Download PDF | Crowds and Sultans_ Urban Protest in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria-American University in Cairo Press (2016).
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PREFACE
This book, as most projects do, has a prehistory. It began in a discussion in our kitchen with my mother’s best friend, the late Lebanese novelist Layla Usayran. Having reunited with my mother in the mid-1990s after the Lebanese Civil War had kept them apart, Auntie Layla visited us in Cairo. As she tried—albeit with limited success—to explain to me just what the war had been about, we turned to protest and despotism. I made an offhand remark that maybe our populations, especially in Egypt, didn’t resist and rebel against despotic rule historically because the stakes were too high and they knew better. Little did I know!
When I started graduate studies at the American University in Cairo, I was struck to discover so many references to street riots and protests in the Mamluk period. Gradually a project came to develop, not on “Why did they not rebel?” but on “When and how did premodern people of Egypt and Syria protest?” And “What did protest look like before colonialism and modernity?” These questions were asked long before the Arab Spring was on the horizon, indeed in part in the hope that one would live to see such active protest in the political landscape of the region in the spirit of our medieval ancestors, or that one would come to better appreciate what appears as a calm surface. This project officially began in 2003, on the eve of the Second Iraq War and when the streets of the Arab world had begun grumbling, if in somewhat muted voices. It is laid to rest in 2015, well after a revolution and its aftermath.
I am grateful for all the support I received at the Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Cambridge, from the Cambridge Overseas ‘Trust, the Gibb Memorial Trust, and my college Clare Hall, without which I would not have been able to finish my research in a reasonable time frame.
I am indebted to many people in helping me write this book. I am thankful to my professor and mentor Professor Nelly Hanna for many reasons, too many to mention and do justice to. Since my graduate-student days Professor Hanna has made history seem so exciting, so crucial, and yet so easy. She continues to inspire me and to teach me lessons on why history matters. She is always generous with her time and thoughts and this book owes much to long, patient discussions with her. I am grateful to the steady advice of Professor Basim Musallam at Cambridge, who made the Mamluks seem less intimidating and the “project” an already existing whole whose parts one only had to assemble.
Iam also deeply indebted to Professor Elizabeth Sartain at AUC. Her encyclopedic knowledge of medieval Islam and Egypt remains a beacon to aspire to.
I am also grateful for the supportive atmosphere and resources—and bottomless cups of hot coffee in the cold Cambridge winter—of the Skilliter Centre for Ottoman Studies and Professor Kate Fleet. I am also thankful to the students of ARIC 460/560 and ARIC 357 at AUC who endured the long reading lists on protest and dissent in premodern and early modern history, especially the group that persevered in Fall 2010, before protest was once more in academic fashion. Our discussions have greatly informed this project. I am also grateful for the insight and comments offered by colleagues at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg of Bonn University where I presented part of the arguments here.
I also benefited greatly from the discussions at the Zukunftsphilologie Winter School on “Textual Practices beyond Europe 1500-1900” organized by Forum ‘Transregionale Studien in Cairo in 2010. A pre-tenure leave from my university, the American University in Cairo, allowed me precious time to put the manuscript in order. The anonymous AUC Press readers made very thorough and insightful remarks and suggestions on the manuscript for which I am very grateful. I wish to thank the team at AUC Press, Nigel Fletcher-Jones, Neil Hewison, Nadia Nagib, and Nadine El-Hadi; they have been particularly helpful and patient through all the stages of finalizing the manuscript.
Iam immeasurably sad that neither of my parents lived to see this book in print or read its drafts, for it owes them much. I am indebted to my mother, Nawal Mehallawi, for her support and encouragement of my education, even from beyond; for giving me my first dictionary with continual instructions to “look it up”; and for instilling in me the idea that one can do almost anything “if you put your mind to it.” To my father, Attia Elbendary, I am indebted to his down-to-earth backing. His support was an anchor far beneath the surface whose gravitation is fully appreciated only after it is gone. [am grateful to my brother Alaa Elbendary for his backing and matter-of-fact encouragement at all the crucial junctures. I am also deeply grateful to Hussein Basyouni, without whose help I would not have been able to leave my home and head to England, for being supportive in many subtle ways.
Last, but certainly not least, I am indebted to my friends and colleagues who endured years of talking about “the book” and about protest, and who made valuable suggestions and helped it materialize: Maggie Morgan, Amira Howeidy, Pascale Ghazaleh, Mona Anis, Sherine Hamdy, Adam Sabra, Camilo Gomez, Reham Barakat—thank you.
