The battle of ʿAyn Jālūt was perceived as a dramatic historical event that responded to the deep crisis and despair that prevailed in the Muslim world in the wake of the Mongol invasion and the termination of the Abbasid caliphate, the symbolic religious leadership of the Muslim world. It was conferred the status of a paradigmatic historical event in Mamlūk historical literature far beyond the time it took place. As such it was used by the powerful groups of the the Mamlūks and the ʿulamāʾ, the religious learned scholars as a vehicle to express their stance or claims in ongoing discourses on legitimacy, authority and power and voice their social and political interests. While the Mamlūks used their military achievements to legitimize their political position and base it on their divine chosen role to support Islam and defend the Muslims, the ʿulamāʾ reduced their importance by placing the Battle as a part of cyclic events that prove the divine protection of Islam. They used primordial Islamic images and figures, and past events to show that this victory was not only a military achievement but mainly the revival of the primal experience of Islam. For them it was a replication of the path of the Prophet Muḥammad, and they as dedicated religious leaders were its true heroes.

The Author

Amalia Levanoni, Prof. emeritus, President, the Middle East and Islamic Studies Association of Israel, Department of Middle Eastern History, Haifa University, Mount Carmel, Haifa. 1990 Ph.D. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Islamic History. 1993 Fellowship, Eberhard Karls University, Tubingen, Germany. 1997 Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Oxford. 2001–2004 Associate Member, Center of Middle Eastern Studies, the University of Chicago. 2002 Visiting scholar, Center for Near Eastern Studies, the University of Chicago. 2004–2007 Chair, Department of  Middle Eastern History, University of Haifa. 2005–2007 Member, Fulbright Foundation Committee, United States-Israel Educational Foundation. 2007 Visiting Scholar, Princeton University, Princeton. 2013 Fellowship, Annemarie-Schimmel-Kolleg for the History and Society of the Mamluk Era (1250–1517), Bonn University, Bonn.

Based upon an analysis of the so-called Mahdi A manuscript of Alf Layla wa Layla—preserved in the Bibliotheque Nationale—and the wider context of Mamluk numismatic history, Schultz explores what this version of the famous collection of stories can tell us about coinage in the Mamluk Sultanate. He first revisits the debate over the date of this manuscript’s transcription. While Muhsin Mahdi concluded that this manuscript was transcribed in eighth/fourteenth century, Heinz Grotzfeld argued that the manuscript was a ninth/fifteenth century product. Grotzfeld based his conclusion on the basis of the mention in the manuscript of gold coins known as “ashrafī ” dinars, and he identified these coins as those dinars struck in 829/1425 during the reign of sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy. Schultz demonstrates how the numismatic evidence overwhelming supports the later date, while also allowing for a date of transcription slightly earlier than the mid-century date favored by Grotzfeld. The second part of the essay gives multiple examples of how the language of money and commercial transactions found in several stories help corroborate other interpretations of monetary circulation in medieval Egypt and Syria.

The Author
Warren C. Schultz (Ph.D., Islamic History, University of Chicago) is a professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern History at DePaul University in Chicago, IL, where he serves as an Associate Dean in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. He is also a Fellow of the American Numismatic Society. Schultz is the author of many articles and chapters on the monetary history of the medieval Islamic world in general, and the Mamluk Sultanate in particular. He has served as a numismatic consultant for several archaeological excavations, and is currently studying archaeologically-found coins from the Mamluk provinces of southern Bilād al-Shām. His interest in the Mamluks was sparked by a graduate course in 1986 taught by Carl Petry, a seminar which set in motion the creation of the Mamluk Bibliography Project and eventually the journal Mamluk Studies Review.

