Jo Van Steenbergen

Qalāwūnid Discourse, Elite Communication and the Mamluk Cultural Matrix: Interpreting a 14th-Century Panegyric

AbstractThis article analyses a brief panegyric text from mid-14th-century Egypt, authored by the court scribe Ibrāhīm b. al-Qaysarānī (d. 1352) and dedicated to the Qalāwūnid Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-āli Ismāīl (r. 1342-5). It challenges this panegyric’s standard treatment as a work of history and as a product of court propaganda, and instead connects it to wider issues of Mamluk literary production and social organisation. In doing so, a new understanding of this panegyric emerges within a specific context of Mamluk elite communication and social performance, demonstrating at the same time how such a social semiotic reading of Mamluk cultural expressions generates further insights into the symbiotic interactions between Mamluk culture and society.

The Mamluk Sultanate as a Military Patronage State: household politics and the case of the Qalāwūnid bayt (1279-1382)

Abstract This article focuses on the conceptualisation of Mamluk socio-political organisation in late thirteenth and early to mid-fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria. Breaking free of the heuristic constraints imposed on Mamluk studies by the paradigm of the political elite as defined by the normative exclusivism of elite military slavery—the so-called Mamluk system—it demonstrates that apparent dynastic attitudes were no mere facade for that system but rather powerful representations of the Mamluk version of a long-standing regional tradition of socio-political organisation: the military patronage state. It is argued here that this tradition, with its focus on military leadership, patronage ties, household bonds, and unstable devolved authorities, coalesced between 1279 and 1382 in Qalāwūnid leadership over and monopolisation of Syro-Egyptian societies.

“Is anyone my guardian . . . ?” Mamlūk Under-age Rule and the Later Qalāwūnids

Succession to the Mamlūk sultanate is one of those thorny issues that keep bothering historians. Within an environment that did not generally favour heredity of military/political status, a frequent tendency towards dynasticism remains difficult to explain, the Qalāwūnids (678–784/1279–1382) offering a case in point. This article analyses the age of accession of the later Qalāwūnids (741–784/1341–1382) and challenges the generally accepted view that they were mostly politically weak minors and mere stopgaps to a failing political system. It argues that there was a dynastic reflex at work, which combined with the specific political circumstances of the mid-fourteenth century and which resulted in the paradox of a very active, but continuously contested Qalāwūnid sultanate.

Truth and politics in Late Medieval Arabic historiography : the formation of Sultan Barsbāy’s State (1422‒1438) and the narratives of the Amir Qurqumās al-Shaʿbānī (d. 1438)

Throughout al-Ashraf Barsbāy’s reign as sultan of Mamluk Egypt and Syria (1422‒1438), one of the main performers and representatives of his expand- ing authority and power was the amir Qurqumās al-Shaʿbānī (d. 1438). Defeated in the power struggle that followed sultan Barsbāy’s death, Qurqumās’ career ended dramatically in his execution by order of the new sultan, al-Zahir Jaqmaq (r. 1438‒1453). Whereas this amir’s rich case received substantial attention from the era’s leading Egyptian historiographers, it has so far hardly attracted any interest in modern scholarship. This article aims to remedy this, but not simply in order to pursue some detailed reconstruction of Qurqumās’ life story. It rather wishes to explore this story as a case study towards a better understanding of how extant historiographical narratives that mattered so much to Qurqumās’ contemporaries may be read in analytically more meaningful ways than traditional approaches have so far allowed for. The article therefore proposes and explores a two-tiered ‒ social and cultural ‒ method of reading contemporary historical texts as politically engaged narrative claims to historical truth. It is demonstrated how across a diverse set of narrative texts the high-profile career of the amir Qurqumās al-Shaʿbānī appears as functionally constructed around the messy relational realities of the administration of sultan Barsbāy’s justice and the performance of his warfare in Egypt, Syria, the Hijaz and Eastern Anatolia. It is furthermore argued that in the historiographical record of these messy realities Qurqumās’ career is made to appear through the semantics of justice and sover- eignty as an agent of the legitimate and truthful political order of the formation of sultan Barsbāy’s state, but only for as long as that state existed.

Īnāl al-Ajrūd, al-Malik al-Ashraf

Al-Malik al-Ashraf Sayf al-Dīn Abū l-Naṣr Īnāl b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAlāʾī al-Ẓāhirī al-Nāṣirī (b. c.784/1382, d. 15 Jumādā I 865/26 February 1461), known as al-Ajrūd (“the beardless”), was sultan of Mamlūk Egypt and Syria (r. 1 Rabīʿ I 857–14 Jumādā I 865/12 March 1453–25 February 1461), following a long career of military slavery and leadership, court service, and family entrepreneurship, in Egypt (Cairo) and in Syria (Gaza, Safed), southeastern Anatolia (Edessa), and the eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus, Rhodes).

Mamluk authorities and anatolian realities : Jānibak al-Ṣūfī, sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy, and the story of a social network in the Mamluk/Anatolian frontier zone, 1435-1438

This article engages with the 838–841/1435–1437 Anatolian adventures of the Mamluk amir Jānibak al-Ṣūfī. It demonstrates how Jānibaks narrative is a remarkable story full of meanings, which enable a more nuanced understanding of Mamluk engagements with southern and eastern Anatolia during the reign of sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy (825–41/1422–38). First Jānibaks whereabouts in Anatolia are reconstructed on the one hand as they appear from contemporary source material and as they have been analysed in a handful of modern studies on the other. Against this historiographical background, a more comprehensive understanding of Jānibaks role and significance is then developed, combining local, Syro-Egyptian and Anatolian readings of Jānibaks story into one integrated social network approach. This reconstruction of Jānibaks social network in the Anatolian frontier zone finally leads to a number of conclusions on the complexity of political life in the 1430s in eastern Anatolia, on the nature of Barsbāys state, and on the shared realities of 15 th -century political cultures in the Nile-to-Black-Sea area.

