Mamluk Studies
This edited volume represents the research results of two international conferences organized and sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: “Environmental Approaches in Pre-Modern Middle Eastern Studies” and “Material Culture Methods in the Middle Islamic Periods”. The following work consists of three parts, which correspond to the themes of the aforementioned conferences (Contributions to Environmental History and Material Culture Studies) and a third which bridges the gap between the two approaches (Practice and Knowledge Transfer). The present papers cover a wide range of such topics as urban pollution, local perceptions of weather, rural estate economy, Sufi understandings of nature and the body and mind, houses and socialization, text and gardens, local know-how and interdependence in medieval Syrian agriculture, crop selection and the medieval agricultural economy etc.
Domestic Slavery in Syria and Egypt, 1200–1500 Slavery touched many aspects of Mamluk society. This volume focuses on the role of slaves within the family, from birth to purchase, liberation, and death. It investigates domestic slavery in Syrian and Egyptian society from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century. Jan Hagedorn focuses on the agency of slaves in the context of master-slave relationships within households and in wider society. He argues that the ability of slaves to shape the world around them was underpinned by a constant process of negotiation within the master-slave relationship and that intermediaries such as the court system channelled the agency of slaves. The principal sources for this study are purchase contracts, listening certificates, marriage contracts, and estate inventories in combination with scribal, market inspection, and slave purchase manuals as well as chronicles.
This volume is based on the ongoing studies on post-Avicennian philosophy in the context of naturalising philosophy and science in Islam from the 12th to the 14th century – a topic that deserves the special attention of historians of Islamic intellectual history. The contributors address the following questions using case studies: What was philosophy all about from the 12th to the 14th century? And how did Muslim scholars react to it during the period under consideration? The present volume approaches complex philosophical topics from different angles and is structured around six main sections: 1. Historical and Social Approaches to Philosophy, 2. Knowing the Unknown, 3. God, Man and the Physical World, 4. Universals, 5. Logic and Intellect, and 6. Anthropomorphism and Incorporealism.
In diesem Band wird eine umfangreiche und beispiellose Erfassung, Dokumentation und Klassifikation erhaltener mamlukischer Minbare in Ägypten, Syrien, dem Libanon, Israel und den Palästinensischen Autonomiegebieten vorgelegt. Sie werden erstmals als gestiftete, geschaffene, genutzte und mit Bedeutung versehene Objekte der mamlukenzeitlichen Gesellschaft vorgestellt. Der gesellschaftliche Kontext der Stiftung der Minbare wird als eine der entscheidenden Ursachen für die Vielzahl erhaltener und unter mamlukischer Herrschaft entstandener Minbare herausgearbeitet. Schließlich stellt Miriam Kühn die Nutzung dieses für die Freitagsmoschee bestimmenden Ausstattungsgegenstandes durch Hinzuziehung von mamlukischen Bild- und Schriftquellen sowie den Inschriften der Minbare dar. This publication is dedicated to the documentation and analysis of the structure and decoration, endowment and use of mamluk minbars. For the first time these objects are presented as endowed, created, used and meaningful objects of the society under Mamluk rule. The work is based on a survey of preserved minbars in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and the areas of Palestinian Authority control carried out between 2006 and 2013. The visual aspects of the minbars are described and classified. Furthermore their endowment is examined and emphasized as the main reason for the numerousness of minbars preserved from Mamluk rule. Finally, the use of minbars is explored by using Mamluk visual and written sources as well as their inscriptions.
Die frühmamlukischen Sultane stellten sich zur Etablierung und Sicherung ihrer Herrschaft bewusst in ayyubidische Traditionen. Im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchung steht Sultan Baibars, der sich nicht nur zur eigenen Herrschaftssicherung ayyubidischer Vorbilder bediente, sondern auch zielstrebig die Etablierung eines dynastischen Prinzips für seine Söhne anstrebte. Seinen ältesten Sohn Baraka Qan baute er umsichtig zum Thronfolger auf und bemühte sich, ihn gleichzeitig durch enge Bindungen mit den führenden Emiren abzusichern. Erstmals analysiert der Autor das planvoll von Baibars durch Verwandtschafts- und Treuebindungen geknüpfte Netzwerk am mamlukischen Hof und in der Armee, das die Gewähr für die Nachfolge seiner Söhne bieten sollte. Diese scheiterten jedoch an ihrem jugendlichen Ungeschick und Qalawuns Ränken. The early Mamluk sultans purposely followed Ayyubid traditions to establish and protect their rule. This analysis focus on Sultan Baibars. Not only did he adopt Ayyubid role models, he also was very determined to establish a dynasty for his sons. He carefully raised his oldest son Baraka Qan to become heir to the throne and at the same time tried to protect him through close relationships with the leading emirs. For the first time, the author analyses Baibars‘ well-planned family and loyalty bonds at the Mamluk sultanate and in the army that should assure the succession of his sons. However, his sons failed due to their juvenile incapacity and Qalāwūn’s intrigues.
