Notes on the Ahl al-Diwan: The Arab-Egyptian Army of the Seventh through the Ninth Centuries C.E. (original) (raw)
Related papers
Revisiting the history of the Egyptian army
Re-Envisioning Egypt, 1919
This paper will sum up many years of research on political activism in the Egyptian army between 1940 and 1952 and will show how the social composition of the officer corps evolved. Historians have so far not treated these two themes convincingly.
Army, Regime, And Society In Fatimid Egypt, 358487/9681094
International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, 1987
Tensions between the regime and the army are a crucial component for the understanding of Fatimid history and, as will be shown, they had a mostly destabilizing impact on society and the economy. A host of factors shaped the relationship between the regime, the army, and society. Among these factors, the socio-military composition of the army was especially important. The composition of the army was partly an outcome of deliberate policies of the regime, partly a consequence of local conditions, and partly a reflection of wider Islamic practices. In the case of the Fatimids, the local conditions of Ifriqiya (Tunisia) and Egypt and the military traditions of the deposed regimes of the Aghlabids and the Ikhshidids must be taken into consideration. Fatimid reliance on the Berbers of Kutama was not much a matter of a choice; they were the first adherents of the Fatimids and had helped bring them to power in IfrTqiya. However, from the earliest years of Fatimid rule the Aghlabid military traditions and local conditions were reflected in the composition of the Fatimid army and had an influence on Fatimid policies. Conditions in Egypt played a smaller role in shaping the Fatimid army. Certain elements of the defeated Egyptian army (the Ikhshidiyya and the Kafuriyya) were incorporated into the Fatimid army while others were disbanded. The Fatimid drive into Palestine and Syria, whose ultimate goal was Baghdad, confronted the Fatimids with militarily superior armies built on the model of the Buyid-'Abbasid and the Byzantines. As a result, the Fatimid imam al-'Aziz (365-386/975-996) and his vizier, Ya'qib ibn Killis, reformed the Fatimid army. The most important feature of their reform was the inclusion of Turkish military manpower (slaves and freedmen). The Turkish warriors served as cavalry and archers-military specializations not common among the Berbers. Al-'Aziz made use of the system of patronage (istina') as a vehicle for the implementation of his reform. The outcome was the emergence of a multi-ethnic army with a very marked congruence of military specialization and ethnic origin on the one hand, but no overall coherence and identification with the dynasty on the other.' The first section of this article is devoted to a detailed examination of the different socio-military groups which made up the Fatimid army. The information on these groups is of an uneven character. On some groups, such as the Saqaliba, Zuwayla, and Qaysariyya, the information is scarce and frequently
The Journal of the Middle East and Africa, 2017
Non-Muslims were pivotal in the rise and development of the medieval Islamic Empire. Coptic Christians made significant contributions in various arenas. Arab Muslims, who had no understanding of naval warfare, relied heavily on the Egyptian maritime technology and Coptic laborers. Using the rich documentary corpus from early Islamic Egypt, this article examines the untold story of these Coptic skilled craftsmen, namely carpenters, caulkers, navigators, sailors, and oarsmen, who were involved in building the Muslim navy.
Egyptian Soldiers in Ottoman Campaigns from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Centuries
Despite being annexed by the Ottoman Empire in 1517, Egypt's military maintained many Mamluk traditions. These continued, though there were some changes, into the early nineteenth century. This article will examine how the Ottoman authorities dealt with the existing special status and how complementary issues of corruption were handled. How effective was Egypt's contribution to the Ottoman Army? Campaigns from the first half of the eighteenth century provide illustrative examples. Source material for this article comes from the Ottoman Archives and period chronicles.
