Download PDF | Mamluks in the Modern Egyptian Mind_ Changing the Memory of the Mamluks, 1919-1952-Palgrave Macmillan US (2017).
238 Pages
Introduction
The Mamluk periods have often been described as decade of chaos in Egypt. Politically tyranny, oppression and destruction became the characteristic feature of their rule. The many Mamluk sultans are demonized as a warmonger and lustful of power. The point of departure of the present study is to critically delve into whether if the unfavorable attitude of modern Egyptian historical literatures toward the Mamluks actually did so or not. Thus the purpose of this study is to explore the ways in which modern Egyptian historians and intellectuals discussed the Mamluk past to discern their perceptions and understandings of the Mamluks and Mamluk era. Following the periodization of Egyptian historians, we will examine the representations of the Mamluks in two historical periods: the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517) era and the Mamluks under Ottoman era (1517–1811), 1 focusing mostly on the years 1760–1811.
To critically analyze and compare the diverse dimensions of distinction, contrast, and similarity among multifaceted representations of the Mamluks presented in the years 1919 and 1952, we will focus on historical literature of representative historians and intellectuals. Although the Mamluks have had a great impact on the Egyptian collective memory and, in particular, modern Egyptian thought, to date, the subject has hardly been researched seriously. 2 One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that the existing scholars have given too much prominence to stereotypical negative representation of the Mamluks in Egyptian historical works. However, as we shall see, many Egyptian historians and intellectuals presented the Mamluk era positively, and even symbolized the Sultans as national icons.
The present study aims to shed light on this heretofore-neglected positive dimension of the historical memory of the Mamluks, 3 and thereby seriously address the way in which Egyptian historians and intellectuals utilized the historical memory of the Mamluks for their own political and ideological purposes. Nevertheless, some scholars deal either with Egyptian historiography in general, or the historiography of the ‘Urābı̄ Revolt and Mamluks specifi cally. 4 The many studies by Egyptian and Western historiographers include those of Jamāl al-Dı̄n al-Shayyāl and Jack A. Crabbs, focusing on nineteenth- century Egyptian historiography, while Youssef Choueiri, Anthony Gorman, and Yoav Di-Capua 5 have researched that of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Gorman has placed more emphasis on the role of the state and nationalism in the development of Egyptian historiography, while Di-Capua contends that Egyptian historians have focused on the modern Egyptian state, with an emphasis on the historians’ role in its emergence. 6 Although these historians have signifi cantly contributed to the study of Egyptian historiography, their studies have not dealt specifi - cally with the role of the Mamluks.
Thomas Mayer focuses on the chronological order in the changing portrayal of the ‘Urābı revolt as recorded in both offi ̄ cial and popular Egyptian historical writings. 7 He convincingly demonstrates how modern Egyptian historians have manipulated the history of the ‘Urābı revolt for ̄ their own purposes. Paul Starkey outlines Egyptian history as refl ected in the Egyptian novel and dramaturgy. 8 Though he covers several historical novels and one play about the Mamluks, 9 his treatment of the relationship between history and fi ction in the modern Egyptian novel is superfi cial, lacking a critical analysis of the portrayal of Mamluks. Moreover, his study is limited to historical fi ction, while neglecting other historical genres. Two existing works of scholarship address the depiction of Mamluks by Egyptian and Arab historians, respectively. 10 Yael Kimron dealt with the representation of the Mamluks by modern Egyptian historians, whereas Ulrich Haarmann attempted to reveal how Arab historians of the Middle Ages perceived the Mamluks.