The Mamluk Sultanate represents an extremely interesting case study to examine social, economic and cultural developments in the transition into the rapidly changing modern world. On the one hand, it is the heir of a political and military tradition that goes back hundreds of years, and brought this to a high pitch that enabled astounding victories over serious external threats. On the other hand, as time went on, it was increasingly confronted with “modern” problems that would necessitate fundamental changes in its structure and content. The Mamluk period was one of great religious and social change, and in many ways the modern demographic map was established at this time. This volume shows that the situation of the Mamluk Sultanate was far from that of decadence, and until the end it was a vibrant society (although not without tensions and increasing problems) that did its best to adapt and compete in a rapidly changing world.
This book contributes to the history of medieval Jewry in general, as a basis for a comparative study of the position of the Jews in Christian Europe in the Late Middle Ages. The eight articles written by leading experts on this topic pay special attention to the following issues: the measure of tolerance of the Mamluk rulers and the Muslim populace toward the Jews; Jews in government positions and as court physicians; conversion and attitudes toward converted Jews; the Sufi (mystical) nature of Jewish leadership and its relation to the Sufi Islamic discourse; professional, intellectual, and legal interactions between Jews and Muslims. In the end, the contributions help us to sharpen our understanding of Jewish life during the Middle Islamic Period in the Near East.
Mamluk Historiography Revisited – Narratological Perspectives This volume discusses Mamluk historical texts with an emphasis on literary/stylistic analysis, basically ignoring issues of ‘factuality’ versus ‘fictivity’. None of the authors set out to write ‘fiction’; nor would their audience have received their accounts as such. The events depicted were a matter of historical record; but their meaning was geared both to contemporary and to general concerns. The fact of telling them is part and parcel of the historian’s task; the means of telling them has to do with the historian’s choice of style; and style is all-important in conveying meaning. Were these accounts not considered ‘true’, the purpose behind their telling and the meaning they convey, would, arguably, be lost; but were they not told in the most effective manner, their meaning might not be clearly grasped.
“Lisān al-ḥukkām fī maˁrifat al-aḥkām” ist das einzige Werk von Lisān ad-Dīn Abū’ l-Walīd Aḥmad b. aš-Šiḥna al-Ḥalabī al-Ḥanafī, der im Jahre 862/1458 zum Oberkadi der Ḥanafīten in Aleppo ernannt wurde. In der Ausübung des Amtes schrieb er dieses Buch nieder. Es behandelt zwei Hauptthemen: Richterliche Urteile und die Rechte eines Menschen gegenüber seinen Mitmenschen. Er hatte 21 von geplanten 30 Kapiteln niedergeschrieben, als er im Alter von 38 Jahren infolge einer Pesterkrankung starb. Sein Buch gehört aufgrund der umfangreichen Rechtsquellen, der Strukturierung und der Vorgehensweise zu den praktischsten und beliebtesten unter den Fiqh-Büchern. Ein aleppinischer Gelehrter namens Burhan ad-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Ḫālifī al-ʿAdawī al-Ḥalabī al-Ḥanafī vervollständigte das Buch. Er benutzte bis zur Fertigstellung des Buches im Jahre 1015/1606 dieselben Rechtsquellen und folgte der ursprünglichen Strukturierung und Vorgehensweise.
Ibn Aybak ad-Dumyāṭī was an historian spe-cialized in recording the scholarly lives of the learned men of his generation. His most im-portant work of this genre was at-Tarāǧim al-ǧalīla al-ǧaliyya wa-l-ašyāḫ al-ʿāliya al-ʿaliyya in which he recounted the intellectual life of the chief judge Taqī d-Dīn as-Subkī (d. 756/1355) and which is important for the fol-lowing reasons: It is the only source which mentions in detail the books that as-Subkī stud-ied with his teachers and reveals a clear picture of his strong interest in the Prophetic hadīṯs. It unveils information about as-Subkī´s travels and mentions teachers that are found in no oth-er source. It is one of the most important sources which were relied upon by Ibn Ḥaǧar in ad-Durar al-kāmina and by aṣ-Ṣafadī in Aʿyān al-aṣr and al-Wāfī bi-l-wafayāt.
