Download PDF | (The Medieval Mediterranean 51), Michael Winter, Amalia Levanoni, The Mamluks In Egyptian And Syrian Politics And Society, Brill (2004).
485 Pages
PREFACE
This volume on the Mamluks of Egypt and Syria grew out of an international conference, which took place in May 2000 at the Universities of Haifa and Tel-Aviv. This conference was a sequel of a similar symposium that had convened in 1994 at Bad Homburg, Germany, which resulted in the volume entitled The Mamluks in Egyptian politics and society, edited by ‘Thomas Philipp and late Ulrich Haarmann (Cambridge University Press, 2001).
The conference at Haifa and Tel-Aviv (and subsequently this book) differs from the previous project in one significant aspect. The first book was limited to Egypt; the present volume includes the history of the Mamluks in Syria as well. Egypt was the center of the Mamluk Empire (1250-1517); the provinces known as Greater Syria (Bilad al-Sham) were wholly dependent on the capital Cairo, the seat of the sultan and the caliph, and was politically and strategically of a secondary importance. In addition, while Mamluks assumed a central role in the politics of Ottoman Egypt (1517-1798; particularly in the eighteenth century), they all but disappeared from Syria after the Ottoman conquest.
The editors would like to extend their gratitude to the persons and departments at the Haifa and Tel-Aviv Universities for their assistance in financing and organizing the Mamluk conference and the present volume.
We would like to thank Mrs. Genoveba Breitstein for efficiently and thoughtfully preparing the text for publication.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Reuven AHARONI teaches at the Department of Land of Israel Studies, the University of Haifa. He is working on issues of Bedouin societies in Egypt and Israel. He is the author of articles about Bedouin in Ottoman Egypt. His book Tribe and State in Egypt of Muhammad Ali (1805-1848) (Frank Cass, London) is forthcoming.
Reuven Amirali is currently Director of the Institute of Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He specializes in the history of the late medieval Islamic world, particularly the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria and the Mongol Ilkhanate of Iran and its environs. He is currently working on a study of the military history of the Mamluk Sultanate.
Freperic BaupEen, Ph.D. (1996) in Oriental History & Philology, University of Liége (Belgium), is Professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Liége. He has published Antoine Galland’s Le Voyage a Smyrne (1678) (Paris, 2000) and a critical edition with annotated translation of Muhibb al-din al-Tabari’s Dhakh@ir al-‘uqba (Cairo, 2004).
JonaTHAN BrERKEy is Associate Professor of History at Davidson College, and the author most recently of The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800.
DaniEL CrEcELIUS is Professor Emeritus of Middle East history at California State University, Los Angeles.
JoserH Drory is Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University in the Land of Israel and Arabic Departments. His main research themes are the medieval history of Palestine, Ayyubid and Mamluk rulers. Among his last contributions are Baybars and the Conquest of Safed, Early Muslim Reflections on the Crusaders, Al-Malk Al-Afral, the Unfortunate Heir and Ciwil rights wardens in Mamluk Egypt.
Jane Haruaway is Associate Professor of Islamic history at Ohio State University. Her publications include A Tale of Two Factions: Myth, Memory, and Identity in Ottoman Egypt and Yemen, and The Politics of Households in Ottoman Egypt.
Rosert IRw1n is Senior Research Associate of the History Department of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London University. He is the author of The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250-1382 and The Arabian Nights: A Companion and various other books.
AMALIA LEVANONI Is Senior Lecturer of Middle Eastern history at Haifa University and Chair-elect of the Department. She has published extensively on the history of the Mamluks, including A Turning Point in the Mamluk History: The Third Reign of al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun (1310-1541) (Brill, 1995).
Donan P. Lirtte is Professor Emeritus, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University, where he continues to teach medieval Islamic history and Arabic language. His research focuses on Arabic historiography and documents of the Mamluk period, as reflected in his major publications: An Introduction to Mamluk Historiography (1970) and A Catalogue of the Islamic Documents from Al-Haram Ash-Sharif in Jerusalem (1984).
Nimrop Luz is currently working at the Department of Geography at the Ben Gurion University of the Negev. His research interests are the relations among politics, culture, and the built environment in the Middle East (past and present). His current research is focusing on the politics and the production of sacred places in Palestinian communities in contemporary Israel.
Cart F. Perry is Professor of History, and C.D. McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. His research focuses on pre-modern Egypt, with emphasis on political economy. Books: The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton, 1982); Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of the Mamluk Sultans al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri in Egypt (U. Washington, 1993); Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt’s Waning as a Great Power (S.U.N.Y., 1994). Editor and contributor of vol. | of The Cambridge story of Egypt, 640-1517 C.E. (Cambridge University Press, 1998). He is currently researching a monographic study of crime and criminality in medieval Cairo.
Tuomas Puiuipp teaches Politics and Modern History of the Middle East at Erlangen University in Germany. He has edited several volumes on the early modern history of geographic Syria. He has also written on Arab Nationalism. His latest work is Acre. The Rise and Fall of a Palestinian City 1750-1831 (NY 2001).
YossEF Rapoport is Associate Member of the Sub-Faculty of Near and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford. He specializes in the history of Islamic law.
AnpDRE Raynmonp is Professor Emeritus at the University of Provence. He published extensively on the Arab cities in the Ottoman period, with a special emphasis on Cairo. Among his recent publications are Le Caire de Fanissaires (GNRS, 1995) and Cairo (Harvard University Press, 2000).
Donatp S. RicHaRps was born in Bristol (England) in 1935 and educated at Merton College, Oxford. He was Lecturer in Arabic at Oxford University, with a special interest in the mediaeval history of Islam (Ayyubid and Mamluk periods), until his retirement in 2000 and is an Emeritus Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford.
