Carl F. Petry

Egypt as a province in the Islamic caliphate, 641–868

The Muslim conquest of Egypt followed naturally from that of Syria. In the aftermath of the final Byzantine surrender of Alexandria in 22/642, the most important decision facing ‘Amr was the settlement of the victorious troops. There is an old tradition that ‘Amr himself wished to establish Alexandria as the capital but the Caliph ‘Umar intervened to forbid this. The most important figure in the political life was the governor or wālī. He was in charge of leading the prayers in the mosque on Fridays and of making sure that the kharāj was collected. In the years which followed the conquest the Muslim community in Egypt was involved in two major developments, expanding Muslim rule in north Africa and responding to the major political upheavals in the rest of the Muslim world. The most striking characteristic of early ‘Abbāsid administration in Egypt is its continuity with the Umayyad period.

Robing Ceremonials in Late Mamluk Egypt: Hallowed Traditions, Shifting Protocols

The final decades of the Mamluk Sultanate based in Cairo witnessed the assiduous maintenance of court-sponsored ceremonials in which robing figured ubiquitously. The impression of imperial continuity these ceremonials aimed to project was in fact something of a facade masking shifts in concepts of prestige on the part of the Mamluk ruling oligarchy. The following essay seeks to indicate the circumstances of robe granting while discerning such shifts as revealed by alterations in its rituals. The study is derived from hundreds of references to robing ceremonials by four prominent chronicles of the late Mamluk period.1 These references often provided detailed descriptions of robe granting that disclosed protocols of bestowal, gradations of fineness, types of fabric or fur, ranges of colors, and styles of weaves evolving from centuries of precedent. Since the Mamluk Sultanate drew its ceremonial traditions from cultures in northwestern Africa, southwest Asia, and the Mediterranean, the precedents inspiring the multiplicity of robes were profuse.

Already Rich? Yet ‘Greed Deranged Him’

This volume contains seventeen essays on the Mamluk Sultanate written by leading historians of this period, and discusses social and cultural issues, women in Mamluk society, literary and poetic genres, the politics of material culture, and regional and local politics.