INTRODUCTION: THE LONG FIFTEENTH CENTURY
Long-Term Transformations
Medieval as well as contemporary histories of the Mamluk period differ in their historiography and on many issues; they all agree, however, that the fifteenth century ushered in a new period for the regime. While many of these sources have understood these transformations in terms of a paradigm of decline—citing signs of the weakness and economic crisis the Mamluk regime was going through—this book will argue that things were more nuanced and complicated.
Rather than straightforward and linear decline, I will argue that the fifteenth century witnessed crises that presented opportunities for various political and social groups, some of whom benefited and gained more power, while others suffered and were placed under increased stress. It will also show that the multiple crises were simultaneously the outward manifestations of deeper changes.
These economic crises and political transformations led to changes and were themselves the outcome of changes in all of the domestic, regional, and international balances of power. Furthermore, while the changes led to distress in some areas, and for some groups at certain times, they also opened up opportunities for others, at other times. Rather than a linear regression, then, there was more dynamic change occurring, with ups and downs. This allowed some groups in society more access to power, and placed others under stress that led them to continually renegotiate their positions. On the whole, this social flux left non-elite urban populations in a position to negotiate power with rulers.
In order to better understand the deeper meanings of these crises, we need to look beyond dynastic history. Rather than narrate the history of this tumultuous fifteenth century solely from the point of view of the ruling dynasties, this book attempts to integrate into the total picture the point of view of the common people, especially the urban non-elites. And rather than presume that the non-elite took no part in those transformations and only stoically endured the oppression, it argues that the urban populations played various roles in those transformations. They were both the recipients of change and the agents of change in many cases. Their contributions are apparent and manifested in various ways, including the literary production of the time but also in references to urban protest.
Sources that refer to the fifteenth century include many references to incidents of protest, at rates that appear higher than those reported for other historical periods. These protests act as warning lights that point modern historians to areas of social and political tension. They also illuminate some of the ways in which power was negotiated and shared in medieval Egyptian and Syrian cities.
The Mamluk sultanate went through various economic crises. While it is difficult to give precise dates for the start of the crisis (indeed, in some modern narratives it seems as if the regime had barely been established when it began to decline economically), it is clear that by the beginning of the fifteenth century the regime was under much stress, and ruling sultans attempted to come up with various solutions to a long-term crisis. There would be times in which the crises reached a nadir as well as times of noticeable recovery throughout the century.
By reconsidering some of the interpretations of the fifteenth-century crisis, one must confront another issue: that of periodization. The issue of periodization is one that challenges many historians; medieval Islamicists are no exception. And while historians of the Arab-Muslim world have become reluctant to use the terminology of European historiography (‘late antique,’ ‘medieval,’ ‘early modern,’ etc.) to describe epochs of Arab-Muslim history, no standard alternative has been reached. Many scholars continue to date periods by referring to the contemporary ruling dynasties: thus Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Mamluk, Ottoman. I will use the terms ‘medieval’ and ‘late medieval’ with all the expected disclaimers.
That is, it is important that the reader try to dissociate the European connotations of the Middle Ages when speaking of Islamic history. Instead I mean by ‘medieval’ the period and institutions that spread and characterized the Arab-Muslim region in the post-Abbasid, postclassical time, when the last semblance of a centralizing political entity gave way to multiple regional courts and military dynasties. By ‘late medieval’ I mean the tail end of this period, which is admittedly a blurred demarcation, but it includes early Ottoman rule of the Arab provinces. Similarly, I will concentrate on the fifteenth century, and I will argue that it was a long century for this part of the world.
There is some merit in following the periodization of Mamluk historians, who saw the reign of Sultan Barquq (7. 1382-99 with a brief interruption) as the beginning of a new epoch. They based this largely on the racial shift in army recruits: Barquq’s reign is seen as the beginning of the Circassian period, characterized by the predominance of Circassian recruits in the army. I will argue that that shift itself was reflective of the long-term changes referred to earlier.
The fifteenth century ended with the fall of the Mamluk sultanate that had ruled Egypt and Syria since 1250. As is well known, the Mamluks were originally slave soldiers who were recruited for the armies by the last Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub, hence the title ‘Mamluk,’ since they were ‘owned.’ Brought in as young slave boys from the Kipcak steppes, the Mamluks were educated in special military barracks. They were converted to Islam and taught basic literacy and skills as well as martial arts. Upon their graduation, the soldiers were manumitted and assigned to positions in the army. However, they continued to be referred to as Mamluks, even after their manumission.