Caliphate and Kingship in a Fifteenth-Century Literary History of Muslim Leadership and Pilgrimage

In Caliphate and Kingship in a Fifteenth-Century Literary History of Muslim Leadership and Pilgrimage Jo Van Steenbergen presents a new study, edition and translation of al-Ḏahab al-Masbūk fī Ḏikr man Ḥagga min al-Ḫulafāʾ wa-l-Mulūk, a summary history of the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca by al-Maqrīzī (766-845 AH/ca. 1365-1442 CE). Traditionally considered as a useful source for the history of the ḥagg, al-Ḏahab al-Masbūk is re-interpreted here as a complex literary construction that was endowed with different meanings. Through detailed contextualist, narratological, semiotic and codicological analyses Van Steenbergen demonstrates how these meanings were deeply embedded in early-fifteenth century Egyptian transformations, how they changed substantially over time, and how they included particular claims about authorship and about legitimate and good Muslim rule.Study-the cultural biography of a fifteenth-century literary text: Contexts: introducing the hagg, al-Maqrizi, and al-Dahab al-masbuk (seventh - fifteenth centuries) -- The hagg ritual: forms, function, and religious meanings -- Pilgriming rulers and the haggs political meanings in Islamic history -- Cairo sultans, Meccan sharifs, and the late medieval hagg -- Military commanders and religious scholars between late medieval Mecca and Cairo -- Introducing a scholar between late medieval Cairo, Damascus, and Mecca -- Contextualising al-Maqrizis authorship -- Contextualising al-Maqrizis al-Dahab al-masbuk -- Texts: al-Dahab al-masbuk between narratives, stories, and meanings -- The hagg in Arabic writing and literature: between fiqh and tarih -- Introducing al-Dahab al-masbuk: Prophet, caliphs, and kings between narratives and stories -- The sources of al-Dahab al-masbuk: between habar and targamah -- The meanings of al-Dahab al-masbuk: between author and ruler -- Production, reproduction, and consumption: al-Dahab al-masbuks life and times (fifteenth - twentieth centuries) -- Producing al-Dahab al-masbuk (821-841/1418-1438) -- Reproducing al-Dahab al-masbuk (sixteenth - twentieth centuries) -- Consuming al-Dahab al-masbuk: from memory to history.

Caught between heredity and merit: the amir Qūṣūn and the legacy of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (d. 1341)

From medieval times until today ideas of heredity through lineage and of merit through slave status have jostled for pre-eminence as explanations for transitions of Mamluk royal authority. This article contributes to this debate through an analysis of events in late 1341 marking the transition from the reign of one of the sultanates most successful rulers, al-Nasir Muhammad b. Qalawun, to that of his sons. This is achieved by focusing on the whereabouts of one of al-Nasir Muhammads most powerful agents, Qusun al-Saqi al-Nasiri, and on how this amir monopolized power in Egypt and Syria in such a way that his accession to the sultanate seemed inevitable. The article then demonstrates how things went wrong for Qusun and how his failed attempt to obtain the sultanate triggered a Qalawunid dynastic succession practice that was to remain dominant for many decades.

From 'Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean' to 'Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean'

The journal Al-Masāq was conceived in 1988 by its founding editor, Dionisius Agius, as a welcome source of inspiration for and response to changing historiographical perceptions and reconstructions of the Mediterranean space in the medieval period. At that time, there was a clear and particular need for a journal with the subtitle “Islam and theMedieval Mediterranean”. In the often unconscious periphery of the Cultural Turn in the social sciences, there was an increasing interest in research organised around transcultural and interdisciplinary medieval Mediterranean questions that explicitly integrated in their scope Islam as a complex and multi-layered socio-cultural phenomenon. After all, conceptualisations of the Mediterranean had long been plagued by binary constructions that tended to ‘other’ its Islamic side, to consider it an intruder, outsider or opponent in Mediterranean places and spaces, conceived as rooted in antiquity and only re-integrated in an emerging Europe from the later Middle Ages onwards. Arguably, this goes back to Henri Pirenne’s development in the 1920s and 1930s of the much debated thesis – famously formulated in his Mahomet et Charlemagne as “sans Mahomet, Charlemagne est inconcevable” – that medieval Europe emerged only when the Arab-Muslim empire conquered the Mediterranean space and disrupted any further continuities between Mediterranean (late) antiquity and the Latin West. On the socio-economic side of things, this particular but influential construction of Mediterranean – and European – history was to a large extent made obsolete by the longue durée structuralism – and its many offshoots – of Fernand Braudel’s La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II. A similar historical consciousness of socio-cultural medieval Mediterranean complexities and of the dynamics of cultural constructions and reproductions (whether of longue or courte durée) of a variety of Mediterranean frontiers – as in the Pirenne-thesis – was slower to catch up. Incorporating Islam into this latter problematisation was therefore an important step forward, and a journal for “Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean” served as a timely vehicle to offer some modest assistance in this respect (and the subsequent