Download PDF | The Chronicles And Annalistic Sources Of The Early Mamluk Circassian Period Islamic History And Civilization, By Sami Massoud (Author), Brill, 2007.
492 Pages
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is dedicated to my children, my daughter Julia and my son Nicolas, and to my parents, my mother, the late Joséphine, and my father, Gibran al-Khart Mikhail Massoud, who, since my early childhood, have instilled in me the love and admiration of Arabic culture, civilization and history, as well as intellectual curiosity. I was, am and will forever be in their debt.
I was blessed to pursue my research on the Mamluks under the guidance of one of the foremost experts in this field, Professor Donald P. Little. Heartfelt thanks go to Professor Little not only for his help, judicious comments and his patience in directing my research, but especially for the steps he has taken to help me launch what I hope will be a successful career as a specialist in Mamluk history.
I am also grateful to Professors Sajida Alvi, Hermann Landolt and Uner Turgay, of the Institute of Islamic Studies at McGill University, from whom I learned so much.
The staff of the Institute, particularly Ann Yaxley, and of its Library, Wayne St. Thomas, Salwa Ferahian and Adam Gacek, the Library Director and a specialist of the Arabic manuscript tradition, were always there to help. Steve Miller, of the Library staff, not only helped refresh my rusty German, but also read, commented and corrected my manuscript.
This work would have never seen the light without the team that supported me at Brill Academic Publishers: Professor Wadad Kadi, of the editorial board of the IHC series, who decided to publish it, and ‘Trudy Kamperveen and Caroline van Erp, my editor, who turned a manuscript into a book. Many thanks to all of them.
Bruce Craig at the University of Chicago and Li Guo at NotreDame were kind enough to make available to me microfilms of important manuscripts, and so did David Reisman at Yale University, with whom I also had very stimulating exchanges. I wish to thank particularly Bruce Craig who, as a member of the editorial board of Mamlik Studies Review, allowed me to use sections of an article that I wrote for the journal in chapter two of this book.
Many colleagues and friends supported and encouraged me in this long enterprise: Jacques Chamberland, Claude Goulet, Patrice Wiedmann, Sylvie Richard-Bessette, Lisa Alexandrin, Mike Wood, Sevag Manjikian and many others.
A special salute goes to my dear friend the late Cedrik Goddard with whom I have had so many engaging conversations and whose presence I so dearly miss: his memory and friendship will forever be with me.
Last but not least, my love and appreciation go to my wonderful wife Ann Nagribianko without whose help I simply could have never successfully completed this difficult endeavour. My love also goes to my brother Michel, my sisters Mayya and Rania, and their families, and to my in-laws, Céline “Belle-Maman” Blais and Walter Nagribianko who, for so many years, endured my complaints about the vicissitudes of doing research, but always encouraged me to carry on.
GENERAL COMMENTS
The transliteration system of the Encyclopaedia of Islam was utilized throughout this book for Arabic words, except when its use conflicted with the objective of maintaining transliterated texts as they appear in the sources. Thus, the spelling and the grammar of all Arabic passages that were transliterated were kept intact, and only punctuation was added when needed. Except for some words such as /fulis, akhbar and hawadith, and for compound words such as qadi’l-qudat, plurals of Arabic words (hajib; n@ib; etc.) have been rendered in English by means of an s added to the singular form (hajibs; na’ibs; etc.).
The symbol [?] that accompanies a given transliterated word, denotes uncertainty as to its reading. On the other hand, the symbol [...?] indicates that a word is missing because I simply could not decipher it. When I have had recourse to the words of other authors, whether translations or commentaries, whatever information appears between two brackets [ ] comes from me, while suspension points between brackets [...] mean that I have omitted certain parts of the text. Editorial commentaries and/or additions made by these authors in their own text have been placed between parentheses (.
The word ibn has been capitalized if appearing in an initial position or when a person was known as Ibn so and so: for example, Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Ilyas, but Salih ibn Yahya. In order to “lighten” a text replete with chronological references, only Hiri dates, and the occasional Gregorian equivalent, of centuries, years, and sometimes of months, have been provided. Only occasionally do I provide the English translation of Mamluk official titles and bureaucratic terminology, as these can be found in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, The Chicago Online Encyclopaedia of Mamluk Studies, as well as in Popper’s Egypt and Syria under the Circassian Sultans, 1382-1468: Systematic Notes to Ibn Taghré Birdi’s Chronicle of Egypt and Gaudefroy-Demombynes’s La Syrie a Vépoque des Mamelouks.
