Sounds and pageantry play significant political and social roles. Giving meaning to sounds is a social production. They create an acoustic community. This was not strange to pre-modern authors. By studying Mamluk soundscape we gain new insights into the elites’ and commoners’ practices and discourse. Data by contemporaneous writers cast light on the role of music, on events that took place in the public sphere, and on reactions that these sounds generated. These sources tell that sounds were instrumental in boosting a sultans’ image and prestige. Recent studies highlight the diverse ethnic composition of the Mamluk military aristocracy. Texts that were produced by members of this ruling class illuminate public performances in Arabic and in Turkish, hence enrich our knowledge of the court culture and languages. From the accounts of sounds we can also deduce on scholarly ties that connected pre-Islamic Hellenistic civilization with the learned discussion that prevailed among Mamluk scholars. Sounds played a key role in religious rituals and ceremonies. Accounts of Sufi assemblies and visitors' guides provide thick descriptions of such communal events. Similar data can be extracted from pious endowments charters. Looking at the soundscape from an opposite angle we come across deeds that prevented non-Muslims from raising their voices in public spheres. Mamluk period Pact of Umar illuminates this socio-religious reality and sultan's efforts to control sounds in urban environments.
Nasser Rabbat: The Historian and the City: Al-Maqrīzī’s Kitāb al-Mawā‘iẓ wa-l-I‘tibār bi-Dhikr al-Khiṭaṭ wa-l-Āthār. (June 2018)
Taqiyy al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī (1364-1442) is one of the most important medieval Islamic historians. Chief among his books is the Kitāb al-Mawā‘iẓ wa-l-I‘tibār bi-Dhikr al-Khiṭaṭ wa-l-Āthār, abbreviated as the Khiṭaṭ. Written between 1415 and 1440, it is the most elaborate repository of topographic and historical information on Cairo and Egypt n general and, arguably, the first true urban history written in any language. My book aims to re-present al-Maqrīzī as a historian with an exhaustive and structured historical project that follows the changing fate of Egypt in time through annals, biographical dictionaries, and short treatises. The plan culminated in the Khitat, with which al-Maqrīzī started his project and which he was continuously redacting until his death. The Khiṭaṭ represents the conclusion of the cumulative narratives on the history of Cairo and illustrates in an almost visual way the ravages of immoral and unjust rule, which al-Maqrīzī blamed on the Mamluks of his time, on its architecture and urbanization. This was al-Maqrīzī's critical stance as it were, conceived and presented from within the epistemological framework of a medieval Muslim thinker; in other words, moralizing and inherently teleological, but still redolent with an anguished search for truth.
Carine Juvin: Civilian Elite and Metalwork. A View from the Edge. (June 2018)
This paper tackles the issue of the luxury consumption goods made for the civilian elite during the Mamluk period, with a focus on the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, through the specific case of the preserved high quality metal objects, replacing them in the general context of the civilian architectural patronage in the main cities of the sultanate. The metal objects made for more or less outstanding individuals may have embodied their wealth, social status, as well as their interactions with the military elite. Most of the recipients remain anonymous or unknown. The case study of a candlestick in the Louvre Museum whose owner can be better identified provides an interesting glimpse into these social interactions. This new attribution offers a precise dating and new perspectives regarding a specific group of late Mamluk metalworks. It is here studied in connection to other closely related inscribed metal objects showing the same stylistic features, and whose poetic inscriptions reflect the literary culture of the civilian elites.
Reuven Amitai: The Development of a Muslim City in Palestine. Gaza under the Mamluks. (July 2017)
Gaza emerged from the Crusading and Ayyubid periods as a small town of minor importance, particularly run down by incessant military activity in the area in the middle decades of the thirteenth century. Under the Mamluk Sultans from 1260 CE onward, the city regained much of its former importance, and perhaps, in some ways, reached new heights. It is described in Arabic and other sources as a prosperous center, not least due to it becoming the capital of a newly organized province around 1300. Other reasons behind these auspicious economic and demographic trends were the massive patronage of the Mamluk elite, a burgeoning agricultural hinterland and ongoing interregional trade. Probably the most important cause for the overall positive developments in the city and its surrounding countryside was the general sense of security provided by the Mamluk regime, including arrangements to keep local nomads (not only Bedouins, but also Kurds and Turkmans who immigrated to the area) under control and to integrate them into the local economy and administrative scheme. Gaza and its region also underwent a process of Islamization, encouraged by the Mamluk authorities. The city and its environs certainly took on a more Islamic appearance, due to construction of large and small buildings. There are increased Muslim religious activities of various kinds in mosques, madrasas, zawiyas and maqams. This may well indicate an increased Muslim population in the region, both in absolute and relative terms. Gaza can be seen an as example of such trends of Islamization in Palestine (and beyond) in the period between the end of Frankish rule and the coming of the Ottomans in 1516.