WarrREN C. Scuuttz is Associate Professor of History, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of The Monetary History of Egypt, 642-1517, “Cambridge History of Egypt”, vol. 1 (1998), and several additional articles on the monetary history of the Mamluk Sultanate. He is an Associate Editor of Mamluk Studies Review.
Hanna Taracan is the Head of the Islamic art division, Department of Art History, Tel Aviv University. Her current research concerns Umayyad and Mamluk art and architecture in Palestine, on which she has published many articles. She is the author of the book Art and Patronage in the Umayyad Palace in Jericho (Hebrew).
MicHaeL Winter is Professor Emeritus of Middle Eastern history at Tel Aviv University. He has published extensively on the history of the Arab countries under the Mamluks and the Ottomans, including Egyptian Society under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798 (Routledge, 1992).
INTRODUCTION
The nineteen articles that have been collected in the present volume cover the politics and society of the Mamluks from 1250, when the Mamluk Sultanate was established in Egypt until the end of the eighteenth century, when the French invasion of Egypt announced the end of the three centuries long, direct Ottoman rule of Egypt. The Syrian provinces were an integral part of the Mamluk Empire, and despite the strong union between Egypt and Syria during the Mamluk Empire (stronger than in any period before or since), there were different conditions in Syria in certain respects. ‘Therefore, Parts IV and VI discuss respectively the conditions in Mamluk Palestine, a part of Greater Syria at the time, and Syria.
Part I, “The formative stage of the Mamluk state”, consists of two quite different studies. Hannah ‘Taragan describes the portal to the Red Mosque in Safed, discussing its artistic themes and _ political messages, comparing that specific portal to other monuments commissioned by Sultan Baybars, the architect of the Mamluk Empire. Reuven Amitai looks at the meaning of loyalty among Mamluk amirs against the background of the Mongol occupation of Damascus in 1300, when several amirs crossed the lines to the Mongols and back.
It is well known that despite the richness of literary sources of the period, the archival documents from the Mamluk chanceries did not survive. In Part II, Frédéric Bauden uncovered at the University of Liége a unique manuscript. It is an imperial decree dating from the mid-fourteenth century. ‘The document was used by the al-Maqrizi, the famous historian, as scrap paper to write a passage from one of his chronicles. Complementing historical sources with Mamluk chancery documents, Bauden constructs more accurate pictures of political events in mid fourteenth century. Using the Haram al-Sharif documents in Jerusalem, Donald Richards suggests first hand information on Mamluk material culture.
Turning to the military aspects of the Mamluk society in Part III, Amalia Levanoni uses the study of Mamluk regal titles (a/gab) during the Circassian period to look at factional politics within Mamluk society. She challenges the model of Mamluk factionalism prevalent in research literature and shows that the Mamluks developed instead a bi-polar political system in which regal titles were used as symbols uniting various Mamluk groups through the generations. Robert Irwin challenges the theory of the late David Ayalon, arguably the founding father of Mamluk studies, that the Mamluks did not adopt firearms for social and psychological reasons despite the fact that they knew the technology. Irwin examines carefully all the relevant evidence of the Arabic chronicles and the technical pros and cons of the effectiveness of firearms of the time and concludes that not only did the Mamluks not reject firearms, but also “they could not get enough of them”.
The two articles of Part IV are concerned with society and administration in Mamluk Palestine. Donald Little offers new facts and fresh perspectives on Mamluk Jerusalem. Little describes the administration of the city under Qaytbay, the most powerful sultan in the fifteenth century. Joseph Drory’s study of Safed describes the considerations, which caused the Mamluk government to turn Safed from a small and politically insignificant town into a mamlaka, a province in Greater Syria. Drory surveys in some detail the officeholders in Safed, giving a list of the military and administrative personnel under the Mamluks.
In Part V, Yossef Rapoport gives an analysis of the significance of the attacks on divorce oaths by Taqi al-Din b. T'aymiyya, the most famous and original theologian and polemicist of the Mamluk period. His rulings about this matter got him into trouble with the authorities, as did other things he said or wrote. Rapoport explains that divorce oaths were widely practiced throughout society, by commoners and the ruling elite alike. By attacking them on religious grounds Ibn ‘Taymiyya challenged some basics of families and households, such as authority and control.
Part VI consists of three articles on the economy. Warren Schultz discusses the circulation of silver coins in the Bahri (or Turkish) period of Mamluk history (1250-1382). He rejects Balog’s assumption that Mamluk dirhams passed by count and argues that the Mamluks minted silver coins of changing alloys and weight and that their value was determined in the market in comparison to the money of account. Jonathan Berkey takes a close look at an ancient Islamic institution, the muhtastb (market inspector) in the Mamluk environment. He shows that there was transformation in the character and functions of the office; from a position of an ethical and religious character, filled in by men from the religious-legal establishment in the early Mamluk period, it turned into a political and administrative office of the state, subordinate to the ruler’s interests. Carl Petry describes the estate and the economic activities of a woman, a royal spouse, who had been widowed several times and amassed considerable fortune. This study is based on archival documents that are relatively abundant for the last decades of the Mamluk Sultanate.