INTRODUCTION
The coming of al-Zahir Barqiiq (784-91, 792-801/1382-9, 1390-9) to power in 784/1382' heralded what contemporary and modern historians alike describe as the beginning of the Circassian period of the Mamluk Sultanate.” The dawn of this new political epoch coincided with pivotal changes occurring at the level of historiography. During the second half of the eighth/fourteenth and the beginning of the ninth/fifteenth centuries, the intellectual scene witnessed the passing of an entire generation of historians, those who had lived through and just beyond the reigns of al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawitn. Al-Bidaya wal-Nihdya f’l-Ta@ikh, the main historical work of Ibn Kathir (d. 774/1373), the last representative of the “original Syrian school,”* does not extend beyond 768/1366—-7.?
The two works of another Syrian historian, one who was however not connected to the Syrian school, Badr al-Din Ibn Habib al-Halabi’s (d. 779/1377) Tadhkirat al-Nabih fi Ayyam al-Mansiir wa Banth® and Durrat al-Aslak fi Mulk Dawlat al-Atrak’ end respectively in 770/1369 and 777/1376. As for Egypt, the other and major pole of the Mamluk Sultanate, Nathr al-fuman ft Tarajim al-A%an, the chronicle of al-Muqri (who was still alive by 766/1364—5), the last of the Egyptian historians to have been a contemporary of al-Nasir Muhammad, ends in 745/ 1345.8
The emergence of new historians, the likes of ‘Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldiin (732-808/1332-1406),? Nasir al-Din Ibn al-Furat (735-807/1335-1405),'° Zayn al-Din Tahir ibn Badr al-Din Ibn Habib al-Halabi (after 740-808/1340—1406),'' Sarim al-Din Ibrahim Ibn Duqmag (745-809/1349-1407),” Shihab al-Din Ibn Hijji (751— 816/1350-1413),'° Aba Muhammad Mahmid ibn Ahmad Badr al-Din al-‘Ayni (762-855/1361-1451),'* Taqi al-Din Ahmad al-Maqrizi (766-845/1364—1441),!° Muhammad ibn Muhammad Ibn Sasra,’° Shihab al-Din Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalant (773-852/1372-1449),'” Ibn Qadi Shuhba (779-851/1377-1448),'® and others, all of whom lived a substantial portion of their life during Barqiiq’s reign and the beginning of his son’s and/or were actually connected to their regimes, would ensure a solid transition in historical writing from the ‘Turkish to the Circassian periods. These would in their turn be succeeded by another wave of authors starting with Jamal al-Din Yusuf Ibn ‘Taghribirdr (812-74/1409-70),'° al-Jawhari al-Sayrafi (819—900/1416—94),” Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Sakhawi (830-902/1427-97),?! Muhammad ibn Ahmad Ibn Tyas (852-930/1427-97),” etc. The existence of this long succession of historians, including authors like Ibn Khaldtn, al-Maqrizi, Ibn Taghribirdi and Ibn Ilyas, who have long been inextricably associated with the history of the Circassian Mamluk Sultanate, makes this period one of the best documented.
At the level of historiography, however, the two eras of the Mamluk Sultanate, the Bahri and Burji,** have not received equal attention from modern scholars.
Thanks chiefly to the efforts of Donald P. Little and Ulrich Haarmann,” Bahri Mamluk historiography, particularly that of the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad, has been subjected to detailed and comprehensive source analysis. No comparable research though has been undertaken concerning Burji historiography.*° More to the point, the period that witnessed the withering away of Qalawint rule and the rise of the Circassians is particularly understudied. With the exception of a certain number of studies of a limited scope and the few words scattered here and there in scholarly articles and monographs,”’ as well as in the introductory notices authored by the editors of primary sources, nothing for example compares with the surveys written by Linda 8. Northrup and Carl S. Petry on, respectively, the early Bahri and late Circassian periods.”
This is not to say that we do not have at our disposal any data concerning this historiography. Even the work done by scholars on the Bahri period has produced results that are relevant to Burji historians. Little, Northrup and Reuven Amitai have all noted that alMaagrizi relied heavily on Ibn al-Furat for his accounts of the events of what amounts to much of the second half of the seventh/thirteenth and the early years of the eighth/fourteenth centuries,” and their conclusions echo those of the research undertaken here.*” Amitai has also remarked on the presence in al-Maqrizi’s writing of a literary device that consists of conflating two narrative elements in order to produce what is basically a different one, a technique used by numerous Burji historians.*!