»Mamluk Studies« is the first series that is exclusively dedicated to the history, culture and society of the Mamluk Era (1250–1517). It contains source editions, monographs, collections of articles, and conference proceedings in English, French, and German. The Mamluk Empire is a historically unique model of a society. A predominantly Arabic population was dominated by a purely Turkish-born elite of manumitted military slaves who sought to regenerate themselves continuously through a self-imposed fiat. The only person who could become a Mamluk was a Turk who had been born free outside the Islamic territories as a non-Muslim, then enslaved, brought to Egypt, converted to Islam, freed, and finally, trained as a warrior. Only those who met these prerequisites were members of the ruling stratum with all the concomitant political, military, and economic advantages. Patrons and companions provided the individual, rootless Mamluk with a place and support in society. The flipside of this esprit de corps was intra-Mamluk rivalry between the various families, a resulting lack of internal cohesion of the Mamluk ruling caste, and in particular, the loss of power upon the deposition or death of a protector. But despite these pre-programmed tensions inherent to the system, the model of the Mamluk »single-generation military aristocracy« seems to have had a considerable stabilizing effect. At least, it is safe to assume that the longevity of Mamluk rule over the autochthonous clientage of Egypt and Syria is also, or even primarily, a result of the Mamluk principle of constant regeneration.
When engaging in the study of the Mamluk period (1250–1517), one will certainly find that neither the theoretical foundations nor the de facto implementation of the law system have been researched extensively. In this book, parts of the "Qawāʿid al-fiqh" ("Fundamentals of Jurisprudence") by Muḥammad b. Bahādur az-Zarkašī (died 1392) will be made accessible. The reader is also provided with information on the jurisprudential and the social backround of the text. Under specific headings, az-Zarkašī subsumed case studies and abstract rules which were suitable to further explain the content of the selected term. He then again arranged the key words in alphabetical order. A direct connection between the "Qawāʿid" and legal practices could not be confirmed. According to the author himself, the alphabetical order of the work should help to facilitate working with the book during studies but had not been chosen with regard to fast availability of legal rules or precedents in an actual trial.
This book focuses on the Manṣūriyya regiment, the mamluks of sultan al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn. It traces the lives of these mamluks during the career of their master Qalāwūn (ca. 1260–1290), the period they ruled the Sultanate of Egypt and Syria de jure or de facto (1290–1310), and their aftermath, during the third reign of sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (1310–1341). Based on dozens of contemporary Arabic sources, the book traces the political and military events of the turbulent Manṣūriyya period, as well as the basic military-political principles and socio-political practices that evolved during this period. It suggests that the Manṣūriyya period marks the beginning of the demilitarization, or politicization, of the Mamluk sultanate.
Der mamlūkisch-aleppinische Emir Faḫr ad-Dīn Abū ʿAmr ʿUṯmān b. Uġulbak war das mächtigste und einflussreichste Mitglied seiner Familie. Er prägte seinen Geburtsort Aleppo in der damaligen Zeit durch sein soziales und religiöses Engagement. Die von ihm und seiner Tochter Sitt Ḥalab errichteten Bauwerke bereichern Aleppo bis in die heutige Zeit. Gegenüber den mamlūkischen Sultanen in Kairo demonstrierte er Stärke und verhielt sich nicht immer loyal. Zwei Quellen liefern viele Informationen über ihn: Die erste ist seine Biographie, die zweite das Gerichtsregister »Ğāmiʿ al-mustanadāt«. In diesem Register befinden sich Abschriften von Urkunden, von denen die meisten ihm zugeordnet werden. Dieses Buch beinhaltet den zweiten Teil dieses Gerichtsregisters, bestehend aus fünf Kaufverträgen und einer Waqf-Urkunde, die durch ihren Umfang außergewöhnlich ist.
Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq’s Taʿlīq (d. 1510) is one of only a few examples that survived from an indigenous arabic diary tradition which lasted about a thousand years. It is also by far the most extensive one, its edition amounting to almost 2,000 pages covering twenty years.
Despite considerable scholarly attention in recent years, this is the first monograph dedicated to the Taʿlīq, not as a source but as the subject of inquiry. To these ends, Torsten Wollina discusses it as an ego-document shedding new light on the interdependence of text form and presented information.
The first of four chapters frames the study by placing the Taʿlīq within the arabic diary tradition, which conformed both to the needs of historians (as primary sources) and to those of each author (as a pragmatic text for everyday use). Chapters 2 and 3 give attention to Ibn Ṭawq’s worldview, treating his household and his social contacts in the wider world, respectively. The final chapter addresses the author's self image and the concepts of self available in his times.