Part VII, “the Mamluks in Syria”, consists of three different studies. Nimrod Luz combines field research in Jerusalem and written historical and topographical sources to examine Mamluk residential houses planning as reflecting Islamic culture in specific towns during the Mamluk period, thus contributing to the ongoing scholarly debate about “the Islamic city”. Michael Winter uses wagf and milk (charitable endowments and private estates) documents from the Istanbul archives to examine Mamluk amirs—their religiosity, their families, households, and women, as well as some demographic data about family size and number of wives and children. The article is an example how early Ottoman documents can be used for late Mamluk social and economic history. Thomas Philipp describes the Mamluk household and military forces of Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar, the ruler of Acre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The article proves that the Mamluk phenomenon did not vanish entirely from Syria after the Ottoman conquest.
In Part VU, “Mamluks in Ottoman Egypt”, André Raymond describes the wealth of the Egyptian amirs at the end of the seventeenth century, basing his study on the documents of legal bequests. He illustrates the economic differences among the various military units and ranks and between the military grandees and the civilian wealthy men. As he does in his previous studies, Raymond also presents the economic geography of Cairo. Daniel Crecelius discusses the political problems of leadership of ‘Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda, an outstanding military and political figure in eighteenth century Cairo. The study is based on contemporary Arabic chronicles. Jane Hathaway challenges the notion, prevalent in the research literature, of “Mamluk revival” in Ottoman Egypt, after their defeat by the Ottoman in 1517. Hathaway strongly calls to differentiate between the historical realities of Ottoman politics that were based on households and had no relation to the defunct Mamluk Sultanate and the nostalgia that evoked Mamluk historical memories, often used for political purposes, as to gain historical legitimacy. Finally, Reuven Aharoni compares the similarities and differences between the two warlike societies, Mamluks and the Bedouin Arab tribes of Egypt. He shows how they often needed each other, but also how they could be fierce rivals.
CHAPTER ONE
DOORS THAT OPEN MEANINGS: BAYBARS’S RED MOSQUE AT SAFED*
Hanna Taragan
Eight years after Baybars had conquered the Citadel of Safed from the Templar Crusaders in July 665/1266, he restored it and turned it into a new Mamluk stronghold that dominated the entire Galilee and functioned as a rear base for attacking Acre and the coastal region. Subsequently, having laid the foundations for the new Muslim city of Safed, which became the center of Mamluk rule in the Galilee! Baybars built the so-called Red Mosque (al-Jami‘ al-Ahmar), not far from the citadel.’ In spite of the fact that the mosque as seen today was repeatedly damaged by the earthquakes that wreaked havoc on Safed, the various renovations it has undergone over the years, and the pilfering of its minbar and the marble panels that decorated the mihrabs, it can still be studied both as a work of art and as a document reflecting the religious and political outlook of its Mamluk builders.
The Red Mosque, which has a fortress like appearance (fig. 1.1) was built in 674/1274—5 of high quality limestone, surrounded by massive outer walls of ashlar masonry, which have been preserved to a height of 7 meters. In certain sections, the walls reach a thickness of 3.4 meters.’
The plan of the mosque is rectangular, measuring 40.5 x 28.3 meters (fig. 1.2). A deep, rectangular portal niche is set into the wall of the northern facade, crowned with a vault whose upper part contains an elaborate, four-tiered mugarnas of the ‘Syrian’ type, topped by a gored conch design, only part of which has been preserved (fig. 1.3). The portal, built of reddish-orange limestone, was once higher than the wall, as evidenced by the broken fragments on both sides of the conch. It is flanked by the stone benches characteristic of Mamluk portals. An inscription can be seen on a marble panel in between the doorway and the muqarnas vault.
The portal leads into the inner open courtyard, and is surrounded on three sides by cross-vaulted arcades, supported by piers (fig. 1.4). In the north corner of the western arcade it is still possible to distinguish the flight of stairs leading to the now-collapsed minaret. ‘The western arcade opens southward on to a small, slightly raised grasscovered garden that adjoins the main courtyard. ‘To the south, behind the garden wall, is another courtyard with two gates opening to the street. A side entrance leads from here to the mosque itself.
The prayer hall is located on the southern side of the complex. Its interior—as seen today, is of square dimensions, measuring 15.5 meters wide and 15.1 meters deep. The gibla contains two muihrabs (fig. 5). Four pillars with flat capitals, looking like “a rudimentary mugamas element” divide the hall into nine equal-sized bays. Seven of the bays, on the north, west and east sides are cross-vaulted and reach a height of 5.30 meters. The central bay is likewise crossvaulted, and its four folded grooves, meeting at its center, create a rosette design. ‘This bay leads into the ante-mihrab which features a dome on pendentives, reaching a height of about 8 meters. Seen from the side, the two bays, with their stepped vaults, form a rhythmically graded axis that conducts the eye from the hall entrance toward the mihrab and serves to make the square hall appear oblong.
An expedition to the site in 1950 under the auspices of Israel’s Ministry for Religious Affairs, conducted by L.A. Mayer, I. Pinkerfeld, and J.W. Hirschberg—the only modern source to document the building—found the wooden minbar, which has since been lost, in place, measuring 5 meters high.
Mayer’s claim that the prayer hall as seen today dates from the nineteenth century, and that it was then covered with a single, central dome, is to my mind, inaccurate,’ since the mosque clearly features architectural and decorative elements from three different phases.
The first phase is characteristic of the period of Baybars and comprises the main portal with its inscription, also the general layout of the hypostyle mosque (fig. 6). I believe that the prayer hall originally extended to the west toward the outer wall and contained five aisles running from north to south, toward the qibla with its’ present western mihrab. If this was indeed the case, it follows that Baybars had the mihrab placed in the central aisle exactly opposite the middle entrance, where it is usually located in this type of mosque.