In the final months and years of Ayyubid rule over Egypt and Syria, and as the regime faced increasing military threats by the Crusaders directing attacks on Egypt, the Mamluk officers came to play greater roles in governance and rule, until ultimately they named one of their number as sultan. It is in the context of a crusade targeting Egypt in an 647/1249-50 ce that they seized power. Not long after that, another invasion of Islamic lands, this time from the east, arrived on the scene. The Mongols reached Baghdad, until then the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, under which the Ayyubids had at least nominally ruled.
The fall of Baghdad in 1258 was a dramatic watershed in the history of medieval Islam. The Mongol advance threatened to expand and include all areas under Islamic rule in the eastern Mediterranean. The Mamluks’ victory against the Mongols at ‘Ayn Jalut in 1260 sealed their reputation as defenders of Islamic Egypt and Syria. It created a border between Iraq and Syria that was to be upheld for centuries. The Mamluks went on under al-Zahir Baybars (r. 1260-77) and al-Mansur Qalawun (r. 1279-90) to found a strong and stable military-feudal regime that was in many ways the epitome of postclassical medieval military regimes in the region.'
The Mongol invasions of the thirteenth century had put paid to the Seljuk network of regimes and subsidiary principalities in Iraq, Mesopotamia, and parts of Asia Minor. This vacuum allowed for the rise of new Turkish military regimes, one of which, the Ottoman principality, was to continue to grow and expand into a world empire that rivaled the Mamluks and others. By 1453 the Ottomans had taken over Constantinople, the historic capital of the Byzantines, thereby ending the centuries-old rule of the Eastern Roman Empire. The fifteenth century saw further consolidation of power by the Ottomans and their expansion in the east. It also witnessed the rise of the Safavid state in Iran and the Mongol successor states in parts of Iraq and Mesopotamia. By the sixteenth century, the balance of power between the Mamluks and the Ottomans had tipped in favor of the latter, resulting in final confrontation. The defeat of the Mamluks at the battles of Marj Dabig (1516) and al-Raydantya (1517) sealed the end of the Mamluk ruling regime, although Mamluk officers would continue to be important in Egyptian politics until the nineteenth century.
The battles between the last Mamluk sultans and the Ottoman armies in 1516-17 and the fall of the regime were in many ways the culmination of a long period of transformation that took place over at least a century. The economic and political transformations that Egypt and Syria witnessed during the long fifteenth century had tremendous effects on the populations and societies under Mamluk rule.
‘Decline and Fall’ Paradigm
Much of the modern literature on the late medieval period and late Mamluk rule is written within the paradigm of ‘decline and fall, which implicitly moves backward from the Ottoman conquests and explains the fifteenth century retrospectively. The rise of the Ottomans is understood firmly as a defeat of the Mamluks, thereby ignoring many of the similarities between the two regimes and many of the elements of historical continuity. One of the main signs and causes of the decline is implicitly the economic crisis. The decline is also thought to have permeated all aspects of society, so that cultural production of the period is looked upon with condescension and populations are imagined to have toiled, silently and stoically, under rampant corruption and injustice. This book tries to look at things sideways and bottom-up to read the signs of decline as signs of transformation and to hear the echoes of the non-elite through the surviving narratives.
Who are the non-elite? In addition to the challenges of periodization, social categorization is also a perennial issue for the modern historian. While it is important for us, writers and readers about the past, to be aware of the historical contexts in which terms such as ‘class’ have developed, we must also acknowledge the challenges in trying to understand and imagine how historical societies conceived and imagined social order in a pre-class context. The main divisions among people in the premodern Islamic world are usually imagined along the lines of rule and military power (rulers and ruled; sultans and subjects), religion (Muslims and non-Muslims), and gender (men and women). Economic privilege is of course understood to have played a role in people’s social position, although the rich as such do not seem to have constituted a visible social group on their own; rich people belonged to other apparently more dominant identities. They could be rich officers, rich ulama, rich merchants, and so on. The poor, on the other hand, sometimes appear in the sources as one undifferentiated block, usually in the contexts of certain crises, such as famine, for example. Such discursive references do not necessarily reflect social reality.
Then there are the elusive ‘ama. 1 tend to translate this term as ‘com-
moners,’ since the two words carry very similar connotations, or else as ‘non-elites.’ The ‘amma of the medieval Arabic sources are easier to define in negative terms: they are not Mamluks, for example; they are not even poor Mamluk soldiers. They are not necessarily uneducated, although some of the poorer members of the ulama class cannot have enjoyed much greater material benefits than the ‘ama, aside from education. They are not necessarily poor either; they could provide for themselves.