When we open a book about Ancient Egypt and specifically consult about the two first historical periods from the unification of the two kingdoms (c.3000 BC), we see a number of commemorative palettes a little before the unity, and other ones from that moment onwards, in which the first monarchs from king Narmer, appeared killing the enemy. This is the period known as Early Dynastic, that embraces the two first dynasties of sovereigns (3000-2686 BC) (2), but little or nothing at all is mentioned about war or conflicts with the most important enemies of Egypt: Nubian, Asiatic and Libyan. And still more unlikely is that they spoke about the bellicose conflicts during the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC). When we search for complete books or papers referring to the war in the Old kingdom, we notice that the majority come from the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC) and specially from the New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC)(3). A few mention the bellicose theme during the Early Dynastic and the Old Kingdom, within the military history of Ancient Egypt (4) and finally, extremely rare are the papers that deal specifically with these two first periods(5). Even the authors who talk about war in these periods, generally make negative comments, in the sense that in fact, there was not an important or professional army till the first crisis of the Egyptian State (6) or until the new centralization of the power of the State: the Middle Kingdom (2055-1650 BC). We will now see some of these comments. According to Shaw and Nicholson: "There was no national or permanent army during the Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BC), but it is possible that a relatively small group of guards existed. Groups of young men were clearly recruited for expeditions and specific missions, from commercial campaigns to the quarries or mines, to the specific military enterprises"(7). We will later analyze if it was possible to fulfill all the military needs during about eight hundred years with just a palace guard and some new recruits arrived from the nomes. In another paper, Shaw and Boatright, say that: "In the most ancient periods of the history of Egypt (c.3200-2100 BC) the army included mostly people recruited as a specialized part of a major recruitment by force of men, used for the great buildings. Because of the indeterminate and unstable nature of the Egyptian army of the Old and Middle Kingdom, it is difficult to know its real dimension, its composition and organization in such remote times. The number of soldiers that the Egyptian battle accounts give us-like a "tenth of thousand" are not very certain, (…)"(8). Although it is sometimes very difficult to separate, inside the royal Egyptian administration and especially in these periods, the group of workers from the military units using the terminology, we will notice that they were not using the bellicose iconography that many of these scholars seem not to have seen. In the same way, the commentary about the army in the Middle Kingdom is out of time, because there are many written, iconographic, and archaeological sources that show the opposite (9). Shaw, in another paper, returns to the same concept, but a little more variegated: "From the great primeval conflict of the gods Horus and Seth to the well documented battles of Meggido and Kadesh, war was an essential element of Egyptian culture(10). If the stereotypical version of Egypt talks only about priests, scribes and embalmers, the real image must also include the warriors and the generals that maintained stable conditions under which the Egyptian civilization was capable of flourishing. The basement for the pharaonic State itself emerged from the fight of powers within the local chieftains from the Late Predynastic period (11). The great quantity of sources for the study of Egyptian war is quite incomplete, especially in terms of its historical range. For example, we know little about the organization of the Egyptian army till the beginning of the second millennium BC (…)"(12). Here Shaw recognized that we could not have the beatific image of an Egyptian civilization where the unique problem was to construct the gigantic houses of eternity for the pharaohs or to look at the stars to prevent eclipses, but that there were also dangers that menaced this paradisiacal civilization and these
Review of Lajos Berkes's (ed.) Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt
Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, 2024
Christians and Muslims in Early Islamic Egypt examines political, fiscal, and linguistic changes after the Arab conquests and the ways Christians and Muslims participated in the administrative structures of the new imperial project in Egypt. The articles offer a cross-disciplinary snapshot of current research on Arabic, Greek, and Coptic papyri from the early Islamic period of Egypt, ranging from linguistic to numismatic, to military, to political, and social history approaches. Novices to the field should note that the research questions pursued in the volume reflect a penchant for the intersection of papyrology and Byzantine studies, with only occasional forays into Islamic historiography (mostly in section one). I want to emphasize that despite several reservations I have about this volume, its individual articles greatly enhance our knowledge of early Islamic Egypt and the minute local manifestations of the broader political and social transitions underway.
Military: Militarism In Arab Society: A Historiographical Sourcebook ; John Walter Jandora
Digest of Middle East Studies, 1998
Review by Ali al-Taie, Ph. D. Shaw University ohn Walter Jandora's Militarisin i n Arab Society is a fresh account of, and a useful bibliographical source on, the Arabs' J military culture. I n this brief eight-chapter book, Jandora references and analyzes "warfare in Arab traditions," "military roles in medieval Islam," and "Arab armies in the modern age." His references are organized according to the topics covered in each military period, making this sourcebook easy for the specialized reader to use. Jandora suggests three types of Arab men at arms: Bedouin tribal warriors, militia of sedentary communities, and professional troops in standing units @. xxi). Inspired by the nascent Islam, and operating "within ... [a] relatively short period of time, the Muslim Arabs created the largest empire the world had yet seen ..."(p. 43). However, together with circumstances, the outmoded military strategies of their glorious past, have not produced victories on the modem battlefield. Jandora's sourcebook can be reviewed with reference to the bibliographic sources identified and the summary historiographical analysis it offers. His exclusion of Arabic sources (p. x) detracts from