Mustafa Banister: A Sword in the Caliph’s Service. On the Caliphal Office in Late Fourteenth Century Mamluk Sources. (January 2017)
In recent decades the Abbasid caliphate of Cairo has continued to attract scholarly attention. An often neglected though noteworthy period of the caliphate’s tenure in Mamluk Cairo is the late fourteenth century reign of the caliph al-Mutawakkil ʿalā ʾllāh Muḥammad (r. 763-85/1362-83 and 791-808/1389-1406). Over the course of his time in office, al-Mutawakkil had been offered the sultanate on at least three occasions: at ʿAqaba in 1377, as an alternate candidate to the Circassian amir (and later sultan) Barqūq in 1382, and later during the rebellion of Yalbughā al-Nāṣirī and Minṭāsh in 1390. Al-Mutawakkil proved consistent in his refusal of the office and was wise enough to realize that any such assumption of interim power would likely spell his own political undoing. Nevertheless, competing Mamluk amirs time and again referred to his authori-ty and continued to put him forth as an acceptable contender for the sultanate. Based on sources from the Mamluk period and modern studies, this working paper addresses how and why the caliphate remained an important symbol in late fourteenth century Mamluk politics.
Caterina Bori: One or Two Versions of Al-Siyāsa al-Sharʿiyya of Ibn Taymiyya? And what do they tell us? (December 2016)
Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-raʿī wa-l-raʿiyya is a very famous book. Al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya is also a complex work that displays a variety of meanings cohabiting together rather harmoniously. The generic and synthetic nature of this treatise, together with Ibn Taymiyya’s controversial legacy, has opened the way to many different claims of what the treatise is about. To some extent, the purpose of the present paper is simple. I intend to present and discuss the contents of Ibn Taymiyya’s al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya through a close reading of the text that will take into account two different editions of it so far unnoticed by Western scholars. By so doing, I hope that some of the prevailing ideas about what al-Siyāsa al-sharʿiyya fī iṣlāḥ al-raʿī wa-l-raʿiyya is can be complemented by new perspectives. In particular, I shall argue that the common view that the book is about the coercive power of the state as in punishment, jihad and public order is to be partially revisited and that pursuing a study of the text’s manuscript tradition is an urgent scholarly task. By focusing on the existence of different versions of Ibn Taymiyya’s treatise on siyāsa, the present paper also open questions about their possible meanings.
Iman R. Abdulfattah: Amir ʿAlam al-Dīn Sanjar al-Shujāʿī. His Illustrious Life and Dramatic Demise. (July 2016)
Amir ʿAlam al-Dīn Sanjar al-Shujāʿī (d. 693/1294) was a very influential and powerful amir, perhaps most recognized for his appointments to the vizierate in Egypt and for his role in the military campaigns against the Crusaders. Throughout his career he also acquired a great deal of experience supervising royal constructions for sultans Qalāwūn and al-Ashraf Khalīl. Consequently, he supervised over a dozen new constructions and renovations in Cairo and Greater Syria. The overwhelming majority of these buildings no longer survive and are only available to us in the sources. In this Working Paper the trajectory of Sanjar al-Shujāʿī’s life is traced from his upbringing in Damascus to his death at the hands of al-ʿĀdil Kitbughā, integrating his architectural activity along the way. While the most famous building project that Sanjar al-Shujāʿī supervised was the funerary complex of Sultan al-Mansūr Qalāwūn (683/1284-1285), the objective of this paper is profile his career more fully in order to identify patterns and insights into his style and its evolution, which can be used as a tool in the future to link him to projects that are not explicitly linked to him in the sources.