The onslaught of the plague, possibly exacerbated by climate change, caused a crisis in 14th century Egyptian agriculture. Shifts in ownership from the state to private hands or pious foundations put further stress on the state’s traditional fiscal base. Christ argues that the sultans increased taxation and state intervention in response, and that control of the international transit trade turned out to be particularly profitable. In order to tap it more effectively, the Mamluk sultanate reinforced ties with the Venetians in the Mediterranean and the Rasulids in the Red Sea. Relations were grounded in an ambiguous language of gift exchange which allowed for the harmonization of nominal hierarchical difference and de facto bilateral, symbiotic exchange. On the basis of shared trade interests, the Mamluks delegated power over the ‘Two Seas’. This delegation was not perfect though; the Mamluks also sought to establish a direct if only seasonal fiscal presence in the Egyptian gateways of this trade in Alexandria, Upper Egypt and the Hijaz , thus combining power delegation on the seas with tighter control in the ports in order to channel the lucrative transit trade through their Cairo power base.

The Author:

Georg Christ is a Senior Lecturer in Medieval and Early Modern History at the University of Manchester. Recent works include “Decline or Deindustrialization? Notes on the Entangled Histories of Levantine and European Industries in the Late Middle Ages”, Comparativ 26, 3 (2016): 25–44. He is currently at work on a book about maritime trade regimes in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 14th century, especially Veneto-Mamluk relations.

There is a rich corpus of texts about agriculture during the Rasulid era (13th–15th centuries CE) in Yemen. One of the most important crops at the time was the date palm (nakhl), which was grown in the Tihāma coastal region, Najrān and Ḥaḍramawt. This essay provides a translation and analysis of the section on date palms in the 13th century agricultural treatise Milḥ al-malāḥa fī ma‘rifat al-filāḥa, written by the Rasulid sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf ‘Umar. Details are provided on the varieties of dates, their cultivation, pollination and protection from insects and diseases.

The Author
Daniel Martin Varisco is President of the American Institute for Yemeni Studies. He has taught at Hofstra University in New York and Qatar University. He has worked in Yemen since 1978 as an anthropologist, development consultant and historian. This essay is part of a long-term research project on agriculture during the Rasulid era. 

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Gül Şen’s study offers a reconsideration of the area covered by present-day Jordan under Ottoman rule during the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. Despite its political and strategic importance over the ages, the former Mamluk- and later Ottoman-ruled region has remained an understudied area eclipsed by other territories in the former Ottoman province of historical Syria (Bilād al-Shām). By applying a combination of approaches, putting an emphasis on ‘transition’ instead of dynastic division and considering the geographical reorientation as the ‘empire’s frontier’, the author reframes Jordan as a frontier during a transitional period and sets it into the larger picture of Ottoman provincial administration. Thus, she offers a fresh understanding of Ottoman rule beyond the conventional assessments.  Further, she argues that in order to understand the multilayered experiences of the imperial administration in this frontier zone, various historical perceptions should be examined. Appealing to interdisciplinary approaches, the study is a contribution to the complex history of the Arabic-speaking provinces of the Ottoman Empire. 

The Author

Gül Şen is currently a research associate at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies (IOA) at the University of Bonn where she obtained her PhD in 2012 in Middle Eastern Studies. Her main areas of research cover pre-modern Ottoman history, historiography in general and of the Syrian provinces, dependency structures, legitimacy of rule, and narratology in particular. Her recent publications include The Mamluk-Ottoman Transition: Continuity and Change in Egypt and Bilād al-Shām in the Sixteenth Century (ed. with Stephan Conermann, 2017). She is also co-editor of the series Ottoman Studies (Bonn University Press V&R unipress), and the Otto Spies Memorial Lecture Series (EB-Verlag Berlin). She is currently preparing a monograph in the framework of a German Research Foundation (DFG) grant project: “Naʿīmā’s (1655–1716) Court Chronicle: A Narratological Analysis of the Significative Function of Ottoman Historiography.”