Haarmann researched the Arab depiction of the Mamluks, mainly that of Arab historians of the Middle Ages, and found two contrasting, if not contradictory, images of the Mamluk, both positive and negative. As is generally accepted, most historians in Haarmann’s study had identifi ed Mamluks as Turkish military slaves. The historians Abu H̄ ̣amid al-Qudsı ̄ , Ibn Khaldu ̄ n, ̄ and Abu Sha ̄ ma presented the Mamluks positively, as having saved the Arabs ̄ from the Mongols and as protectors of Islam. In contrast, the ‘Ulama’ defi ned the Mamluks as Turkish military slaves and stereotypically depicted them as Turkish barbarians. 11 However, Haarmann did not touch upon modern Egyptian historians, focusing on historians of the Middle Ages. Kimron’s unpublished study is closely related to the present research in that she investigates the manner in which Egypt’s Mamluk past is depicted by modern Egyptian historians. She concludes that, for the most part, nationalist historians have treated the Mamluks as “the others” or “the strangers.” The description of the struggle for Egyptian sovereignty excluded the Mamluks, perceived as imperialists. Furthermore, she argues that the modernists, who were ideologically secular and liberal, perceived the Mamluks as ardent Muslims and, therefore, wanted to expunge their names from the national, collective memory. With that, emphasizing the ethnic Arab element of national Egyptian identity, the pan-Arabist movement rejected the “Turks” as part of that identity. 12 Consequently, no one felt committed to “guarding” the Mamluk past; very few historians expressed interest in adding the chapter of Mamluk history to the Egyptian national collective memory, with the majority regarding it as insignifi cant to Egyptian history. 13
The current study proposes to correct the following shortcomings in Kimron’s work. Although Kimron explored in-depth the presentation of the Mamluks by a number of Egyptian historians, her research has failed to consider important Egyptian historians and intellectuals who, in contrast to her proposition, did indeed assimilate the history of the Mamluk Sultanate into Egyptian history. Moreover, these historians and intellectuals used the history of the Mamluks in order to strengthen Egyptian nationalism. 14 Methodologically too, Kimron analyzes the perception of the Mamluks without distinguishing the Mamluk Sultanates from the Mamluks under Ottoman rule. Unlike previous studies, which have focused either on academic works of history 15 or on a limited number of historical novels, 16 the current study will also include the writings of intellectuals as well as popular literature, such as popular periodicals, and even school textbooks as an offi cial narrative.
By comparing the various historical writings in which Mamluks are portrayed, this study seeks to provide a wider and more comprehensive range of representations than that presented in previous studies. The following signifi cant historic events and knowledge concerning the role and representation of the Mamluks will be referenced as categories of critical analysis: (a) the identity of the Mamluks, (b) the Mamluk war against Louis IX, King of France (1249) at al-Mansụ ̄ra, (c) the Battle of ‘Ayn Jālūt (1260) by Ẓāhir Baybars and the Battle of Ḥoms (1281) by Sayf al-Dın Qala ̄ ̄wūn al-Alfı against the Mongols, (d) the independent ̄ movement of ‘Alı Bey al-Kabı ̄ r, (1760–1772) in Egypt, and others. ̄ These categories serve two purposes. First, change and continuity in the Mamluk narrative is refl ected through a chronological comparison of the categories. Second, differences in the depiction of the Mamluks in the several historiographical trends are illustrated through the prism of the categories. The scope of the present study will be limited to the modern Egyptian historical narrative between 1919 and 1952.
The year of 1919 is considered as a turning point, in which modern Egyptian historiography was alleged to have appeared in its mature form. Within the new zeitgeist and socio-political context of the time, Egyptian intellectual discourse on the Mamluks reached its zenith, as refl ected by a dynamic and important revision in Mamluk representation. Thus, this period is crucial in discussing the concept of the Mamluk in Egyptian thought. In the 1920s and, particularly, the early 1930s, Egyptian nationalist historians endeavored to reinterpret Egyptian history through Egypt’s own perspective, rather than Arab-Islamic historiography, or the Western historiography of European Orientalists. 17 This reinterpretation involved engaging in the discourse of emancipation and rehabilitation, urging Egyptians to free their collective memory from the burden of foreign histories, purge their historical awareness of imposed prejudices, and recover a distinct Egyptian collective memory that could serve as the solid foundation for a new Egyptianist national consciousness. As far as the nationalists were concerned, writing Egyptian history “as it actually was” meant reconstructing the history of Egypt in a manner that displayed its “territorial essence”—that is, the millennial and paramount bond between the Nile Valley and the people of Egypt.
At the same time, monarchist historians, whose protagonists were Muḥammad ‘Alı, Ibra ̄ ̄hım, and Isma ̄ ̄’ıl, were recruited by King Fua ̄ ̄d’s ‘Ā bdın Project. ̄ 18 Hence, they mainly focused on reforms and developments in administration, army, public works, and education during the period of Muḥammad ‘Alı and his descendants. ̄ 19 In addition to those two monarchist and nationalist narratives, the Ottomanist narrative that emerged in the previous century still lingered in the landscape of the Egyptian collective memory. During the 1930s, on the other hand, three historiographical styles competed for hegemony in Egyptian society: “nascent academia, monarchist historiography, and the popular-nationalist tradition.” 20 Academic historians adopted the monarchist historiography, their focus, assumptions, methods of work, style of writing, and, most importantly, their political orientation. 21 However, with time, academic historians shifted focus from Muḥammad ʿAlı and his family to ordinary people, and developed ̄ an ideology of professionalism, distinguishing themselves from popular and amateur historians. A new fashion of Egyptian nationalism emerged in the 1930s. If the 1920s and early 1930s were a period of exclusivist, territorial Egyptian nationalism, the period after1930 can be defi ned as an era of supra-Egyptian nationalism in which three different supra-Egyptian ideologies developed: Egyptian Islamic nationalism, integral Egyptian nationalism, and Egyptian-Arab nationalism. 22 Among them, EgyptianArab nationalism became the most extensively articulated and important variety, as evidenced by its acceptance on the part of other Arabs and Muslims outside of Egypt.