Abdelkader Al Ghouz: Brokers of Islamic Philosophy in Mamlūk Egypt. Šams ad-Dīn Maḥmūd b. ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān al-Iṣfahānī (d. 1348) as a Case Study in the Transmission of Philosophical Knowledge through Commentary Writing. (September 2015)
This working paper summarises the main research results of my research stay as a post-doc research fellow at the Annemarie-Schimmel-Kolleg. The aim of this research project is to cast light on knowledge brokerage between Ilkhanid Tabriz and Mamlūk Cairo during the third reign of the Mamlūk ruler an-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r. 1310-1341). Therefore, it focuses on the Sunni scholar Šams ad-Dīn Maḥmūd Ibn ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān al-Iṣfahānī (d. 749/1348) and his role as a philosophical broker in religious and educational foundations (ḫānqāhs) devoted in the first place to religious practices of Sufism. This working paper is divided into three parts: 1. the academic setting of the present post-doc research project, 2. a biography of Šams ad-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Iṣfahānī, and 3. an analysis of the text data of my research project from the perspective of both social and intellectual history.
Kate Raphael: Mosques East and West of the Jordan Valley. From the Arab Conquest to the End of the Mamluk Period. (September 2015)
As an institution that fulfilled both religious and civil functions, the mosque facilitated the establishment of Muslim rule and played an essential role in the consolidation and construction of the identity of the new emerging Muslim society. The aims of this research are twofold: the first is to record the mosques that were built throughout the region. The second aim of this project is to try and follow the pace of Islamization from the Arab conquest (638CE) up until the end of the Mamluk period (1517CE), by examining the spatial distribution of mosques in the region of what are today the modern states of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel.
By recording the mosques built over the period under discussion and examining them in the wider historical frame one may well be able to provide a better picture of what might have occurred in this region. The corpus of mosques (which does not form part of this publication) is drawn from historical sources, the large body of inscriptions that commemorate the construction and/or repairs of mosques, and archaeological excavations and surveys.
The following is a preliminary analysis of this data. It is important to stress here that this work is still in progress and that the database may grow and the picture presented here may well change.
Jo Van Steenbergen: ‘Mamlukisation’ between Social Theory and Social Practice. An Essay on Reflexivity, State Formation, and the Late Medieval Sultanate of Cairo. (September 2015)
This working paper is a reflexive essay that tries to think with and beyond one of the basic assumptions upon which the field of late medieval Syro-Egyptian ‘Mamluk’ studies is built: the idea that all late medieval Syro-Egyptian objects of study are by default first and foremost connected, circumscribed and distinguished by some agency of dominant military slavery, of Mamluk-ness. Acknowledging that there may be different ways to pursue such an epistemological exercise, this essay opts for re-imagining the historical agency of what traditionally tends to be subsumed under the phenomenon of the Mamluk state. It is argued that the notions of state in modern research and of dawla in contemporary texts remain an issue of related analytical confusion. Engaging with this confusion in the generalising fashion of a historical sociology of late medieval Syro-Egyptian political action, this essay proposes an alternative analytical model that is inspired by Michael Chamberlain’s prioritisation of social practices of household reproduction and by Timothy Mitchell’s related understanding of the state as a structural effect of practices of social differentiation. The proposed model sees sultanic political order — the state — as process, in constant flux as the structural effect and structuring embodiment of constantly changing practices of social reproduction, of elite integration and of political distinction, in contexts that range between multipolar and unipolar social organisation at and around Cairo’s court and its military elites. The essay ends with summarily suggesting from this model how the socio-culturally structured and structuring memories of dynastic political order that had remained politically dominant for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all but obliterated in the fifteenth century by a new layer of particularly ‘Mamluk’ socio-political meaning.
Amar S. Baadj: The Term “Zawāwa” in the Medieval Sources and the Zawāwī Presence in Egypt and Syria during the Ayyubid and Mamluk Periods. (March 2015)
This paper consists of two parts. In Part One I trace the history of the name “Zawāwa” in the medieval Arabic sources both eastern and western from the early Islamic period until the 16th century. The near absence of any reference to the Zawāwa in the early sources for the history of the Maghrib stands in contrast to the frequent appearance of the term in later sources such as Ibn Ḫaldūn’s history and as-Saḫāwī’s biographical dictionary and I propose an explanation for this. In Part Two I have compiled biographical information on prominent Zawāwīs who lived in Egypt and Syria during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods.