The difficulty of understanding medieval social distinctions in the spirit of their times is best understood by the terminology the contemporary sources themselves used. The Mamluk historian al-Magqrizi divided
contemporary society into seven groups. The first were the rulers,
those who hold the reins of power. The second [is formed of] the rich merchants and the wealthy who lead a life of affluence. The third [encompasses] the retailers, who are merchants of average means, as are the cloth merchants. This also includes the small shopkeepers. The fourth category embraces the peasants, those who cultivate and plow the land. These are the inhabitants of the villages and of the countryside. The fifth category is made up of those who receive a stipend [al-fuqara’] and includes most legists, students of theology, and most of the ajnad al-halqah and the like. The sixth category [corresponds to] the artisans and the salaried persons who possess a skill. The seventh category [consists of] the needy and the paupers; and these are the beggars who live off the [charities of] others.’
Thus wealth alone was not the main marker of difference among groups of people in society, though al-Magrizi does offer a quasi-hierarchical structure that begins with the rulers at the top and ends with beggars at the bottom. In the middle are various categories of people who are distinguished by their roles in society and the functions they performed. Therefore, in discussing the roles of the non-ruling/non-Mamluk classes, including common people, I refer to them as the ‘non-elites.’ It is not an ideal term but it is meant to convey to the reader the sort of individuals who were not formally part of the ruling structure, who were not part of power, and who were not particularly wealthy or well connected, but who increasingly came to play roles in matters of power and politics, often through protest and negotiating power. They might have included craftsmen, artisans, and tradesmen of the Egyptian and Syrian cities, small-scale and local merchants. They might have included minor clerks and employees of ruling institutions, minor employees of educational institutions, katibs (scribes), janitors, muezzins, copyists. These members of society were traditionally marginalized in contemporary historiography, yet—as this book will argue—they made increasing appearances in the narratives of the late Mamluk period, which arguably reflects their changing social and political roles.
Economic crises Contemporary and modern scholars agree that the Mamluk regime faced an economic crisis by the fifteenth century. Various reasons have been suggested for this, especially the long-term and cumulative effect of the waves of the plague, including the Black Death of 1348, that swept through the eastern Mediterranean. Contemporary historians recognized that something was amiss, prompting the famous Mamluk historian al-Magqrizi (d. 1442) to pen his treatise Ighathat al-umma bi kashf al-ghumma (Helping the community by revealing the causes of its distress). He and others placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the rulers; the crises were a function of corrupt government. A similar argument is reflected in another treatise by Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Khalil al-Asadi (fl. 1450) titled a/-Taysir wa-l-i‘tibar (The book of relieving hardship and learning lessons), in which the author called for administrative and fiscal reforms. The book analyzes the corruptions of the time and then describes the basic principles of sound administration and political practice that should be followed by Muslim rulers. According to al-Asadi there were four main reasons behind the disorder that Egypt suffered, all relating to matters of governance: the administration’s neglect of the land and irrigation; the state’s failure to quell rebellious Bedouin; the tyranny of government officials, especially inspectors, governors, and tax collectors; and the extortions levied by armed men and men close to the sultan.’ With the benefit of hindsight, we now recognize a number of economic challenges and difficulties that befell the Mamluk state simultaneously or else in close enough succession to be at times inseparable. Apredominant factor must have been the successive waves of plague that decimated the population. That in turn had effects on both the workforce (i.e., the peasants) and the armies. Whole villages were reported to lie fallow as their dwindling populations fled to other areas, ultimately affecting agrarian production, especially in Egypt. When we keep in mind that Egypt was largely an agrarian society and that the land taxes did constitute a significant percentage of the state’s income, we can appreciate the compounded effects of decreased agrarian production on tax revenues. New military recruits were also severely affected by the epidemic; young and unaccustomed to the disease as they were, many perished during the plague epidemics. This meant that money, dearly obtained to buy young slaves for the army, was lost. Another economic challenge was that the Mamluk regime suffered from a cash crisis. Gold was difficult to obtain during the late Mamluk period, a situation clearly reported in surviving sources and reflected in the decreasing percentages of gold and silver in currencies. At the same time, the Mamluk state was increasingly facing new rival powers that threatened or cut off its control over certain trade routes and its supply of various materials including slaves, wood, and bullion. The rise of the Ottomans and the Safavids in Asia affected trade patterns. So did the increasing encroachment of the Portuguese into Red Sea trade.