In this volume, we try to understand the “Mamluk Empire” not as a confined space but as a region where several nodes of different networks existed side-by-side and at the same time. In our opinion, these networks constitute to a great extent the core of the so-called Mamluk society; they form the basis of the social order. Following, in part, concepts refined in the New Area Studies, recent reflections about the phenomenon of the “Empire – State”, trajectories in today’s Global History, and the spatial turn in modern historiography, we intend to identify a number of physical and cognitive networks with one or more nodes in Mamluk-controlled territories. In addition to this, one of the most important analytical questions would be to define the role of these networks in Mamluk society.
The responsible Ḥākim passes judgement on the “mūǧab of her iqrār”. What impact does this judgement have? Is it valid? What does “mūǧab of the iqrār” mean? And what in fact does “mūǧab” mean? Why does the Ḥākim not pass judgment on the legal validity of the endowment? And what role does the notarization play in this judgement? Taqī d-Dīn Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī as-Subkī, Imām and Supreme Qāḍī, addresses this controversial judgement as well as other issues in this manuscript “al-Qaul al-mūʿab fī l-qaḍāʾ bi l-mūǧab”.
The authors of this volume address a wide range of fascinating topics: medicine and non-Muslim physicians in Mamluk Cairo, the social order of 15th-century Damascus, official reports on natural disasters (maḥāḍir) as sources of Mamluk geography, folk literature, narrative analysis of ego-documents, the judiciary of Late Mamluk and Early Ottoman Damascus, and the problems of imperial village planning. All contributions lead to a better and more sophisticated understanding of the Mamluk society. The contributions were produced at the Annemarie Schimmel-Kolleg »History and Society of the Mamluk Era« at Bonn University.
Once a person starts to study the 250-some years of the Mamluk Era in Egypt and Syria (1250–1517), one characteristic of that period stands out immediately – the very unusual polarization of its society. A predominantly Arabic population was dominated by a purely Turkish-born elite of manu-mitted military slaves who sought to regenerate themselves continuously through a self-imposed fiat. The only person who could become a Mamluk was a Turk who had been born free outside the Islamic territories as a non-Muslim, then enslaved, brought to Egypt as a slave, converted to Islam, freed, and finally, trained as a warrior. Only those who met these prerequisites were members of the ruling stratum with all the concomitant political, military, and economic advantages. On this historically unique model of a society, Stephan Conermann has published a series of seminal articles. In this edited volume the reader gets an excellent introduction to some of the central issues of the ongoing research on the Mamluk history and society.
Sources, which have so far often been overshadowed by chronicles and normative literature, are also the focus of interest of this book. Treatises against unacceptable innovations, pilgrims’ guidebooks, travel reports, prosopographical and biographical writings, journals and diaries, folk novels, documents and law manuals can provide us with valuable information. But what generally applies for Mamlukology is the fact that an enormous amount of fundamental work in the edition of texts remains yet to be done. Many Mamlukists are primarily engaged in this activity. It may also have been this unavoidable focus on handwritten materials that resulted in the fact that the scholars studying the Mamluk Era have only very rarely occupied themselves with interdisciplinary questions or theoretical hypotheses. Nevertheless, during the last ten years a lot of innovative research has been done in this field. For the first time, this book presents the state of the art with regards to the Mamluk “Empire”.
Winslow Williams Clifford is one of the few historians so far who have addressed the history and culture of the so-called Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517) on the basis of theoretical models. This volume is a posthumous publication of his doctoral thesis, submitted in 1995 at the University of Chicago. Through his skillful application of social theory, Clifford succeeded in providing highly convincing evidence that the Mamluk rulers did not - as was maintained fo a long time - constitute a static form of "oriental despotism" but was, rather, a highly differentiated society. It was primarily based on compliance with a complex system of order that had established itself during the rule of the first sultans.
This is the first publication in almost three decades to be dedicated to Mamluk art. The fifteen authors in this book explore the architecture and decorative arts of Egypt and Syria under Mamluk rule between the 13th and 16th century. They discuss the evolution of specific crafts regarding their dating and provenance, the patterns of their patronage and the interaction of Mamluk art with other regions of the Muslim world and beyoond. Their new research based on fieldwork, archaeology, archive sources and museum collections presents a focused view on certain subjects while also conveying a panoramic persepective of Mamluk artistic approaches and concepts.
Before joining SOAS in 2000, Professor Abouseif taught Islamic Art at the American University in Cairo and at the Universities of Freiburg and Munich in Germany.
On two occasions, she was Visiting Professor at Harvard University at the Fine Art Department and the Graduate School of Design; she also was awarded a Bin-Ladin-fellowship to spend a semester at the Graduate School of Design.
She has also been invited as a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Berlin and Bamberg in Germany and the University of Leuven in Belgium, and was "Distinguished Visiting Professor" at the American University in Cairo.