Stephan Conermann, Bethany J. Walker (together with Amr El-Hawary, Miriam Kühn, Nur Özdilmaç & Daniel Redlinger): Islamic „Art“ History – Some Postcolonial Perspectives. (December 2014)
This Working Paper questions the concept of “Islamic Art History”. The term is amorphous: ever since the fundamental studies of Oleg Grabar we have known that the direct allocation of religion to art and vice versa raises questions. Art constitutes a cultural subsystem within societies. Sociologically, art has to be tied, or referred, to the realms of politics, economics, law, social orders, institutions and further cultural patterns. Only in the interplay with other cultural studies and the humanities is it possible to deconstruct art, considering its function and cultural context. Often enough it considers its task in the recording, description and classification of objects. This is, of course, an important and essential step, yet, it should not be the reason for stopping to ask further questions about the objects and, especially, to relate them to their socio-cultural context in which they emerged and to which they have to be related. In general, we ask how concepts current in postcolonial studies in disciplines such as history and comparative literature can help Islamic art historians to re-envision their objects of study.
Daniel Redlinger: The Impact of Religious Architecture Memorial in Rural Areas in Jordan in the 13th-16th Century as a Focus of Identity and Social, Religious and Economic Centers. (October 2014)
This Working Paper describes the starting point for a post-doctoral project on the social, economic and political meaning and function of memorial architecture constructed during the Mamluk and early Ottoman time in a geographical area that today belongs to the kingdom of Jordan. The post-doctoral project aims at building up a sound documentation of these hitherto neglected structures of the Mamluk and early Ottoman Memorial architecture in this area; it will include a study of their function for the region, but also for the central power in Cairo and Syria in pre-modern times. An important issue of the post doc-project will be to unveil which images of history materialize in the architecture and how they were adapted and exploited by different groups from the past until today.
This Working Paper provides also a short insight into the results of two short field researches in 2013 and 201, which where intended to gain a first insight into the structures, forms, condition and accessibility of the buildings. The methodological work in this post-doctoral project is intended to be interdisciplinary. The analysis is not limited to a philological, historical-critical evaluation of written source material, or an archaeological approach but also includes art historical analysis of the existing buildings and the technic of interviews in the overall consideration of memorial architecture in Jordan.
Mohammad Gharaibeh: The Buldāniyyāt of as-Saḫāwī (d. 902/1496). A Case Study on Knowledge Specialization and Knowledge Brokerage in the Field of Ḥadīṯ Collections. (October 2014)
This paper offers new approaches on how to analyze ḥadīṯ collections and to make them useable for social and intellectual history. While focusing on the so called buldāniyyāt (geographical ḥadīṯ collections) – a subgroup of the forty ḥadīṯ collections – the study explores new forms of knowledge that an author includes into his collection to make it innovative for his reference group. The idea of what an innovative work should be is significantly related to the shared ideas of the reference group to which an author belongs and/or for which he writes. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the structure and content of the collection reveals something about the author’s very reference group and its shared ideas. Putting their contributions in the light of previous works, authors usually choose a strategy of knowledge specialization or knowledge brokerage to develop innovative moments in their work. Consequently, a comprehensive study of scholarly pieces needs to contextualize both the social context of the author and the intellectual references he makes. In this paper, the focus shall lie on the buldāniyyāt of Šams ad-Dīn Muḥammad as-Saḫāwī (d. 902/1496). In a first step, his collection will be compared with preceding written buldāniyyāt to identify the knowledge specialization and knowledge brokerage processes that make his collection innovative in the context of the text group of the buldāniyya. In a second step, an analysis of as-Saḫāwī’s social and intellectual context, represented through horizontal and vertical intellectual and social ties, reveals that the concrete structure and content of his collection is also influenced by the shared ideas of his reference group.
Matthew Ingalls: Šarḥ, Iḫtiṣār, and Late-Medieval Legal Change. A Working Paper. (October 2014)
The study that follows analyzes three examples from Islamic purity law (ṭahāra) as they evolve across four consecutive generations of substantive law (furūʿ) texts with the aim of understanding how the antipodal processes of šarḥ (expansion/commentary) and iḫtiṣār (abridgement) affect the substance of a legal tradition. Owing to their significance in the development and reception of the later Šāfiʿī maḏhab, the furūʿ works of the Mamlūk scholar and judge Zakariyyā al-Anṣārī (d. 926/1520) form the crux of the analysis here. Before examining specific passages from these works and their precursors, the study begins with an overview of al-Anṣārī’s position in the Šāfiʿī maḏhab, the idiosyncrasies of his legal prose, his major works in Šāfiʿī furūʿ, and their genealogical relationship to earlier texts in the tradition. In light of the textual examples presented, it concludes with a summary of the variables that influence a commentator’s control over the textual tradition at hand.