In explaining the fifteenth-century crisis, modern historians fall roughly within two main schools. One school tends to explain it by stressing internal factors of decline. By looking within the Mamluk system, some historians have questioned not only its economic productivity, but also its politics. E. Ashtor, for example, considered government monopolies, taxes, corruption, and technological stagnation largely responsible for the collapse of Egyptian and Syrian industries such as the sugar and textile industries, and the ultimate triumph of European trade and commerce in the second half of the fifteenth century.* Within this paradigm, the cruelty and greed of sultans such as Barsbay (r. 1422-38) led them to monopolize commodities and enterprises such as the spice trade and sugar production through various measures. The excessive taxes they levied from private, non-Mamluk producers and the system of tarh, or forced purchases, they imposed on traders in effect strangled competition and is the main reason, Ashtor argued, for the closing of many sugar factories. This led to both corruption in the management of surviving sugar factories and an aversion to technological innovation.* Meanwhile, Europeans were developing more innovative techniques using horses instead of oxen, and a new sugar press was introduced by the mid-fifteenth century.° Ultimately the Levantine products could not compete in price or quality with European sugar, especially after the introduction of New World plantations. While Ashtor did make allowance for demographic realities, mainly the depopulation of Egypt and Syria following the series of epidemics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the detrimental effects on the Syrian economy of Tamerlane’s invasion at the dawn of the fifteenth century, his analysis stresses the effect of the structure and organization of medieval Mamluk government itself, in addition to the decrees of particular rulers.’ Similarly, though he disagrees with some of the arguments of Ashtor, Sato Tsugitaka sees political corruption and natural disasters—rather than technological stagnation—as the main causes for the decline of sugar production in late Mamluk Egypt.®
Carl Petry has focused on studying the politics of Egypt’s last two important and long-reigning sultans, Qaytbay (r. 1468-96) and Qansuh al-Ghawri (r. 1501-16). In his studies of the late Mamluk period in Egypt, published in two volumes as Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power and Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt, Petry focused on the history of the two sultans and the policies of the senior men of state who surrounded their regimes.’ Petry was able to bring to life the economic and political crises these two sultans faced and the ways in which the ruling men dealt with and unintentionally aggravated the challenges before them. While medieval historians like Ibn Iyas idolized Qaytbay—and demonized Qansuh al-Ghawri—Petry takes issue with their judgment. According to his reading, Qaytbay championed the old Mamluk order and did not attempt to reform it. He was more a custodian of a tradition, who did not introduce any significant innovations in foreign policy, administrative style, or economic production.'° Qaytbay bequeathed his eventual successor, Qansuh al-Ghawri, a legacy of bankruptcy, confiscation, and oppression.'’ And although Qansuh al-Ghawri’s foreign policy also aimed at maintaining a regional environment in which Mamluk institutions could continue to function as they had for centuries instead of adopting proactive initiatives, Petry credits the sultan with innovations in armament and financial administration.’? Al-Ghawri’s military and fiscal experiments had the potential of altering the power structure itself in the face of crisis. However, Petry remarks that historians’ pessimistic assessments of both reigns show that members of the lettered classes saw that the conduct of the soldiers and military, their exploitation of society at large, had gotten out of hand'—a situation confirmed by analyses of urban protests during that period. Indeed, the frequent rioting of the ju/ban (new army recruits) for more pay is a recurring motif in all the historical sources and is assumed to be one of the main reasons behind the state’s imposing more and more taxes. It was also a frequent cause of unrest and disorder in Cairo. Petry offers a rather daring hypothesis to account for Qansuh al-Ghawri’s appropriation of awgaf (pious endowments), funds, and the hoarding of resources. Rather than see al-Ghawri’s decisions as either erratic acts or else the behavior of a tyrant (as the ulama and contemporary Mamluks who stood to lose from all this seemed to believe), Petry connects this policy with that of establishing the fifth corps who were experimenting with firearms and were paid direct salaries and not through gta‘s (tax farms). By placing more and more of the state’s resources directly under royal control, Petry argues, al-Ghawri might have been trying to gradually phase out the traditional Mamluk regiments and their system, which was based on igta‘, and replace it with a different kind of army."* It is a daring hypothesis, but surviving sources do not offer enough details to either confirm or refute it, and time was unkind to Qansuh al-Ghawri; the Ottomans arrived at the doorstep before such a master plan—if it really existed—could reach fruition.
Petry’s analysis of the late Mamluk period stresses the stasis and lack of innovation in the system rather than any decline in agricultural production. It is such stasis that encouraged mismanagement of resources, the exploitation of subjects, and the hoarding of assets over innovative investment. What ingenuity existed lay chiefly in devising ways to hoard assets and keep them out of other people’s hands; the same attitude informed the strategies of both the state and its subject population.
