Download PDF | Carl F. Petry - The Mamluk Sultanate_ A History-Cambridge University Press (2022).
380 Pages
The Mamluk Sultanate
The Mamluk Sultanate ruled Egypt, Syria, and the Arabian hinterland along the Red Sea. Lasting from the deposition of the Ayyubid dynasty (c. 1250) to the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517, this regime of slave soldiers incorp orated many of the political structures and cultural traditions of its Fatimid and Ayyubid predecessors. Yet, its system of governance and centralization of authority represented radical departures from the hierarchies of power that predated it. Providing a rich and comprehensive survey of events from the Sultanate’s founding to the Ottoman occupation, this interdisciplinary book explores the Sultanate’s identity and heritage after the Mongol conquests, the expedience of conspiratorial politics, and the close symbiosis of the military elite and civil bureaucracy.
Carl F. Petry also considers the statecraft, foreign policy, economy, and cultural legacy of the Sultanate, and its interaction with polities throughout the central Islamic world and beyond. In doing so, Petry reveals how the Mamluk Sultanate can be regarded as a significant experi ment in the history of state building within the premodern Islamic world. carl f. petry is the Hamad Ibn Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Middle East Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University. He is the author of The Civilian Elite of Cairo in the Later Middle Ages (1982), Twilight of Majesty: The Reigns of al Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al Ghawri in Egypt (1993), Protectors or Praetorians? The Last Mamluk Sultans and Egypt's Waning as a Great Power (1994), and The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks (2012), and is the editor of The Cambridge History of Egypt: Islamic Egypt, 640 1517 (1998). His research has been supported by the J. S. Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the American Research Center in Egypt, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
Introduction
In 784H/1382CE, North African historian and political philosopher Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) arrived in Alexandria, Egypt’s Mediterranean port, ostensibly on his way to pilgrimage in Mecca but in fact as a refugee from political controversy in the Maghrib. Ibn Khaldun’s fame had preceded him, and the reigning Sultan, al-Zahir Barquq, appointed him senior judge of the Maliki school of Islamic law in Cairo, the first of several prestigious offices he would hold as a jurist and scholar.
Ibn Khaldun spent the rest of his life in the city revising his monumental history of North Africa and the central Islamic lands, Kitāb al-ʿibar. Ibn Khaldun is known to the modern world primarily for his analysis of social structures in a volume titled al-Muqaddima fi’l-taʾrīkh (Introduction to History), which he wrote as an explanatory preamble to his larger work (cf. Chapter 6). While the Muqaddima overshadows the Kitāb alʿibar in contemporary scholarship, Ibn Khaldun expressed in the latter his esteem for the regime that, ironically, would grant him sanctuary years later: When the [ʿAbbasid] state was drowned in decadence and luxury and donned the garments of calamity and impotence and was overthrown by the heathen Tatars [the Mongols], who abolished the seat of the Caliphate and obliterated the splendor of the lands, and made unbelief prevail in place of belief, because the people of the faith, sunk in self indulgence, preoccupied with pleasure and abandoned to luxury, had become deficient in energy and reluctant to rally in their defense, and had stripped off the skin of courage and the emblem of manhood then it was God’s benevolence that He rescued the faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms (al diyār al Mi_ sriyya), preserving the order and defending the walls of Islam. He did this by sending to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation (al _ tāʾifat al turkiyya) and from among its great and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and totally loyal helpers. They were brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery (riqq), which hides in itself a divine blessing.
By means of bondage they learn glory and blessing and are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues (akhlāq badawiyya) unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure, undefiled by the ways of civilized living, and with their ardor unbroken by the profusion of luxury. The slave merchants bring them to Egypt in batches, like sand grouse to the watering places (al qa_ tan na_ hwa al mawārid), and 1 government buyers have them displayed for inspection and bid for them, raising the price above their value.
They do this in order not to subjugate them, but to intensify loyalty, increase power, and strengthen zeal. They choose from each group, according to what they observe of the characteristics of the race and the tribes. Then they place them in a government barracks where they give them good and fair treatment, educate them, have them taught the Qur’an and kept at their religious studies until they have a firm grasp of this. Then they train them in archery and fencing, in horsemanship, in hippodromes, and in thrusting with the lance and striking with the sword until their arms grow strong and skills become firmly rooted. When the masters know that they have reached the stage of readiness to defend them, even to die for them, they double their pay and increase their grants (iq _ tāʾ), and impose on them the duty to improve themselves in the use of weapons and horsemanship, and so also to increase the number of men of their own races (ajnāsihim) in the realm for that purpose. Often, they place them in service to the state and appoint them to high offices. Some of them are chosen to sit on the throne of the Sultans and direct the affairs of the Muslims, in accordance with divine providence and with the mercy of God to His creatures.