Kristina Richardson: The Evolving Biographical Legacy of Two Late Mamluk Ḥanbalī Judges. (September 2014)
In 887/1482, two Damascene Ḥanbalī judges, Nāṣir ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. Zurayq (d. 900/1495) and Naǧm ad-Dīn ʿUmar b. Mufliḥ (d. 919/1513), stood accused of confiscation of waqf property and were summoned to Cairo to be interrogated and investigated by Sultan Qāʾitbāy. In this article I investigate this incidence of waqf manipulation, the lives of the accused parties after this event, and the ways in which later biographers, particularly Ibn Zurayq’s favorite student Šams ad-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Ṭūlūn (d. 953/1546) and Ibn Mufliḥ’s grandson Akmal ad-Dīn b. Mufliḥ (d. 1011/1603), sought to reframe the event and, thereby, the legacy of the participants.
Boaz Shoshan: On the Marital Regime in Damascus, 1480-1500 CE. (July 2014)
This paper is part of a larger project that will attempt to reconstruct the socio-economic dimensions of Damascus at the end of the Mamluk period, and which is primarily based on Ibn Ṭawq’s diary. The paper summarizes the author’s earlier study of divorce in Damascus life and focuses on marriages and bonds with female slaves and concubines. It argues that while, generally speaking, Damascus men were monogamous, quite a number owned slaves and concubines who mothered children. The paper illustrates these general conclusions by references to pertinent examples that Ibn Ṭawq provides.
This article reexamines wages in Egypt using new evidence not analyzed in my previous study of the late Mamluk economy (Borsch, The Black Death in Egypt and England, 2005). The results show that wages for unskilled labor fell precipitously from the 1300s to the 1400s and stayed at a very low level thereafter. Shown in the figure below are the primary quantitative results from approximately 300 wage listings from the late thirteenth century to the late seventeenth century.
Linda Northrup: Al-Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī Explorations. The Interface Between Medicine, Politics and Culture in Early Mamluk Egypt. (September 2013)
Al-Bīmāristān al-Manṣūrī (the Manṣūrī hospital), founded by the sultan al-Manṣūr Sayf ad-Dīn Qalāwūn (r. 678-689/1279-1290) at a moment of cultural shift, is both the object of this study and a lens through which to view the links between medicine, politics and culture in Mamluk Egypt and Syria. The exploratory research described here is intended to result in a history of this hospital that will cast light on aspects of the intellectual history of the Mamluk period that, despite several recent groundbreaking studies, still remains largely unknown and underappreciated. Two approaches have been used: 1) source analysis with primary focus on two documents, the diplomas for the riyāsat aṭ-ṭibb (chief physicianship in Egypt and Syria) and the tadrīs al-bīmāristān (chair of medicine at the hospital) examined with respect to their structure and three themes (ǧihād, ʿilm, and medical education) and 2) network analysis focusing on individuals who had some affiliation to the hospital whether as founder, later donor, physician, administrator, student, or patient. Although we have barely scratched the surface here, the paths followed seem promising as strategies to arrive at more than a descriptive history of the hospital and to provide insights into the role of the hospital within the context of the medicine, politics and wider intellectual currents and culture of the period. The textual analysis of two diplomas of appointment indicates that in addition to other possible purposes, the hospital was intended both to elevate the status of medicine as a discipline by rendering this foreign science less controversial in the Islamic context by demonstrating that medicine (ʿilm al-abdān) was integral to the religious sciences (ʿilm al-adyān) and ultimately to advance the Islamization of the medical profession. The analysis of networks of individuals with affiliations of various kinds to the hospital promises to yield insights into the links between medicine and power within the context of the wider cultural and intellectual environment. To date, this type of analysis also shows that despite the ǧihādī, exclusionary language and intentions of the documents at the formal level, actual relationships and networks at the time of the founding of the hospital were in fact more inclusive at the informal level at least at the beginning of the Mamluk era. This exploratory research opens new paths for studying the history of Mamluk society and intellectual history while raising more questions than it answers, such as, most basically, what role the hospital played in these developments?