The second school of modern interpretation attributes the fifteenth-century crisis to the changes in the world economy at large. Rather than a decline in Egyptian and Syrian economic productivity due to despotism and oppression, it was changes in European patterns of investment, capital production and accumulation, and manipulation of markets that changed the international world order to a degree with which a traditional economy, such as Egypt and Syria, could not immediately compete.’ This argument, which focuses on external world explanations for the crisis, is best exemplified by the works of Immanuel Wallerstein and Janet Abu-Lughod. Wallerstein refers the decline in eastern Mediterranean trade and the ensuing crisis that evolved to structural changes in world trade.'® Sugar production did not decline only in Egypt and Syria, for example; the decline reached the whole eastern Mediterranean by the end of the fifteenth century largely due to failure to compete with sugar imports from American plantations with their abundance of new land, favorable climate, and slave labor.'’
Abu-Lughod identifies two main external factors as precipitating the decline and turning Egypt and Syria from a hegemonic diversified economy to a dependent one: firstly the aggressive trade policies of Venice, by which the Italian city-state dumped large amounts of fabrics on the Egyptian and Syrian markets and turned Egypt and Syria into exporters of raw cotton, rather than textiles, and secondly the double impact of the Black Death and Tamerlane’s invasion at the beginning of the fifteenth century."
My own interpretation considers the way that these various crises were interrelated. It stresses the dynamic relationship between economic problems and challenges and the administrative decisions taken in response to them, showing that the acts of the Mamluk sultans were often in answer to pressures from below. This crisis led various Mamluk rulers to resort to a number of policies in order to raise income and save cash. Historians of medieval Egypt and Syria are familiar with the policies of monopolization, forced sales, and extra-legal taxes that different sultans and amirs enforced. Most famous of course are the monopolies imposed by Sultan Barsbay (1422-38). Igarashi Daisuke’s study of the diwan al-mufrad shows that the establishment of this diwan by Sultan Barquq in 1383 in order to pay monthly salaries to the sultan’s Mamluks was part of awider restructuring of Mamluk finances and the collapse of the igta‘ system, which meant a deep restructuring of the Mamluk state.'’ Indeed, even as late as the period of Sultan Qaytbay (r. 1468-96), when the diwan al-mufrad was abolished, the ruler was trying to find ways of restructuring the administration to better control resources. While some of these policies were viewed as corrupt and evil by contemporary scholars, we can in retrospect see them as ways in which rulers tried to circumvent strenuous conditions. Indeed, some scholars, such as Toru Miura, have argued that some of these policies, such as bribery and the sale of offices, were not deviations from the norm but rather were so institutionalized they were part of the financial policy followed to compensate for the state’s loss of income, allowing it to function in a somewhat decentralized mode.” Even if the state did not formally recognize these latter practices, or if rulers did not officially condone these as state policies, their prevalence confirms that they had overarching long-term cumulative effects on the ability of the state to penetrate society and to impose its will—even at times over its own employees. Thus, hand in hand with the image of autocratic military rulers that we have of the Mamluk sultans, we must also recognize the limitations they faced in exercising their powers and their repeated attempts to restructure their institutions. Much of the coercive power of the state was gradually usurped over the span of the century even by the officials appointed by the state itself.?! This does not deny that the sultan remained powerful—indeed, the almost endemic confiscations of the same century are testament to the sultanate’s ultimate supremacy over the amirs (senior Mamluk officers)—but it is a power that was shared, and exercised brutally when the hegemony of the state itself and of the sultan was seriously threatened and imperiled. It’s also a situation that allowed room for other members of society to participate in politics.
It is important to question and study how these policies were implemented, and how they were received by the populations. An analysis of the surviving sources shows that despite the autocratic nature of the Mamluk regime, many of these policies were adjusted or modified in order to accommodate popular dissatisfaction, expressed through protest. The urban non-elite managed on many occasions to negotiate these policies to their advantage or at least to ameliorate some of the burdens that befell them.
The straitened financial and economic situation meant that the Mamluk state and its functionaries were forced to share power with other groups in society, albeit in indirect and subtle ways. Continuous negotiation was one avenue through which power was shared and redistributed. This did not always work smoothly or to the satisfaction of all parties involved. Yet it was a premodern, non-institutionalized form of power sharing and political participation. Perhaps because these developments were not rarefied in institutional formats, they were perceived as signs of decline, as signs of the breakdown of an imagined order. That is in any case how they were often perceived by the ruling classes, including some of our chroniclers— as signs of breakdown rather than restructuring and transformation.