A critical analysis of these Ottomanist, monarchist, academic, and nationalist intellectual and historians’ perceptions of the Mamluks provides a means of understanding the ways in which Mamluk history has been narrated in order to institute various Egyptian projects of modernity and nationalism. From the perspective of cognitive psychology, any study of the representations of the Mamluks is inseparable from the fi eld of individual and collective memory. According to Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan, “since collective remembrance is an activity of individuals coming together in public to recall the past, historians would do well to refl ect on the fi ndings of cognitive psychologists on how memory happens.” 23 Accordingly, this study seeks to offer a critical examination of the forms of memory and public commemoration of the Mamluks and the Mamluk era, developed in 1919–1952, to celebrate the progress of Egyptian modernity and Egypt’s struggle for national liberation. During this period, Egyptian national identity was constructed through an imagined community. The subjects of commemoration were dramatic episodes and dominant historical fi gures who played a pivotal role in the nation’s parade toward independence, freedom, and progress. The methods of remembering immortalize these glorious moments and individual heroes of the nation, and narrate the national drama. The result of these various endeavors was the creation of a monarchic, Ottoman, or national culture of commemoration and memory that served as a guide and an inspiration for the evolving nation. 24 As mentioned, the critical examination of public commemoration of the Mamluk era is a part of the extended fi eld of memory studies. In recent decades, the study of collective memory has received a great deal of critical attention from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and cultural critics. This immense boom is even referred to as “memory mania.” 25 The scholarship that deals with the nature and operation of collective memory proposes the basic framework for our examination of the history of public commemoration in modern Egypt.
The concept of “collective memory” was fi rst subject to systematic analysis in the work of Maurice Halbwachs. Following in Emile Durkheim’s footsteps, Halbwachs stressed that collective memory is a social construction. This is in stark contrast to Henry Bergson, who conceptualized memory as an individual process and accordingly regarded psychology as the most suitable discipline for its analysis. The best method for examining that construction, Halbwachs argued, was historical sociology. 26 Patrick H. Hutton admitted that “Long neglected, his [Halbwachs’] work today serves as a theoretical groundwork in the emerging project of the history of memory.” 27 Halbwachs’ main hypothesis is that collective memory takes shape and unfolds in specifi c social contexts and, as such, is located within what he termed “the social framework of memory.” For Halbwachs, individuals are not able to exist outside society. Consequently, the social groups to which they belong inevitably have an effect on their memories of the past. He stated, “It is in the society that people normally acquire their memories,” and added that “it is also in society that they recall, recognize, and localize their memories.” 28 In effect, individuals can arrange their memories and give them specifi c meaning only within the social framework of memory, within which they are located as individuals: “It is to the degree that our individual thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in this memory that it is capable of the act of recollection.” 29
Halbwachs’ work has been a point of departure for every “scholar of memory.” During the 1970s and 1980s, Pierre Nora made a signifi cant contribution to the systematic study of collective memory. In an endeavor to operationalize Halbwachs’ focus on the social nature of collective memory, Nora conceptualized the researcher’s objective as the study of “sites of memory” ( lieux de memorie). Nora supervised the massive collaborative effort that produced Les lieux de memorie, a multi-volume study of numerous French sites of memory. Nora’s fundamental assumption was that in the modern era, with its acceleration of the pace of historical change, the genuine, spontaneous, unpremeditated forms of memory that prevailed in the past are eroded and disappear. “We speak so much of memory,” he asserted, “because there is so little of it left.” 30 Modernity therefore compels human societies to invent or produce artifi cial, manufactured forms of collective memory to compensate for the elimination of more natural forms of remembrance. Instead of real environments of memory that shaped human recollection in the past, modern sites of memory serve as the reference points for collective memory. Nora’s sites of memory encompass nearly every social and cultural monument, fl ag, anthem, museum exhibit, archive, or library. 