Bethany J. Walker: Planned Villages and Rural Resilience on the Mamluk Frontier. A Preliminary Report on the 2013 Excavation Season at Tall Hisban. (August 2013)
There is a considerable body of literature today on urban space in Mamluk studies. This is in large part due to the nature and survival of the textual sources, which reflect an urban bias and are preserved in city archives. Architectural studies of Mamluk cities also abound, as many monuments and even entire neighborhoods of the period have been preserved in the urban fabric of modern Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo, and Jerusalem. The same cannot be said, however, about the rural lands under Mamluk rule - namely settlements of village and sub-village size – about which we know precious little. While textual sources, and particularly documentary ones, can produce some information about rural life, if they are carefully mined, it is the archaeological record that offers us the greatest promise for reconstructing the physical structure of rural settlements, their function(s) and development over time, and details of the lives of the people who lived there. The focus of the 2013 excavation season at Tall Hisban, co-sponsored by the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of the University of Bonn, was to investigate the settlement associated with the Mamluk citadel and to explore the many factors that may have contribute to its growth, decline, and transformation over time. The following essay is a preliminary, non-technical assessment of that fieldwork, highlighting the most important results relevant to a study of Mamluk-era rural life and raising important questions about changing relations between state and village in the seventh/ fourteenth century.
Yehoshua Frenkel: Mapping the Mamluk Sultanate. (March 2013)
The present brief contribution aims to shed light on a particular source, namely on official reports about natural disasters. These documents, known as maḥḍar (pl. maḥāḍir), were recorded by an inspector or an inspection team, following a severe event. They are a potential source for the study of Mamluk historical geography and have not been adequately studied until now.
Yehoshua Frenkel: Volksroman under the Mamluks. The Case of the Tamīm ad-Dārī Popular Sira. (February 2013)
The present paper evolved from a historical-legal research project. While searching for information about properties in Hebron (al-Ḫalīl), which the offspring of the ṣaḥābī Tamīm al-Dārī claimed, I stumbled upon a popular story. In this story Tamīm is portrayed as a hero who has been kidnapped by ǧinns and endured ordeals and adventures on remote islands. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the text and its reception by the Mamluk society. Inter alia, I will describe the audiences, and will try to elucidate the supposed connections between Tamīm the historical character and Tamīm the literary hero.
Since there is slight positive evidence to indicate that this text is “Mamluk,” one may ask why my talk is about a “sīra šaʿbiyya” in the Mamluk environment? What makes it “Mamluk”? What is Mamluk in the story? My answer is based primarily upon circumstantial evidence, and I will return to it at the closing section of this paper.
Thomas Herzog: Social Milieus and Worldviews in Mamluk adab-Encyclopedias. The Example of Poverty and Wealth. (February 2013)
The economic and cultural rise of parts of the ʿāmma due to the particular economic and infrastructural conditions of the Mamluk era fostered the emergence of new intermediate levels of literature that were situated between the literature of the elite and that of the utterly ignorant and unlettered populace, between the Arabic koiné (al-ʿarabiyya al-fuṣḥā) and the local dialects (ʿāmmiyya-s), between written and oral composition, performance and transmission. The following paper proposes to analyze the composition of three Mamluk adab-encyclopedias and their treatment of poverty and wealth in light of the social milieus of their authors and publics.
Yehoshua Frenkel: Al-Biqāʿī’s Naval War-Report. (October 2012)
Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm al-Biqāʿī’s ego-document is at the heart of the present paper. The author provides a rich account of Mamluk military operations in Cyprus and al-Qashtīl al-Rūj (Château Roux/Kastelorizo/Castellorizo) Island. It is not an impartial or “objective” story, but rather an observer-participant report of a naval expedition by a well-known administrator and writer. The detailed text reflects the author’s self-presentation and interpretation of events and deeds. It casts light on historiography under the Mamluks, as well as on the history of the Eastern Mediterranean in the 15th century.