The second phase, still Mamluk, but probably dating from the first half of the fourteenth century, can be seen in the present, small prayer hall (fig. 2), with the eastern mihrab and vaulted bays, which attests to a decline in artistic quality compared to the portal of Baybar’s period. Since the overall style of this latter phase of the Mamluk period is not covered in this article, only several of its major features will be mentioned below.
The third phase is characteristic of the Ottoman period, although the mosque clearly underwent repeated restorations in the course of the last two centuries. However, the photograph that appears in Mayer’s report—and which was certainly not taken after 1950— would seem to document what is no longer found in situ: the huge Ottoman decorated minbar and the tughra which appears above the mihrab (see fig. 7).°
Today, the mosque contains two inscriptions. ‘The one which has already been mentioned, appearing on the portal, is a foundation inscription (fig. 8), written by Baybars, reading: bi-ism Allah al-rahman al-rahim amara bi-insh@?i hadha al-jami al-mubarak mawlana al-sultan al-Mahk al-Zahw (al-sayyid al-qall al-kabir al-Glm alGdil al-muahid al-murabit al-mwayyad al-muzaffar) al-mansir rukn al-dunya wal-din ( ) (sultan al-Islam wa’l-Muslimin) qabil al-kafara wa’l-mushrikin gahw al-khawary wa’l-mutamarndin Baybars al-Salhi (qastm Amir al-Mu’minin) wa-dhalika ft sanat arba‘ wa-sabin wa-sittame a.
In the name of Allah the merciful and compassionate.
The building of this blessed Friday-mosque was ordered by our lord the Sultan al-Malik al-Zahir (the venerated, the great lord, the learned, the just, the wager of jhad against the unbelievers, the frontier warrior whom God supports and renders victorious, the pillar of the world and faith ( ), the sultan of Islam and the Muslims, the fighter against the infidels and politheists, the oppressor of the transgressors and rebels, Baybars al-Salihi (co-ruler with Amir of Believers [the Abbasid Caliph] in the year of 674 [1274/5].
The second inscription (fig. 5), which dates from the first half of the 14th century (our second phase), is an endowment inscription that is located above the eastern mihrab.®
bi-ism Allah al-rahman al-rahim innama ya‘muru masajida Allaht man amana bi-Allahi wa'l-yawmi al-akhirt wa-aqama al-salawata wa-ata al-zakawat walam yakhsha ula Allaha fa-‘asa itil@ika an yakiini mina al-muhtadina amara bi-insha’t hadha al-masid al-mubarak wa’l-turba allatt dakhilihi al-‘abd al-faqir wa Allah taala Najm al-Din Fayriiz al-Mahki al-Nasii wa-waqafa ‘alayhima wa-‘ala ‘asharat nafar imadm wa-mw adhdhin wa-qayyim wa-qurr@ wa-farsh watanwir jami® al-tabaqatayn wa’l-istabalat allati ila janibiha wa-nisf al-bustan al-maiif bi’l-rashidt wa’l-hammam allatt ansha aha bi’l-attarin_yusraf min wat tulka ma yuhtaj ilayht kama dhukiva ft kitab al-wagf wa-ma fadala ‘an dhalika Ja-li-avladihi wa-qbthi wa-nashhi.
In the name of God the merciful and compassionate.
None should visit the mosques of Allah except those who believe in Allah and the Last Day, attend to their prayers and pay the alms-tax and fear none but Allah. These shall be rightly guided.
The building of this blessed mosque and the tomb inside it was ordered by the humble servant of Allah, Najm al-Din Fayriiz al-Maliki al-Nasurt and he endowed a wagf, for [their maintenance] and for [salaries] of an wmam, a muezzin, an acting manager and Qoran reciters, and for the carpets and illumination, [consisting of] all [the following]: the adjacent two barracks and stables, half of the fruit gardens known as al-Rashidi and the bath that he had built in al-‘Attarin [the drug-gist market]. Expenditures [on the mosque and tomb maintenance] will be paid from the rent of those [the aforementioned properties] as was specified in the wagf document and the remaining [of the rental income] should go to his children, grandchildren and descendants.
This inscription, which provides an illuminating document for the study of the local history of Safed, raises questions that fall beyond our present context. I will confine myself to some details that are important for our purpose here.
After citing verse 18 of Sura 9, (which is highly popular for inscriptions chosen for mosques),’ it states that the mosque and the Jturba, or tomb therein’? were built by Najm al-Din Fayriiz, officer of alMalik al-Nasir Muhammad, who made waqf (wagafa) in favor of ten mosque functionaries, among them Qoran reciters. Mention of the latter may point to the funerary nature of the complex at that time." In any case, today the site contains no turba. Emanuel Damati, the Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist of Safed, has identified the still-remaining podium, attached to the gibla wall by means of a door that was blocked by Damati, as the turba. However, Mayer and his colleagues in the 1950 expedition, while referring to the inscription and its location above the mihrab, made no mention of a turba.
It is also worth noting that Evliya Tshelebi, who recorded his visit to the mosque in 1649, said nothing about the turba and the endowment inscription but did mention Bayabars’s portal inscription,'’? as well as an additional, contemporaneous inscription; the latter must also have been lost during one of the restorations of the mosque. In any case, I believe that if the building indeed comprised a turba, built in the second phase, in the early years of the 14th century, it would have been located in the western part of the prayer hall.
Baybars ostensibly built the mosque as a place of prayer and as part of the development plan for a new neighborhood on the outskirts of Safed, which was designed to attract numerous inhabitants and thus strengthen the Muslim settlement of the city. Indeed, we know that he encouraged the civil population from Damascus and the villagers of Galilee to move to the city. He also sought to attract religious dignitaries, and absorbed refugees that were in flight from the Mongols. We should also bear in mind that Safed was close to the fertile agricultural heartland and enjoyed a proportionally large part of its produce.'’ However, above all, it would appear that Baybars built the mosque as a monument of the victory to Islam over the Crusaders, thus commemorating his own glorious conquest of the Citadel.