Thus, one intake succeeds another and generation follows generation, and Islam rejoices in the benefit which it gains through them, and the branches of the kingdom flourish with the freshness of youth.1 Ibn Khaldun’s praise for this cadre of slave-soldiers was not meant as effusive acclaim of utopian guardians or gratitude for sanctuary offered to a refugee. He credited these individuals for providing security to the Islamic heartland from conquest by unbelievers and salvation from moral decay on the part of indigenous Muslims themselves. The characteristics Ibn Khaldun attributed to these slave-soldiers encompass the qualities he found requisite to the revitalization of Islam as a religion and the endurance of the polity necessary for its fluorescence in his own day. The survey that follows examines these qualities in the context of the regime in which they achieved their fullest development: the Sultanate that ruled Egypt, Syria, and the Arabian hinterland along the Red Sea from 648/1250 to 922/1517.
The institution of Mamluk military slavery had its origins centuries earlier in the centralized Caliphate during the formative era of Islamic history in regions known today as the Middle East (Northeast Africa, Southwest Asia). The traits Ibn Khaldun emphasized have received attention in many contexts of scholarly inquiry for more than a century. In the past several decades, they have been subjected to revisionist approaches reflective of analytical currents prevalent in disciplines of the humanities and social sciences at the present time. The survey also takes stock of these shifting currents to indicate how they are reshaping the field of medieval Islamic history itself. Several overviews of the Mamluk institution and its manifestation as an autonomous state centered in Cairo have appeared since the emergence of this field as a distinctive branch of premodern Islamic historiography. Notable among these in English are by Robert Irwin,2 Linda Northrup,3 Jean-Claude 2 Introduction Garcin,4 and Amalia Levanoni.5
Similar outlines have appeared in Arabic, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, and Turkish. So, what justifies the publication of this survey? To date, no endeavor to depict the evolution of the Mamluk State beyond a summation of its political trajectory has appeared in a single volume. Given this regime’s complexities and the range of studies devoted to its development, no analysis of this scope can credibly claim to be comprehensive. The current bibliography is vast, its subjects varied. What this work attempts to do is revisit the qualities Ibn Khaldun attributed to this cadre from the perspective of recent scholarship in the humanities and social sciences. Ibn Khaldun’s own opinions about the Mamluks constitute a special aspect of historiographical inquiry into his broader worldview. As the reader will observe upon perusal of the following work, these qualities have prompted a wide range of reactions that embrace diverse approaches in several fields. Beyond historiography, the disciplines of anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture, gender and literary studies, education and pedagogy, politics, political economy, and religious studies are evident in the scholarship cited. While the author’s own views are apparent, the survey’s overriding objective has been to suggest how this scholarship has reshaped contemporary understanding of Egyptian and Syrian History during the late medieval and early modern period and continues to do so. The survey is presented in seven chapters.
Chapter 1 provides a synopsis of events from the Sultanate’s founding to the Ottoman occupation in 922/1517. Chapter 2 considers the regime’s identity and sense of heritage in the era following the Mongol conquests throughout the region. It outlines procedures of training for Mamluk cadets in the Islamic religion and military arts, the hierarchy of positions held by senior officers, and the competitive ethos that pervaded the military elite’s ranks. Chapter 3 addresses the Sultanate’s interaction with other polities in the central Islamic world, East and South Asia, Mediterranean Europe, and Africa beyond its borders (Takrur, Abyssinia, and the Maghrib). Chapter 4 examines the Sultanate’s administration, the bureaucracy that managed it, the civil judiciary and scholastic classes that presided over litigation and education, and the agents of religious service who upheld a stance of distinction from their learned counterparts. Chapter 5 appraises issues of political economy: agriculture and land use, taxation, interregional and local commerce, commodity prices, salaries and wages, and procedures of revenue extraction (formal and clandestine) imposed by the regime to address cash shortfalls. Chapter 6 considers the Sultanate’s cultural legacy, its sponsorship by the military elite, the evolution of literary production (poetry and prose), and the dramatic growth of historiography.
Chapter 7 examines the rural setting, issues surrounding its lack of visibility in sources, gender relations, the status of religious minorities (Christians and Jews), and diversity in religious practice, especially as measured by popular identity with Sufism. Introduction 3 Matters of chronology, events, persons, locales, and institutions are cited initially according to their listing in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second and third editions (EI2/EI3), as first lines of reference to a source with internationally recognized standards for accuracy and scope. Arabic diacritics conform to the Romanization Tables for Arabic of the American Library Association/ Library of Congress. They are limited to terms or phrases in italics, when precise transliteration is indicated. Dates are listed as Hijri (H) and Common Era (CE). Several individuals who are authorities on the history of medieval Egypt and Syria read chapters of this work during the drafting process: Li Guo, John Meloy, Adam Sabra, Warren Schultz, and Terry Wilfong. Their insights and criticisms were invaluable and are deeply appreciated; any errors of fact or interpretation are the author’s responsibility. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Olaf Nelson of Chinook Design for drawing the maps that locate sites noted in the text.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق