Download PDF | Doris Behrens-Abouseif - The Book in Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1250-1517)_ Scribes, Libraries and Market-Brill (2018).
190 Pages
Introduction
Walking through historic Cairo, from the northern gates ofBab al-Futuh or Bab al-Nasr, and proceeding toward the southern gate of Bab Zuwayla and further south to the Citadel, via Saliba Street and the al-Darb al-Ahmar quarter, I found myself reading Mamlukarchitecture, behind the facades and between the lines. The density of monuments along the way inspired wonder and provoked questions about their meanings and purposes, the connection between their stated role and their implicit symbolism, between their pious dedication as mosques and madrasas and their worldly display of power and prestige. Returning home to my library and looking at the shelves stacked with thousands of pages of Mamluk books, more questions came to mind about the connection between these books and the monuments built to house scholars, students, and their libraries.
This experience is the motivation behind the present study. The subject is the impact of the philanthropic and monumental patronage of the Mamluks as a significant expression of their government and their identity on the production of the book as a commodity. It focuses on commissioning and copying books, their material value, and their circulation between market and libraries and between the private and the institutional domain, the formation and function of libraries, and the "who's who" of the Mamluk circles involved. No such study has been available to date. Much has been written about the culture of the book in the classical age of Islamic history, which is also valid for the Mamluk period. Studies on the history of libraries and the culture of the book in earlier periods by Pedersen, Eche, Touati, Sayyid, Deroche, and others are relevant to the Mamluk period as well.1 Eche's book on libraries in medieval Iraq and Syria, particularly its emphasis on the endowment or waqf system, is largely endorsed in this book. Although the material culture of the book continued to show many common features across periods and regions of the Muslim world, there are still many reasons to explore this subject with a focus on the specific context of the Mamluk sultanate ( 1250-1517 ).
Although this book is not about intellectual history and reading practices, studies on this subject have significantly contributed to stimulate the issues and questions I address here. Among the studies on Mamluk intellectual and academic life, Jonathan Berkey's and Michael Chamberlain's have touched on reading practices. More recently Konrad Hirschler explored the transmission of the written text and its reading circles in Syria during the Zangid and Ayyubid periods and, with his publication of the catalog of the Ayyubid Ashrafiyya mausoleum library in Damascus, contributed to our knowledge of libraries in the Arabic-speaking world of this period. Epistemological studies on the Mamluk period inspire further curiosity regarding the material culture of the book. Elias Muhanna's monograph on Mamluk encyclopedism focusing on Nuwayri's opus raises questions regarding the technicalities and practical management of this author's massive book production. 2 Frederic Bau den's codicological research on Maqrizi's autographs deals with such technicalities and provides insight into some of his methods for writing down his voluminous compilations. Research based on waqf documents initiated by 'Abd al-Latif Ibrahim, and continued by Ulrich Haarmann, Muhammad Amin, Leonor Fernandes, and myself have elucidated some material aspects regarding the functioning of academic institutions and their endowed libraries.
Apart from DavidJames's art historical work on Bahri Mamluk Quran manuscripts and his articles on scribes and calligraphers, very little has been dedicated specifically to Mamluk scribes and physical book production. Khaled Yusuf's list of Mamluk scribes accompanied by references to some of their manuscripts in library holdings is a recent useful contribution. Sheila Blair, in her book on Islamic calligraphy, dedicates a chapter to the Mamluk period with an art historical and paleographic documentation that draws largely onJames's work on Quran manuscripts and Adam Gacek's study of Mamluk authors on calligraphy. Apart from art historical publications on luxury Quran manuscripts and Alison Ohta's studies of late Mamluk book bindings, not much has been written on the Mamluk physical book. A recent article by Elise Franssen provides a rare codicological analysis of a Mamluk manuscript, which does not belong to the category of objet d'art but to that of an ordinary commodity. The primary sources available to the present investigation are far more limited than for the Ottoman period. In the absence of opulent archival material of the kind used by Ismail Eriinsal and others for libraries in Ottoman Turkey and by Nelly Hanna for Ottoman Egypt, and in the absence of a Mamluk library catalog, the sources for this book are mainly biographic literature alongside chronicles and waqf documents. A search through manuscripts has provided valuable information on library practices.3 A Mamluk codicological database is needed to provide a wider scope of the physical book and add a new dimension to the subject of the Mamluk manuscript.