Koby Yosef: Ethnic Groups, Social Relationships and Dynasty in the Mamluk Sultanate (1250-1517). (September 2012)
The Mamluk Sultanate has been considered as the arena in which the "Mamluk principles" were expressed most clearly. According to the prevalent view among modern scholars, in the Mamluk Sultanate dynastic and hereditary tendencies were rather weak. Generally, students of the Mamluk Sultanate tend to underestimate the importance of relationships based on blood ties, marital ties and ethnic solidarity. Instead, they emphasize the importance of mamlūk connections. It is here argued, that throughout the entire period of the Mamluk Sultanate blood ties, marital ties and ethnic solidarity were more important than it is commonly believed. Notwithstanding this, significant changes in patterns of social ties are noticeable after the transition to the Circassian period. Only then a considerable decline of the social and political importance of the nuclear family occurred, and mamlūk ties became increasingly significant. This change led to an erosion of the dynastic and hereditary practices. This change did not arise from the alleged principle that non-mamlūks were unfit for holding key positions. It was rather the result of circumstances unique of the Circassian period.
Michael Winter: The Judiciary of Late Mamluk and Early Ottoman Damascus. The Administrative, Social and Cultural Transformation of the System. (August 2012)
The study compares the profiles of judges (qāḍīs), deputy qadis (nāʾibs), and the personnel of the courts in Damascus mainly in the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Although both the Mamluks and the Ottomans were committed to the Sharīʿah law, their legal and administrative practices and policies were quite different. This was the result of the obvious political realities and the status of Damascus within the Mamluk and the Ottoman states. Damascus in the transition period is a good test case, owing to the many excellent sources in sixteenth century Damascus, that were even richer than the sources of Cairo during the same period. The involvement of the qadis with the local population under both rules and their relations with the center (Cairo and then Istanbul) are recorded in the chronicles, biographical dictionaries and other literary and documentary sources of Damascus. The social and cultural differences between the local (Arabic speaking) qadis and the Turkish speaking nominees from Istanbul call for an extensive comparative study.
Torsten Wollina: What is a City? Perceptions of Architectural and Social Order in 15th-Century Damascus. (July 2012)
This paper deals with the question how one occupant of 15th-century Damascus perceived his hometown and how he transferred this perception into writing. The key witness in this endeavour is the notary Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad b. Muḥammad, known as Ibn Ṭawq (834-915/1443-1510). He amassed a lengthy account encompassing several decades of his life. As Li Guo stated in a recent review article: “It is evident that the author’s motivation and impulse for writing the diary lay in his consummate interest in the wellbeing of himself, his community […], and his place: Damascus and its suburbs.” But is this really his place? Is it restricted to the city and the suburbs? In this paper, the author aims to address the question of whether 15th-century Damascenes made a distinction between the city and the countryside. This question will be approached from two directions. Firstly, does the author describe the rural geography differently from the urban one? Does he make a distinction between a physical entity of the city and its surroundings? And secondly, does he single out any groups as alien or different because of their rural background?
Paulina B. Lewicka: Medicine for Muslims? Islamic Theologians, Non-Muslim Physicians and the Medical Culture of the Mamluk Near East. (July 2012)
The present paper is an attempt to define the ways in which the process of radicalization of Islam influenced the medical culture of Egypt and Syria under the Mamluks. Both the transformation of medical culture and the impact of this transformation on medical theory and practice are discussed, above all, in the context of the inter-faith antagonism. The work is in progress, so some of the interpretations are of preliminary character and require further investigation. As an area of research, the microcosm of non-Muslim physicians living and working in the Mamluk state is rather capacious and non-uniform. As such, it can be approached from a number of perspectives. On the most obvious level, the subject belongs, on the one hand, to the social history of medicine; on the other, it forms a part of the history of inter-communal and inter-faith antagonisms. The present study aims at investigating the area where medical culture and inter-communal conflict overlapped. This area constitutes in fact a rather complex puzzle in which the issues of sickness and health were interwoven with ideology, politics, and propaganda based both on the “time-honored tradition” of blaming the doctor and the fear of (and animosity towards) the religious Other. In other words, this is interdisciplinary research, focused on the social aspects of medicine, inter-communal antagonism, and the interaction between them. Approaching such a complex subject matter from just one of the possible perspectives would mean depriving it of its rich and multifaceted context. In order to make the study comprehensive, I have decided to apply a mode of inquiry which is sometimes used by historians of the Alltag, and which allows the scholar to combine many different instruments, including those that are typical for fields such as anthropology, sociology, or social psychology. This mode also makes it possible to make comparisons with other cultures.
Stephan Conermann: Quo vadis, Mamlukology? (A German Perspective). (February 2011)
No abstract available.