31 The recreation of the historical memory of the Mamluks was also an effective medium for Egyptian Ottomanist, monarchist, and nationalist intellectuals for transmitting relevant political messages to their public. Through heroic monuments and spectacles, commemoration creates emotionally powerful evocations of episodes from the national drama: the heroic era of the founding fathers, the noble struggle for national liberation, and the splendid revival of national culture. Commemoration invites citizens to see and feel the greatness and glory of their nation. The active participation of the “Egyptian people” in these powerful communal festivals of Ottoman, monarchic, and national commemoration is obviously crucial for the education of broad sectors of society. The collective memory molded through commemoration reinforces a sense of a shared Egyptian monarchic or national identity. 32
Public commemoration is constructed on “national sentiment,” rather than “rationale” as it creates a vivid tableau of national greatness, encouraging collective effort and sacrifi ce. In the words of Benedict Anderson, “it is this fraternity that has made it possible over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.” 33 In order to create a new historical memory, the Ottomanist, monarchist, academic, and nationalist intellectuals were devoted to uncovering the “lessons” of the past. These lessons can be learned from a historical record replete with glorious moments and splendid heroes, but may also be tainted by unsatisfactory compromises and ignominious defeats. For Ottomanist, monarchist, academic, and nationalist intellectuals all tend to stress the former while ignoring the latter. 34 Defeats and tragedies receive attention not as indicators of national incapacity, but as a warning and admonition (lest we forget) for traps and pitfalls that should not be allowed to reoccur. 35 Thus, commemoration enables the producers of the Ottomanist, monarchist, academic ideology and nationalism to either erase a problematic past or turn it into a lesson. The shaping of memory allows the past to be reevaluated into a meaningful, teleological account of history: “Each act of commemoration reproduces a commemorative narrative, a story about a particular past that accounts for this ritualized remembrance and provides a moral message for the group members.” 36 This narrative defi nes the periodization of the nation’s history, determines the relative importance of the events and individuals that comprise its content, and, by exclusion, mandates what is trivial and best forgotten. One important point that should be emphasized in this context is that public commemoration incorporates a multiplicity of “memories.” Various forces within civil society mark their interests by generating their own monuments, narratives, and rituals. Different communities of memory take tangible shapes in different communities of commemoration.
Each community of commemoration has a distinctive commemorative portfolio from which it draws in an attempt to convince wider society of the validity of its memory of the past and the wisdom of its vision for the future. A variety of groups utilize commemorative objects, ceremonies, song, and even texts as weapons in an endless contest for national hegemony. Opposition groups create subversive counter-narratives of commemoration in order to challenge prevailing master narratives constructed by dominant groups. 37 These subgroups constantly endeavor to set an alternative agenda for the nation, using their forms of counter-commemoration to promote their ideological and political preferences. 38 In modern times, agencies connected with the state-incumbent governments, royal families, ministries of education, and public, provincial, or municipal authorities have often had the greatest impetus to reshape national sites of commemoration and mold collective memory. However, we ought to remember that the offi cial agencies do not always monopolize the content and themes of public commemoration and collective memory. 39 Particularly in pluralist societies, public commemoration is often initiated by a variety of civilian intellectual groups and individuals. Much recent scholarship on public commemoration rightly distinguishes between offi - cial commemoration, initiated and organized by the state, and unoffi cial commemoration, conducted by various groups within civil society.