Social mobility, the “bourgeois trend,” popularization
My analysis also considers the various social groups that were affected by the transformation taking place. The diffusion of power and the state of social and political flux that characterized late Mamluk rule allowed some groups and individuals in society to rise and flourish. Thus we see increasing references to members of the non-elite, commoners and people from craftsman backgrounds, who were able to rise through the administration, reaching high levels of authority. Some also left their mark on surviving literature and historiography. Contemporary medieval sources—and not a few modern sources—interpret this as one more sign of the corruption and decline of the Mamluk system. However, one can read these developments differently. In place of the rigid hierarchical system that was roughly based on merit, whether among the ranks of the ulama for the intellectuals or Mamluks for the military administrative apparatus, and through which only the tough first-generation slave soldiers were able to occupy senior positions in the army and top administration, commoner upstarts were recorded as occupying official positions from muhtasib (market inspector) to nazir al-khass (supervisor of the Royal Fisc). These include Abul-Khayr al-Nahhas, who started out as a coppersmith and went on to occupy senior positions in the bureaucracy,” as well as Sharaf al-Din Muhammad ibn ‘Ali al-Hibri, a one-time sugar trader and convicted felon of bad repute who was appointed to the hisba.?? However, rather than the simple value judgment of “decline”
with which many fifteenth-century changes are stamped, the modern historian can see this as part of a bigger trend throughout the century, one that allowed for more participation in some quarters, and for a relaxation of some of the rigid dichotomies in others—even perhaps for a “popularizing” trend. Some historians see this as a reflection of social mobility, or of a “bourgeois trend.” By referring to these developments as indicating a “bourgeois trend” I mean to argue for the genesis of a new type of culture, new forms of cultural expression, and new genres, that reflect the burgeoning of a potential new class. It is important, however, not to over-stretch these indications. That is, these indications, these hints, that survive to us in the sources, are not enough to argue for the rise of a bourgeois class as such (in the Marxist sense) in Egypt and Syria in the fifteenth century. They do, however, suggest that the germs of such developments are perceptible.”
This book argues that deep economic and social transformations were taking place in the late Mamluk period, especially during the fifteenth century, and that these changes allowed for a greater space for the nonelite. It also argues that it is these transformations that were behind the many popular protests that are reported for the century. Rather than reading the changes through the lens of decline, and the protests as a sign of breakdown, it will argue that the changes were more dynamic, with benefits to some and losses to others, and that the protests—while they were naturally against perceived injustices—were themselves a mechanism through which some of the urban non-elites participated in the politics of their communities. It will argue that this was all part of the transformations occurring at the time.
The gradual rise of the non-elite and the ‘bourgeois trend’ are quite palpable in literature, including historical literature. Medieval Egyptian and Syrian historiography is remarkable for the concern and attention it shows to daily life and the affairs, not only of the ruling elite and their caste, but of the cities and their people. In doing that, medieval chroniclers and scholars brought common people into history. Biographical dictionaries came to include people of craft and petty-bourgeois background. Some historians were themselves of modest background, such as Ibn al-Sayrafi, whose father was a money-changer. The very language that was used by some of the chroniclers, such as Ibn Ilyas, reflects echoes of the vernacular. This is a complex development. In part it is due to the fact that some of the people who were putting their pens to paper during this period came from various non-scholarly backgrounds. ‘That is, there was a widening of the scope and social base of the literati. Many of those people were writing history books. Furthermore, it would seem that what contemporary writers thought of as history broadened to include affairs of their own societies. Historians were no longer solely interested in the history of early Islam or the golden years of the caliphate, but they came to see their own lives, and their own contemporaries, as worthy of historicization and documentation. And this they did in a language that sometimes bore echoes of their everyday lives. This suggests that they had an awareness of their role in history as being important and their times as being worthy of note. It includes new references to the writers’ sense of individuality as well, and to changing attitudes toward public space.
This is a question that will be discussed further in the book. I will argue that this shift in the historiography is related to a general shift in society, a flexibility and a broadening of the power base that also allowed non-elite urbanites and social groups outside the scholarly and military establishments or on their margins to express their political opinions and
wills, often enough, through negotiation and protest.
A world upside down
Much of the literature on the fifteenth century has portrayed the period as being one of disruption of the social order. The reactions to this disruption varied. On the one hand, contemporary scholars perceived changes as signs of the decline of the regime and the horrors of the times. Thus, for instance, the social mobility that allowed for the rise of a coppersmith like Abul-Khayr al-Nahhas to levels of senior administration were interpreted by contemporary scholars such as the historian Ibn Taghribirdi as a sign of the weakness of the regime and the corruption of the social order. Social upstarts were viewed with suspicion, and indeed much of the information that contemporary historians provide about these historical figures relates to the administrative “corruption” and sale of offices that prevailed during the late Mamluk period—itself a consequence of the economic crisis that strained the state and the attempts to alleviate it. Rarely is this presented as a successful “rags to riches” narrative to be emulated. Instead, the dire consequences of such social trespass are often the moral of the tale. The upstarts invariably ended up in prison, or executed, usually having been deprived of the properties and wealth they had (illegally) amassed.