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Bogdan C. Smarandache
76 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2019

This paper is an attempt to clarify the development, function, and conceptualization of shared‐revenue arrangements between Franks and Muslims in the Coastal Plain (al-Sāḥil) and Greater Syria (Bilād al-Shām) in the medieval period. I first catalogue truces that established partitions while assessing their defining characteristics. I then analyze how Frankish and Muslim conceptualizations of property and territory may have informed two slightly different notions of partitioning. Based on an analysis of these conceptualizations of ownership and territory, I argue that the only basis for partition truces in the Frankish‐Muslim context was a division of revenue that resembled tributary status.

The Author

Bogdan is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, where he is writing his thesis under the supervision of Prof. Mark Meyerson, Prof. Linda Northrup, and Prof. Michael Gervers. In his dissertation, he is investigating the linkage between diplomatic relations and minority conditions in the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Bogdan finished his undergraduate studies at McGill University in 2011 and his MPhil at St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, in 2012.

Boris Liebrenz
67 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2019

This book comprises the edition and analysis of a waqf-scroll documenting the charitable foundations of a Damascene physician, Ibn Ḥubayqa, established in the last years of the Mamluk reign. The document is regularly updated and corroborated by courts and judges of all madhhabs throughout the first century of Ottoman rule in the city. Two principal reasons make this document, which is now held at the American Unversity of Beirut, stand out: First, the general scarcity of pre-Ottoman archival material from Damascus, notably the near-complete absence of original waqf-deeds from the city. This is, of course, in stark contrast to the many surviving endowment documents from Mamluk Egypt, a fact that means a severe geographical imbalance in our knowledge of this important institution’s history. Second, the profession of the endower and his descendants as prominent physicians makes this a welcome addition to our knowledge of a group that left otherwise very few traces in the literary sources. This scroll allows us to investigate how this physicians’ family participated in the spread in personal ownership of rural agricultural lands in the Damascene hinterland in the late Mamluk and early Ottoman period. Finally, the edition and analysis of this rare document will help us better understand the process of transition from the Mamluk to the Ottoman law-court system.

The Author

Boris Liebrenz studied Arabic philology and History at Leipzig University. In his dissertation (awarded the Annemarie-Schimmel-Forschungspreis in 2018), Liebrenz analysed the history of a Damascene private library and the broader book culture of the city during the Ottoman period (Die Rifāʽīya. Leiden: Brill, 2016). After research positions in Bonn, Berlin, and New York City, he is currently a research fellow at the Saxon Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig within the framework of the project Bibliotheca Arabica. He is also a co-editor of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts. Besides a sustained interest in the history of manuscripts, libraries, and reading, Liebrenz’ main publications revolve around the history of Oriental studies, printing, themes of social and economic history, and minorities in the pre-modern Middle East, all with a particular focus on documentary sources from the earliest Arabic papyri to Ottoman merchant letters.
 

86 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2020

This brief monograph is a close examination of the chapter dealing with the occult “science of letters and names” (ʿilm al-ḥurūf wa-l-asmāʾ) in the sixth faṣl of Ibn Khaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) famous al-Muqaddimah. It is argued that his views on this Sufi occult discourse are best understood in light of a rising tide of interest in lettrism, other occult disciplines, and millenarianism among the learned classes of eighth/fourteenth century Cairo, especially at the court of his patron, the Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Barqūq. On the basis of multiple recensions of the work, the text is approached as one that the author adapted over time according to his shifting personal situation and contentions with various interlocutors. Particular attention is paid to Süleymaniye MS Damad Ibrahim 863, the recension prepared for donation to Barqūq’s sultanal library. A critical edition of the chapter on lettrism as it appears in that manuscript is included, as well as a new translation of the chapter.