Although the chronicles and biographies provide occasional information on libraries, they also leave us with wide gaps. Many questions remain open about the impact of the economy on the Mamluk book trade, as books do not figure among the price lists provided in the chronicles or elsewhere. Little is reported on a royal library, although the physical evidence of the collections in the Topkap1 palace and other Turkish libraries reveal that manuscripts were produced for the late Mamluk sultans, which points to the existence of a royal library at that time. However, the narrative sources discuss other matters that open up new avenues for investigation. For example, they provide information on the chain of transmission of calligraphy, which enabled me to outline the Mamluk cultural context for the art of calligraphy and trace a chain of its great masters. Although biographies of Syrian scholars occupy a prominent place in this research, it is not surprising that due to the concentration and magnitude of the royal foundations in Cairo and their role as magnets for academic careers, Mamluk historians are more informative on the institutional libraries of emirs and sultans and the book market in Cairo than those in Syrian cities. Chapter 1 follows the tradition of library patronage prior to the Mamluk sultanate, referring to the dispersal of the Fatimid palace library and other collections and their survival in its aftermath.
While Salah al-Din's successors tried to replace the Fatimid palace library, their use of the waqf system to found learning institutions on a large scale introduced a new era in book patronage. Chapter 2 brings together the available sporadic information on the libraries in the Mamluk religious institutions. It examines what waqf documents stipulate, as well as what they omit, about the function and status of libraries and librarians in these institutions. Chapter 3 reveals that the institutional libraries were not the sole or even the main resource for books. Private initiatives contributed significantly to the compilation and production of books. While endowing their collections to religious institutions, scholars and bibliophiles contributed to their growth as well as to their profile. The private book domain and its market were an indispensable resource for scholars and students. Private collections often exceeded the size of institutional libraries. Chapter 4 is about the circulation and habitat of the physical book. Borrowing practices had been discussed widely and regulated in earlier periods, and a lively debate on this subject continued under the Mamluks. Students and scholars depended on borrowing books from institutional libraries and private ones.
Although it was common practice for books to be written and copied on the premises of mosques and madrasas, these did not necessarily include a dedicated scriptorium space, as was the case in contemporary European religious institutions,4 but were merely a space for the storage of books. The volume of Mamluk collections varied between hundreds and thousands. The different categories of book formats, which can vary between large bound codices and fascicles, make it difficult to assess the actual size of a library with precision. Chapter 5 is concerned with the book market and its multiple and complex commercial activities and networks, its intellectual environment, and the manifold role of the book dealers. A number of factors defined the value and price of books, notably the edition and authenticity of scholarly texts, besides the material production of the volume and the copying fees, depending on the scribes and calligraphers. Chapter 6 is dedicated to the complex role of the scribe in the authorship, editing, dissemination, and trade of books. Authors and students usually wrote and copied their own books and even whole libraries. Not all scribes were calligraphers and vice versa. However, calligraphic education was common to all, and it was provided commercially or through religious institutions.
Chapter 7 concentrates on calligraphers as an elite category of artists who taught the art of writing, set its norms, and designed new styles. Their main field of activity was the chancery and other bureaucratic institutions. Teaching and copying luxury manuscripts were other aspects of a calligrapher's career. The discipline of calligraphy had a singular status in Mamluk society, enjoying the patronage and the active participation of the court and the aristocracy. This patronage included the establishment of a scriptorium in the soldiers' barracks in the mid-fifteenth century. Although it is not within the scope of this study to address the technical or artistic aspects of Mamluk calligraphy, by exploring the modalities of teaching writing and calligraphy, it has been possible to trace the chain of the master calligraphers from Syria and Egypt throughout the entire Mamluk period, which is the subject of chapter 8. This volume dedicated to the material culture of the Mamluk book is intended to serve as an introduction to more detailed codicological research on this subject.
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