In their work titled War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century, Jay Winter and Emmanuel Sivan recommended the adoption of a “social agency approach” to the study of collective memory and public commemoration, emphasizing the importance of “secondary” agents of commemoration and memory, and non-offi cial groups and individuals who represent the different communities of memory within a society. 40 First and foremost, Winter and Sivan stress the role of “second- and third-order elites within civil society” in reproducing collective memory: The social organization of remembrance tends to be decentralized. This claim shifts the emphasis in this fi eld “away from the central organization of the state […] towards civil society groupings, their leaders and activists.” 41 Focusing on the role of non-offi cial actors in producing memory is not meant to deny that the state and its agencies are often “a major producer and choreographer of commemoration.” 42 However, it does draw attention to the fact that public commemoration and collective remembrance are the result of an ongoing process of dialog, negotiation, and contestation between a variety of agents working within civil society and those associated with the state. One dichotomy that has become popular in the academic literature dealing with collective memory and commemoration is John Bodnar’s distinction between “offi cial” and “vernacular” forms of memory. Offi cial memory is the creature of activities performed by “representatives of an overreaching or offi cial culture.” Such offi cial agents usually “share a common interest in social unity, the continuity of existing institutions, and loyalty to the status quo.” Vernacular forms of memory “represent an array of specialized interest that is grounded in parts of the whole.” Rather than providing an idealistic emphasis on unity and the covering-over of the manifold characteristic of the offi cial culture, vernacular culture gives voice to “views of reality” emerging from fi rst-hand experience in small communities rather than the “imagined communities of a large nation.” 43
Nevertheless, Bodnar contends that it is not always possible to differentiate between offi cial and vernacular forms of memory. Rather, he emphasized that “public memory emerged from the intersection of offi cial and vernacular cultural expressions.” 44 Bearing in mind Bodnar’s thesis, this study focuses on selected forms of offi cial and public commemoration developed in the era of the Egyptian parliamentary monarchy, from 1919 to 1952, often considered “Egypt’s liberal age” or “liberal experiment.” With political parties competing with each other and vigorous, if not raucous, press occupying the public sphere, the state was only one among many agents which enabled public commemoration. While it is true that in some cases the processes of commemoration initiated by non-offi cial groups or associations eventually gained the state’s stamp of approval and sometimes also its fi nancial support, this was mostly not the case. More often, commemoration was produced by agents emerging from within Egyptian civil society—political parties, ad hoc lobbies, and individual entrepreneurs. Hence, through critically examining popular periodicals, the present study also devoted considerable attention to the systematic examination of non-offi cial agents of public commemoration, and the projects and narratives which, together, constitute Egypt’s “vernacular” culture of memory. 45
This study deals with two groups of intellectuals: “luminaries,” or “great thinkers,” on the one hand, and “secondary agents” on the other. The “luminaries” were those to whom Edward Shils referred as “productive intellectuals.” 46 The luminaries outlined the contours of a future Egyptian identity. The group of “secondary agent” intellectuals (i.e., those discovering or disseminating, rather than shaping, narratives) included historians, professionals, artists, editors, and university professors. 47 These agents played an important role in the recreation, dissemination, and consolidation of new imagery and ideology. 48 Thanks to the “secondary” intellectuals, the “great thinkers” were able to communicate with the Egyptian public. In this context, the question of how the Mamluks were perceived by both groups of intellectuals will be compared to the manipulation of Mamluk history by nationalist intellectuals. Thus, the present study attempts to examine whether Mamluk history contributed to the emergence and development of new Egyptian nationalism, and if so, to what extent. Two sections of this study each address a distinct system of historical memory of the Mamluks. The fi rst offers a critical analysis of Egyptian school textbooks and historical works of the ‘Ā bdın Project, thus discern- ̄ ing “offi cial forms” of historical memory of the Mamluk era. The second section of this study will focus on “public forms” of commemoration of the Mamluks and Mamluk era, as mirrored in three kinds of Egyptian historical literature. Firstly, popular periodicals provide a diverse discourse on the Mamluks, or even confl icting interpretations of historic events and characters. Above all, these sources are useful in tracing how the “secondary agent” intellectuals represented the Mamluks, as the periodical was their main medium of historical discourse.
From the range of material on the Mamluks, this study will concentrate on three main historiographical trends: academic, monarchist, and nationalist. The following are the most signifi cant periodicals in this context: al- Hilāl, al-Risāla, al- Manār, al- Thaqāfa, and al- Muqtataf̣ . In addition to the periodicals, Egypt’s popular culture was also refl ected in its novels, short stories, and plays. Historical novels and plays are not just storytelling, but may also serve as effective media for political propaganda. Indeed, the writer often presents selected historical facts and characters, thereby reshaping them to offer a new understanding of the past. As Georg Lukács noted, “What matters […] in the historical novel is not the retelling of great historical events, but the poetic awakening of the people who fi gured in those events.” 49 Accordingly, this study offers a critical analysis of the various political positions that shaped the Mamluk narrative. Moreover, the popular historical novels and plays may also provide insights into the popular discourse on the Mamluks within Egyptian society.
Lastly, since historians were the primary creators of Egyptian historical discourse, it is essential to examine their narratives in order to critically address the representations of the Mamluks. Above all, through this source I will address the mainstream depictions of the Mamluks in the Egyptian historical discourse. As previously noted, the four separate historiographical trends that emerged between 1919 and 1952, by nationalist, Ottomanist, monarchist, and academic historians, represent different facets of the Mamluk narrative.
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