The Author

Noah Gardiner is an Assistant Professor of Religious Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of South Carolina. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies in 2014 at the University of Michigan, and he was a Junior Fellow at Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg, Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, in the 2015–16 academic year. His dissertation, “Esotericism in a manuscript culture: Aḥmad al-Būnī and his readers through the Mamlūk period,” was awarded the 2014 Bruce D. Craig Prize for Mamluk Studies. His research is on Sufism, the science of letters and other occult sciences, and Arabic manuscripts and manuscript culture, all with a focus on the late-medieval Arabic-speaking Mediterranean. He is currently working on two book projects, one on the arch-lettrist Aḥmad al-Būnī and his reception, and the other on a renaissance of learned occultism in Cairo and other Mamluk cities in the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries.

Among his publications are: Co-editor with Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, special issue Arabica 64/3–4 (2017), pp. 287–693. | “Books on Occult Sciences,” in Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library 1502/3, ed. Gülru Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell Fleischer, Muqarnas Supplements 14 (Leiden: Brill, 2019), pp. 557–587. | “The Occultist Encyclopedism of ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Bisṭāmī,” Mamlūk Studies Review 20 (2017), pp. 3–38. | “Esotericist Reading Communities and the Early Circulation of the Sufi Occultist Aḥmad al-Būnī’s Works,” in Islamicate Occultism: New Perspectives, pp. 405–441. | “Stars and Saints: The Esotericist Astrology of the Sufi Occultist Ahmad al-Buni,” Journal of Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 12/1 (2017), pp. 39–65. | “Forbidden Knowledge? Notes on the Production, Transmission, and Reception of the Major Works of Aḥmad al-Būnī,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 12 (2012), pp. 81–143. | With Frédéric Bauden, “A recently discovered holograph fair copy of al-Maqrīzī’s al-Mawāʿiẓ wa-al-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-āthār: University of Michigan Islamic MS 605,” Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 2 (2011), pp. 123–131.

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Although David Ayalon (1914–98) is primarily known as a Mamlukist and many will consider him the father of Mamluk studies, he also turned his attention to other weighty matters in the study of Middle Eastern and Islamic history.  Among these were the important relations between the Muslim dominated Middle East and the Eurasian Steppe, the original home of the nomadic Turks and Mongols.  A related subject that Ayalon explored was the relations of the mostly Turkish Mamluks of Egypt and Syria with the Mongols.  In the early 1970s he examined if Mongol law (Yasa) had been implemented in the Mamluk Sultanate, as claimed by some scholars. Ayalon’s conclusion was a resounding negative answer, but along the way, he opened up new vistas of source criticism, together with innovative ideas on both Mongol and Mamluk history.

The Author

Reuven Amitai is Eliyahu Elath Professor for Muslim History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, specializing in history of the late medieval Middle East and adjacent areas.  From 2010 to 2014, he was dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Hebrew University, and from 2014 to 2016, he was a senior fellow at the “Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg: History and Society during the Mamluk Era (1250–1517)” in Bonn.  He has recently co-edited (with Christoph Cluse), Slavery and the Slave Trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, 11th to 15th Centuries, published in late 2017 by Brepols. His current research focuses on Palestine during the later Middle Ages.

28 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2019  

For almost two centuries, relations between the Rasulids of Yemen (1229–1454) and the Mamluks were characterized by a strong competition over political and economic supremacy in the Red Sea region. This rivalry was most forcefully apparent in Mecca which became the focus of political and religious contest following the destruction of the Abbasid caliphate in Bagdad in 1258. The Rasulid sultans used important emblems of political power, such as the sponsoring of architectural projects in Mecca, the sending of the kiswah and the maḥmal, the striking of coins, and the distribution of gifts, all of which contributed towards reinforcing their regional and local legitimacy.

The Author

Historian of Islamic art and architecture, Noha Sadek earned her Ph.D. degree in Middle East and Islamic Studies from the University of Toronto with a thesis on Rasulid architectural patronage. Her on-going research focuses on the art and architecture of Yemen on which she has published in English and French. She is currently a research associate at the CEFAS (Centre Français d’Archéologie et de Sciences Sociales).

36 pages, paperback,
14,8 x 21,0 cm, 2019