Examining the “expressive intent” of Mamluk architecture in Cairo, Humphreys analyzes its structure, function, and metaphorical or symbolic quality.'* This inherent quality—which is ‘beyond’ structure and function—relates to values and ideas that the patron seeks to convey to the viewer, and it is independent of the building itself. It should be noted that Medieval rulers, were fully conscious of the symbolic level of architecture, employing it deliberately and shrewdly, exploiting the building’s various elements, such as the dome and the portal, to convey overt as well as covert messages. Furthermore, in Medieval Islam a ruler who built solely for functional purposes would be suspected of putting his faith in the everlastingness of material things and hence be accused of self-aggrandizement. Even the Qoran admonished against edifices that were intended only to glorify the builder.’ Hence, investing the building with a symbolic significance gave it justification as the embodiment of a truth upheld by the society that had produced it.
Baybars indeed enlisted both the verbal and the visual media to relay political and religious messages with the aim of institutionalizing the power apparatus of Mamluk rule in general, and to legitimize his own rule as a defender of Islam and protector of the Muslims in particular. After all, we should bear in mind that al-Malik alZahir Baybars al-Bunduqdari (658-677/1260—1277), and all other Mamluks, were not born Muslims but had been purchased as slaves, converted to Islam, and conscripted into the army, from where some succeeded in rising to power or to senior positions. Their rule was justified primarily by presenting themselves not only as devout Muslims but also as Jihad warriors and guardians of Islam. It appears that “The concept of Jihad is a plastic one, which can be employed in widely varying ways for varying ends... For thirteenth-century Muslim rulers, there was a happy and all too rare marriage of values and interests.””!°
I intend to examine to what extent the portal of the Red Mosque at Safed reflects Baybars’s ambitious aims. ‘This will be done by making a stylistic analysis of the portal with its decorative elements and its inscription; by investigating his ambitious use of stone and stone mugarnas and by considering the portal and the mosque generally in the context of the regional art that evolved in Syria and its environs.
Baybars’s emphasis on the portal of his monumental buildings 1s evinced both in written sources and in the actual examples familiar to us. Our knowledge of the portal of the Great Mosque in Cairo for example, relies on two biographies of Baybars, which were written in his lifetime and under his patronage, one by Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Abd al-Zahir"’ (died in 692/1292), the other by Ibn Shaddad ‘Izz al-Din" (died in 684/1258), and on a third record, written two centuries later by al-Maqrizi'® (died in 845/1442). They all dwell on Baybars’s special request, prior to his destruction of Jaffa, in 666/1268, that the portal of his new Great Mosque be identical to the portal of the Zahiriyya Madrasa at Bayn al-Qasrayn in Cairo, built by Baybars himself in 660/1262-63, and that the dome match that of Imam al-Shaf‘i, built by the Ayyubids in 1211. In all other respects, Baybars gave the architect a free hand. From the said texts we thus learn that the elements of the portal and the dome were of central importance to Baybars.
Another example is provided by an inscription in the mosque of Ramla commemorating Baybars’s victory over Jaffa. In their survey of inscriptions found in this area (the &.C.A.) Gombe, Sauvaget, and Wiet claim that the inscription was located in the White Mosque at Ramla.*” Rosen-Ayalon has it that the inscription is located on the minaret to the north of the rummed White Mosque, and suggests that Baybars had restored the dome over the now-ruined prayer hall.”! Although literary amara bi-insh@? means that he ordered the establishment of the dome, according to S. Blair restoration texts generally used the same form as foundation texts.” According to another source, the inscription came from the Great or ‘al-“Umari’? Mosque, a former Crusader church situated in the market of Ramla®’ (incidentally, I have found no trace of such an inscription at either site).
The inscription opens with verse 18 of Sura 9—one of the most common Quranic inscriptions, being one of three references in the Qur’an ran to the mosques of God (masajid Allah), as distinct from any earthly maszd or place of prayer. It continues:
Bi-ism Allah al-Rahman al-rahim walamma arada Allahu jalaluhu infadh hukimth lima sabaqa ft ‘tlmihi adhina l-abdihi al-fagqir al-mutawakkil ‘alayhi watab fi umiirihi ‘alayhi al-myahid ft sabiliha al-nasir l-din nabiythi wa-habtbthi wa-khalilii al-sultan, al-qall al-kabir al-mwyahid al-murabit al-muthaghir alghaz (t) rukn al-dunya wa'l-din sultan al-Islam wa’l-mushmin Baybars bin ‘Abdallah qasim amir al-mwminin amta‘a Allah bi-baq@ hi fa-kharga bi-jayshih al-mansiir ft al-Gshir min[shah]r Raab al-fard min al-diyar al-Misriyya Gqidan myyat al-jthad ghazwyan ahl al-shirk wa’l-inad fanazala bi-thaghr Yafa bukrat al-nahar wa-fatahaha bi-idhni Allahi ft thalith sa‘a minhu thumma amara bi-insh@® hadhihi al-qubba fawgq al-manara al-mubaraka wa-hadha al-bab ‘ala hadha al-jami' al-mubarak ‘ala _yad al-faqir al... . [sanat sitta wa-sittin] wasutamva ghafara Allah lahu wa-h-walidayhi wa-h-jami al-muslimin.
In the name of God the Merciful, the Compassionate.