To these findings and others, one ought to add the works done on Circassian historiography proper. Eliahu Ashtor was the first to analyze the manuscript of the anonymous Jawahir al-Sulik fr'l-Khulaf@ wa’l-Mulik,” a chronicle of the late ninth/fifteenth and early tenth/sixteenth centuries that is part of the same historiographical tradition as Ibn Iyas’s Bad@i‘ al-Zuhiir,*? and ‘Abd al-Basit al-Malati’s Nayl al-Amal fi Dhayl al-Duwal,** a history that runs from 744/1343 to 896/1491.* For his part, regarding quantitative data, Jere Bacharach has underlined the existence of patterns of copying by Ibn al-Furat from Ibn Duqmagq, by al-Maqrizi from Ibn al-Furat, by Ibn Hajar from both al-‘Ayni and al-Maqrizi, etc.,*°
all of which have been attested in the chapters below.*’ Amalia Levanoni and the author of these lines have for their part analysed the sources pertaining to two themes, respectively, the rise of Barqiq and the opinions expressed by Mamluk historians about this sultan over the course of the entire Burji period.** Irmeli Perho and Little have examined the relative merits of the works of, respectively, alMaqrizi and Ibn Taghribirdi, and al-Maqrizi and al-‘Ayni, as historians of contemporary events.*’ Lastly, David C. Reisman has greatly contributed to the field by “discovering” and then analysing sections until then unavailable of Ibn al-Furat’s Tartkh al-Duwal and Ibn Duqmaq’s Nuzhat al-Andm preserved in a manuscript in the hand of Ibn Qadi Shuhba.*” He also produced the most detailed analysis yet of the genesis of the dhayl this last author wrote to the history of his teacher Ibn Hijji."!
However, whether limited by the very nature of their research objectives or by the absence of certain primary sources, and despite the wealth of valuable data they have unearthed, none of these studies has managed to provide an overall assessment of early Burji historiography.” This means that, with the exceptions noted just above, globally speaking we still have not established the value of Burji historical works in their own right or in relation to one another. The research undertaken here therefore endeavours to fill this lacuna by providing a critical analysis of the works of early Burji historians with regard to their “originality, sources, and possible interdependence.” It reproduces, albeit with some modifications, the method-ology pioneered by Little in his study of the sources for the reign of al-Malik al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawin. In Little’s words,
The nature of the method is disarmingly simple; it is nothing more than comparison, close word-by-word comparison of individual accounts of topics within annals and biographies, with a threefold aim. One, given the fact that historians followed in most cases the conventions of the annalistic and biographical genres almost slavishly, what variations can be found in the treatment of individual authors? It is obvious that the variations constitute the author’s originality, whether they consist of stylistic innovations, departures from the conventions of the genres, or the introduction of original subject matter....A second, related, purpose is to characterize Mamluk historiography in general... .; in other words, having pointed out variations, I would attempt to establish the similarities in approach, technique and subject matter. Included under this purpose is the desire to indicate the type of data which can be gleaned from Mamluk sources, both as to the quantity and quality, so that the beginner in Mamluk studies can readily discover what variety of subjects the historians both discuss and omit, as well as the difficulties which he can expect to encounter as a result of the mode of presentation. Third and most importantly, I am trying to establish what Claude Cahen calls a ‘repertorium’™* of the sources of the period, by which I mean an analytical survey of the sources which aims at classifying them in terms of their value to modern historians. All the goals can be achieved by comparison, which, in the last analysis, aims at disentangling the inter-relatedness and inter-dependence of the sources so as to discover the original contribution of each historian .. .*°
By means of textual collation, this “micro” approach to historiography allows us to identify similarities and variations amongst chronicles that may help explain the complex of borrowings that forms the very basis of each one of them. Within a given chronicle, it will help us explore, where possible and relevant, the genesis and scope of reports, as well as their impact on the way the narrative was constructed, and, consequently, on our appreciation of their contents. Finally, it provides us with a detailed understanding of the events of a given year, something which will allow modern historians to revisit, reevaluate and reconsider historical data.
The selection of the three annals, 778/1376—-7, 793/1390—-91 and 804/1401—2, to be subjected to individual source analysis was not done randomly. While, methodologically speaking, this will not permit the generalization of the results obtained from the analysis of these annals to the entire historiographical production of the era under scrutiny, it does allow us to deal with issues inherent to historical research, among others: the non-availability of some primary sources; the need to concentrate on significant historical occurrences and to find events “covered by the largest number of extant chronicles;”*® etc.
For the year 778/1376-7, the most important factor was the absolute necessity of covering Ibn Duqmaq’s Nuzhat al-Aném.”’ The only existing manuscript of this chronicle that is relevant to the period at hand ends in 779/1377-8, a year during which nothing out of the ordinary happened; 778 thus appeared as a logical choice not only because its contents are more substantial, but also because it deals with the regicide of al-Ashraf Sha‘ban (764—78/1363-77), the last effective ruler from the house of Qalawin. The rebellion of 778 is significant also because it is the first of a series of incidents that were to lead to the rise of Barqtiq, who, as a Yalbughawi mamluk, was an active although invisible participant in the events of this year,® and to the advent of the Circassians.