Similarly, this social mobility was reacted to on the streets by riots and protests that aimed at restoring an imagined traditional social order that was perceived to be under threat, or to advance claims or protest injustices. ‘Thus repeated attacks on non-Muslim administrators and on non-Muslim places of worship often invoked the legendary “Ordinances of ‘Umar.” These were once more revived as part of the social and political discourse, and Mamluk sultans and elite, former non-Muslim born slaves, were eager to demonstrate their loyalty to the Muslim faith and social order by upholding such traditional regulations. The sense of crisis that permeated the Egyptian, and to some extent Syrian, societies resulted in violence against non-Muslims. At times, non-Muslim administrators were targeted by angry crowds. So were Muslim administrators, especially those charged with collecting taxes and levies. When levies were deemed unfairly high, crowds negotiated.
These changes and transformations also took their toll on people. In addition to their cumulative economic effects, the recurrent waves of plague had a psychological impact on society. The rate of change might also have left many uneasy; references to cases of suicide and violent crime suggest some form of social malaise. Some of the protests that are reported are also indications of the unease and difficulties people faced. After all, a limited number of people benefited directly from the transformations, and some stood to suffer.
By stressing transformation over decline I do not intend to deny the hardships that many contemporaries suffered or the corruption that existed. Rather, I mean to dig beneath these impressions and problematize them, to stare at the cracks that such pressures exposed in order to better understand how these societies functioned, and to better understand the role of a larger segment of the population in their histories. ‘This is not intended to evoke a romanticized narrative of “the people” nor to make grand claims over the power of the urban non-elites in premodern times. Instead it is meant to aid the student of history to imagine a more complicated social and political landscape for premodern Egypt and Syria; rather than focusing on a hegemonic, autocratic power structure, it allows us to see various groups acting to further their interests. In short, it aims to look at society from the bottom up, or sideways, and to write a greater
percentage of the population into its history.
After the Fifteenth Century
The economic, social, and political transformations that occurred over the fifteenth century left indelible marks on the Egyptian and Syrian societies, and influenced their history long after the fall of the Mamluks. Many of those transformations continued in effect under Ottoman rule. While Ottoman rule brought a measure of stability to Arab cities, and introduced some administrative changes, many of the aspects of the reorganization of the social order that had occurred during the fifteenth century remained in place. Thus, the sense of civic engagement that can be felt in medieval/Mamluk chronicles is very much apparent in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sources. The series of chronicles by non-scholarly authors, including the Barber of Damascus, have already been subjects of historical inquiry. This literature, and the popular politics it narrates, indicates that many of the trends that were burgeoning
in the fifteenth century bore fruit in the late-seventeenth and eighteenth.
Book outline
After this introduction, chapter two focuses on the transformations in the state structure and organization of power that occurred in Egypt and Syria in the late Mamluk period. It will study the various economic and political challenges that the Mamluk order faced and the attempts of the rulers to deal with them.
Chapter three deals with the social transformations that were occurring at the same time. Issues such as social mobility were heavily influenced and affected by the changes occurring in state and regime structure, especially during the fifteenth century.
Chapter four discusses the popularization of literature and historiography and the development of the bourgeois trend. As society was changing, more people were expressing themselves in literary and historical texts. They were doing this using new linguistic styles and genres. Their surviving writings reflect a changing awareness of themselves and their roles in history. They therefore suggest a new social trend, a kernel of a potential bourgeois class.
Chapters five and six are concerned with the various instances and reports of popular protest during the late Mamluk period. The discussion considers the ways in which different groups in society negotiated their interests with the powers that be. It shows that the deep transformations that were occurring to the state structure and to society were also reflected on the streets of the major cities and on the ways in which the urban non-elites dealt with their rulers. It brings the commoners into the viewfinder of history and argues that the behavior of common people, especially the urban non-elites, their decisions, and their protests, were part of the transformations occurring at the time. They reflect a way in which larger groups in society were participating in the politics of their time. Rather than assume that they were silent or ineffectual, these chapters bring out many examples from the historical literature to highlight the dynamic relationship between rulers and ruled.
Finally, chapter seven offers general conclusions on the transformations that Egypt and Syria were undergoing during the fifteenth century and the importance of studying urban protest in the premodern period.
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