None should visit the mosque of Allah except those who believe in Allah and the last day, attend their prayers and pay the alms tax and fear none but Allah. These shall be rightly guided.
When Allah may his greatness be exalted, wanted to carry out his decree because of his foresight, he allowed his humble servant, trustful in Him, labouring on [carrying out] His orders, wager of His holy war, supporter of the religion of His prophet, beloved and true friend, the sultan, the venerated, the great, the wager of Holy War, the frontier warrior, the raider in the name of Islam, the pillar of the world and faith, Sultan of Islam and Muslims, Baybars b. ‘Abd Allah, coruler with the Amir of Believers, may Allah [bring] enjoyment by his longevity. He departed with his victorious army from the land of Egypt on the 10th of Rajab resolved to wage Holy War, raiding the politheists and infidels. He camped early that morning in the port-city of Jaffa and conquered it with Allah’s will, in the third hour of the day. Then he ordered the establishment of this dome above the blessed minaret and this gate of this blessed Friday-mosque by the humble al... [in the year] of six hundred [and sixty-six] may God forgive him his parents and all the Muslims.
Whereas the two aforementioned examples demonstrate how the construction of a portal was intended to symbolize Baybars’s triumphs over the Crusaders, the two that follow show how the transfer of an extant portal likewise connoted his victory by appropriating enemy property as part of the spoils of war. This was decidedly the very purpose of Baybars’s transfer of Bab al-‘Iid from the Fatimid palace in Cairo, as recorded by Mujir al-Din:**
Wa-lahu bi'l-Quds hasanat minha: innahu «itana bi-‘tmarat al-masid wa-jaddada fusiis al-sakhra al-shartfa allatt ‘ala al-rukham min al-zahir wa-‘ammara al-khan al-ka@in bi-zahir al-Quds al-Shartf min jthat al-gharb ila al-shamal almaviif bi-Khan al-Zahw wa-kana bin@uhu ft sanat ithnatayn wa-sittin wasutme a.
wa-naqala ilayhi bab qasr al-khulafa’ al-Fatimiyyin wa-waqafa alayhi nisf garyat Lafta wa-ghayriha min al-qura bi-amal Dimashq wa-ja‘ala bi'l-khan furnan wa-tahinan wa-jaala li7l-masid alladhi fihi imam wa-sharata fihi ashy@ min fil al-khayr min tafriqat al-khubz ‘ala babihi wa-islah hal al-nazilin bi wa-aklihim wa-ghayr dhalika.
He did in Jerusalem charity acts among which are the following. He...took care to establish the khan [caravansary] outside noble Jerusalem, to the north-west, known as al-Zahir’s khan. Its establishment was in the year six hundred and sixty two. He transferred the portal of the Fatimid Caliph’s palace. He endowed half of the village of Lifta and other villages in the provinces of Damascus as a wagf [for its maintenance]. He set up a bakery and a mill in the khan. He nominated an wmdm in the mosque which is inside [the khan] and stipulated that acts of charity be carried out there such as distributing bread at its gate and improving the conditions of its guests and their food and the like.
Finally, we are told that when Baybars recaptured Aleppo from the Mongols, he removed the iron plates and nails from the portal of Qinnasrin at Aleppo and took them to Damascus and Cairo for some purpose. If this transfer from Aleppo may seem to be primarily utilitarian, the aforementioned Cairo transfer appears to be at least partly symbolic.”
In these chronicles, I believe, the portal figures as a metonym for a comprehensive idea. Indeed, generally the medieval chroniclers do not investigate art or architecture according to aesthetic criteria. Any ruler would be extolled for his building activity for contributing to the prosperity and civilized existence of his subject; for architecture that rivaled that of other nations in order to glorify Islam: “wainsh@i mahasin_ yubahiina al-umam bi-bah@ tha’;”’ or for his self-reflection as a great builder.*® This is of course not contradicted by the fact that Mamluk rulers also built religious edifices and charitable institutions under the auspices of the waqf in order to secure their descendants’ income and circumvent the zgta system. ‘Thus, when the portal element is mentioned by the chronicles as a separate and emphasized item in Baybars’s building activity—sometimes in conjunction with the dome and/or minarets—it is afforded a special role among the other elements of the building, signifying, in our case, the victory of Islam, and of Baybars himself, over their enemies. It should be borne in mind that portals and gateways had constituted a declaration of the patron’s power and victory already in the Eastern and Western Roman and Christian Empires, and from the early Islam period on. We already find clear examples of this in the monumental entrance gates to the Umayyad palaces as well as to the prayer hall of the Great Mosque of Damascus, in the city gates of Baghdad, Fatimid portals, etc.
The importance assigned by Baybars to the portal element is likewise evinced by the mashhad of Abi Hurayra at Yavne, also known as the tomb of Raban Gamliel—where the cushion voussoz frieze adorns the arches of the portal in the same way as on the main portal of Baybars’ Great Mosque in Cairo.”? This element was deliberately borrowed by Baybars from Crusader buildings such as the Holy Sepulcher on the one hand, and the Fatimid gate Bab al-Futth on the other as well as from other monuments. Both buildings—in Safed and in Yavne—also feature inscriptions commemorating Baybars’s victory over his enemies.