The annal of 793/1390—-91 was chosen for a number of reasons. First, it gives us the opportunity to examine closely the most important events of the year which happened to take place mainly in Syria: the “aftershock” of Barqtiq’s overthrow in 791/1389 and his return to power in 792/1390, as well as the ongoing rebellion there of his arch-foe Mintash, which culminated in the quasi-siege of Damascus in 793. Consequently, Syrian sources acquire in this context an important dimension not evident in the case of the year 778: we have at our disposal not only the edited text of Ibn Qadri Shuhba’s Tarikh Ibn Qadi Shuhba, but also Ibn Sasra’s Al-Durra’l-Mudi’a and excerpts from Ibn Hijji’s Tarikh Ibn Hy.
As for the last annal, that of the year 804/1401—2, it represents the end of a historiographical cycle. Writers who had relied on Ibn al-Furat’s Tartkh al-Duwal for their reports either had to turn to another source or were confident enough, like al-Maqrizi and al‘Ayni, to generate their own. This is so because the works of Ibn al-Furat and of all of the historians who were full-grown men at the time of the emergence of the Circassian Sultanate, save two, ended before this particular year: Ibn al-Furat’s in 803/1401, Zayn al-Din Tahir’s in 801/1399, and Ibn Khalditin’s in 796/1394; only Ibn Duqmaq and Ibn Hiji continued their production beyond 804, respectively until 805/1403 and 815/1413. With regard to Ibn Hiyji, we have for the year 804/1401—2, not only his Tarikh Ibn Hyjt, but also the entire spectrum of the works authored by Ibn Qadi Shuhba on the basis of this latter chronicle. This makes it possible to bring to partial fruition the research started by Reisman on the interrelation amongst the works of these two Syrian historians.
As for the order of presentation, I have devoted an entire chapter to each of the three annals examined here and proceeded by studying the production of each author for every one of the three selected years, but only when such a production was available. For example, there is a section on Ibn al-Furat in the first two chapters, but not in the third, because this author’s chronicle does not cover the year 804. Authors are introduced into the text according to their year of birth, with two exceptions however: first, I have allowed for distinctions between Egyptian and Syrian authors, and second, even though Zayn al-Din Tahir was younger than Ibn al-Furat, and the latter older than Ibn Duqmaq, the author of Tarikh al-Duwal appears after both of these historians because he borrowed more from them than the other way around.
One last issue still needs to be addressed, namely the fact that I have chosen to concentrate on hawddith and not on obituaries. The practice for Mamluk authors of tatkh works to include therein both hawadith and wafayat dates back to Ibn al-Jawzi’s (d. 597/1200) AlMuntazgam fi Tartkh al-Mulk wa’l-Umam,* and all the histories examined here, with the exception of Aitab al-Ibar, contain both a section for events and another for obituaries/biographies. However, the proportion of a historical work devoted to each of these sections is nowhere uniform: some authors have chosen to expand one at the expense of the other, whereas others have found some kind of a middle ground. We thus see Zayn al-Din Tahir inflate the obituaries section of his work and al-Maqrizi that of events, while Ibn Duqmaq managed to strike a balance between the two.”
The fact that the relative weight of events and obituaries changes from one author to another, and sometimes, within one work, from one annal to another,”! and the fact also that they are assigned separate places in the text, should then come as no surprise. Despite the existence of interrelationships and similarities between hawadith and wafaydt, we are dealing nevertheless with two different genres.” Biographical material obviously has an undeniable historical dimension that sometimes relates to the chronological unfolding of the events of a given year but often does not.
Since one of the main objectives of this research is to examine side the confines of a single annal, the disposition of akhbar and their interrelation within sources, data from other years are of less importance. Nevertheless, the source criticism of biographical material from the early Circassian period is, scientifically speaking, a worthy endeavour and could have been included in this research. Considering, and rightly so, this type of data as a source of information separate from but related to annalistic material, Little did just that in chapter two of his Introduction;? but because of the very nature of the research I have chosen to conduct, and for questions of personal circumstance, I have decided not to, in the hope of one day dealing with it as part of a separate project.
One final comment regarding the way readers of this book ought to understand its underlying scheme. Since the basic unit of analysis here is the individual relation, throughout this volume, in the body of the text and in the footnotes, they will encounter countless references to reports. These have been numbered and placed in four broad categories: Political, Military and Administrative Affairs [PMA], matters which include political events, military encounters, and appointments to both state, administrative and even religious functions if the latter resulted from political considerations; Religious Life [RL]; Social History/Miscellany [SHM] and Foreign Affairs [FA]. When readers happen upon, say, PMA21 in chapter one, they will be able to read its contents and find its location in the sources in the appendix to this chapter.
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