If the portal is indeed a bearer of Baybars’s political and religious message, its inscription declares this publicly. Even if the foundation inscription is often a “banal formulation,”*° it perpetuates both the metaphorical quality of the mosque portal and the name of the ruler inscribed on it, and automatically establishes a link between the two. Anyone passing by or through the portal would have to read it, and the name of Baybars would be impressed on his mind.*' In a culture that could not present a visual image of the ruler or patron who had endowed the building, unlike the custom in Christian edifices and portals, the written word—that is, in our case, the name of the ruler— became a surrogate means of magnifying his deeds. The Mamluks in Syria kept up this practice, which originated in the Ayyubid period with Nur al-Din (541-569/1146-1174). The later, in the wake of the battles against the Crusaders at Edessa, Antioch, and Tripoli, had his epithets as a warlord of the judd inscribed in Arabic on the portals of the buildings that he erected, emphasizing his dedication to the holy war against the infidels as well as his affirmation of Sunni orthodoxy.”
The foundation inscription appearing on the portal of a mosque or other edifice thus clearly proclaims the agenda of the ruler. Sheila Blair even singles out this type of inscription as an insignia of ruling power, similar to the mandatory khutba in the Great Mosque.**
It is no coincidence that Baybars built a hypostyle mosque of the arcades open courtyard type in Safed, repeating the plan of his Great Mosque in Cairo. We should keep in mind that mosques of this type were predominant in the Umayyad period, with the Great Mosque of Damascus constituting a likely prototype. The open courtyard mosque soon turned into a symbol and, throughout the Middle Ages, such mosques would be erected wherever Islam made a new conquest and its victorious presence was to be declared.** The legitimacy of rule is founded, méer alia, on the continuity of a glorious past. ‘Thus, just as the Umayyads had fought against Byzantine Christianity, the Mamluks fought against the Crusaders; this historical memory is clearly manifested in the Red Mosque.
Baybars’s mosque at Safed is built and decorated entirely in stone. The use of stone had been prevalent in Syria and Palestine already in the Roman-Byzantine period. However, the Ayyubids and Mamluks most probably chose stone because masonry, being both strong and workable, can be used to great effect to make even the functional elements of a building look grand and imposing. Hence, cut and dressed stone would be almost exclusively employed both inside and outside mosques for walls, piers, columns, and vaults, and their decorative motifs. Furthermore, the stone mugarmas ornamentation of portals and vaults called for the best limestone and for the most highly-skilled masons and craftsmen, since the stone had to be cut with great precision in order to coordinate elements of structure, color and geometry. More than a technical feat, then, the muqamas was an exquisite work of art, which only rulers could afford to commission as a symbol of their status and patronage.” Hence, it is not surprising that this type of portal was also adopted for palatial architecture.
Most of the preserved Mamluk buildings in the area have a portal niche of the type seen at Safed (although each portal is unique and there are hardly two examples with the same structure or decoration), and their decorative elements—dquite frequently only the mugamas—are concentrated in, if not restricted to the portal section. The portal through which the monument is entered thus becomes one of the most ambitious elements of the building.
In the Red Mosque at Safed, as in other Mamluk mosques in Syrian cities, the facade is plain and devoid of decoration, apart from the monumental portal, so prominent in its height and warm reddish limestone shade. It was the latter that gave the mosque its name, first mentioned by al-‘Uthmani in 1372 who described the mosque as a resplendent source of grace.*°
Apparently this reddish stone was brought from elsewhere, since the stone quarry near the entrance to the city provided a white stone, as it does to this day.
The portal, with its stone mugarnas vault, is 7.20 meters high, rising some 20 cm above the wall, 1.50 meters deep and 3 meters wide. It is thus twice as wide as deep. According to Terry Allan’s “Mugarnas Questionnaire”*’ these became the standard proportions for any vaulted portal in Damascus built after Nar al-Dm. There are still remnants of the stone benches on either side. The doorway is topped by a plain monolithic lintel, that rests on two corbels (fig. 8). Although this is a feature rarely found in Ayyubid Syria, it can be seen in Damascus in the Madrasa Salihiyya al-Murshidiyya (654/1253)"8 and in the early Mamluk period, in the portal built by Ashraf Khalil in 692/1292 at Yavne.*
In the portal of the Red Mosque at Safed, between the monolithic lintel and the mugamas vault above, a framed slab panel with five lines of inscription appears in the center (fig. 3). This is a typical Damascus tabula ansata (inscription cartouche).° The mugamas vault springs from corner brackets (fig. 8) and can be compared for example, to the corner brackets in the al-Salihiyya al-Sahiba madrasa in Damascus (630—643/1233-1245) (fig. 9).!
The vault in our portal rises up steeply through four tiers of mugqarnas terminating in a big scalloped shell. ‘The back corners of the vault form an “arch”. These back corners are developed in the second tier into two recessed squinch-like domelets whose inner apexes contain little globular pendants carved with a floral pattern (fig. 10). Each tier alternates cells of the ‘Syrian’ type (somewhat triangular in profile), with dominating branched massive brackets. In the first tier the central cells are divided into two. In the second tier they are divided into three-petaled “conch-like” flowers (fig. 11). Threepetaled flowers like those we find within the cells are not common, perhaps because of the difficulty in carving the stone. However, we can find similar examples from the late Ayyubid period on the portals of al-Farafra khanaqah (635-8/1237)" and Kamaliyya Madrasa (639—649/1241—1251)* in Aleppo, as well as on the entrance portal to the mausoleum of Baybars (676—680/1277—1281) which is the only part that remains of the original Madrasa al-Zahiriyya in Damascus (fig. 12).
The third tier is lower and the cells vary in height and depth. The fourth tier is flat, with fluted cells functioning as a “base” to the tall gored half conch above. Because of the crude cement filling applied in the modern period to repair the cracks, it is difficult to detect the boundaries between the tiers.
The portal of the Red Mosque is an impressive artistic feat indeed. Its complexity is expressed not only in the virtuosity of the stonework, but also in the relationship between the units: the geometry, the light and shade effects, the rhythm of the protrusions, the proportions of the three-dimensional forms, and the numbers of tiers. Baybars’s portal thus masterfully demonstrates what 'T. Allen observed, referring to Ayyubid architecture: “This is what geometry means. ... the display of ski and the harnessing of the abstract in the service of a patron or institution.”*
It is worth mentioning here that notwithstanding the repeated restorations and repairs that it has undergone over the centuries, the Red Mosque at Safed manifests elements of a well-defined regional style in type, scale and ornamentation that characterized the artistic centers of both Damascus and Aleppo and, from 1293 on, also of Tripoli, which was rebuilt by Qalawitn after the Crusaders were repelled.
The stylistic characteristics that we find in the Red Mosque from the second phase, 1e., the first half of the fourteenth century, link it to the above-mentioned local tradition*® The architecture stresses the interior and as in Aleppo the mosque in Safed also tended to vault all interior bays with cross vaults after Crusader models, which remained the basic type of vaulting system in Syria throughout the Mamluk period (fig. 5). ‘The arcades are supported by piers, and the vaults in the hall are supported by columns with mugarnas capitals, dividing the prayer hall into bays, with the line of cross vaults meeting in a central concave rosette, a feature commonly seen in buildings in Tripoli. Another element deriving from Tripoli is the dome on pendentives in the ante-mihrab. ‘These and other elements which are typical of the second phase will be discussed in a separate article.
We should now address the question of why Baybars chose to adorn the portal of the Red Mosque with mugarnas. After all, it would indeed have been possible to ornament it differently.*” For example, Baybars could have installed gates like those at Yavne, intended to remind the local population of the Great Mosque—his “coronation” mosque—in Cairo. This question brings us back to an additional aspect of the discussed metaphorical quality, namely, the believerbeholder, to whom the patron and ruler sought to impart his message: How, could the viewer be made to grasp the ruler’s message, as formulated in architectural terms?
We know that the manner in which a building conveys a message or connects with a community relies on special, fixed codes crystallized in the textual and visual collective memory which that community has itself established.’ Innovations are confusing whereas stability is reassuring. A portal that looked familiar to the local population thus signified continuity, and so facilitated identification with the ruler who built it. Hence, it was mandatory to effect a visual experience common to the ruler or architect and the viewer.
In other words, by stressing the link with the local population while concomitantly dominating it with the sheer impact of overpowering architecture, the sultan’s right to rule was underlined. ‘The portal of the Red Mosque indeed constituted a dominant element in the architectural vernacular evolved by Baybars. Whereas the stone mugarnas portal featured in Cairo only from 1298," and in Jerusalem from 1295,° it had appeared in Aleppo as early as 589/1193 in the madrasa of Sadbaht, and in Damascus in 1213,°! subsequently becoming prevalent throughout Syria. In other words unlike Cairo, which adapted earlier architectural elements—e.g. Fatimid at least in the early Mamluk period—to express and enhance the intent of the imperial patrons, Syria’s prevailing architectural style perpetuated the patterns set by local tradition.
This conclusion goes counter to the view of Creswell, who, on the basis of Cassas and Roberts’s drawings from the early 19th century, claimed that the portal of the al-Zahiriyya Madrasa built by Baybars at Bayn al-Qasrayn in 660/1260, was the first mugarnas portal in Cairo, and that it was destroyed or disappeared soon after being visually represented by Roberts. Creswell was aware of, but did not explain, the time lapse between the alleged appearance of the mugarnas portal of the madrasa in 1260 and its actual appearance in Cairo in the early 14th century.** However, as we have seen above, according to the chronicles, Baybars wanted the portal of his Great Mosque, built in the years 1266-69, to reproduce the portal of his madrasa— which is not a mugamas portal, but features arches elaborately decorated with cushion voussoir and zigzag patterns, which were chosen because of their association with the architecture of their enemies the Crusaders and/or the Fatimid Isma‘ilis. Moreover, had Baybars indeed built a mugarmnas portal in his madrasa, it is possible that other sultans would have been likely to imitate him and this did not occur. In the final analysis, therefore, Baybars would have appealed to a local model for his Zahirtyya Madrasa, familiar to the population of Cairo, rather than a mugarnas portal.
According to al-Nuwayri and in the (now lost) wall inscription of the Citadel, Baybars pledged to replace the Crusader bell tower with the adhan (the call for pryaer by mu’adhdhin), and the Gospel with the Qoran.” Eight years after capturing the citadel Baybars announced the fulfillment of this oath by founding a Muslim city in Safed, in the center of which he constructed the Red Mosque, whose unique and prestigious portal proclaims not just Baybars’ power and might as a patron, but also his wielding of an ideology of religious guardianship.
The mugarnas in this portal, as we have seen is not a ‘functional’ element. Its semiotic or symbolic ingredients pose a complex interpretative challenge. Being a kind of ornament,” the mugamas “refuses” to receive any iconographic interpretation unless there is an accurate inscription that implies a specific meaning.*° However, we may conclude that in a region in which the Christian memory—in the form of Byzantine churches and Crusaders fortresses—was so dominant, the mugarnas portal constitutes a kind of bearer and signifier not only of Muslim presence but also of the victory of its patron Baybars over the infidels.
Today no Muslims live in Safed as most of its Arab inhabitants fled the city during the war in 1948. The Red Mosque currently serves as a wedding and banquet hall. While this metamorphosis may seem to flaunt the cynical, postmodern <eitgeist, it also highlights, if ironically, the fact that throughout history, architectural constructions have conveyed the ideological message of the establishment.
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