Ayyubid history Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

- by Jan Vandeburie
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- Crusades, Ayyubid history, Medieval Warfare

A recording can be found at: https://youtu.be/dWzVyIdBcmg. Presented at the 92nd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America (University of Toronto, 2017).
The sudden construction of larger and stronger fortifications in the Near East from around the start of the thirteenth century has long attracted the interest of scholars. This medieval 'Fortification Revolution' was traditionally thought to be a product of the cross-cultural exchange of information brought about by the crusades, while more recently some have postulated that this shift was caused by the sudden development of much larger varieties of mechanical artillery. Ample consideration is rarely given to the individuals responsible for commissioning these defences and the socio-political, rather than technological, context in which they were built. While the great strongholds constructed by the Crusaders reflect an assortment of tactical and economic considerations that emerged in the wake of Saladin's conquests of 1187-91, the influence of the power struggle that broke out within the Ayyubid family following Saladin's death is readily apparent in the designs of the citadels rebuilt by the principal contenders. Rather than a response to any particular military threat, the ostentatious scale of the defences built by Saladin's brother, al-Adil, and his nephew, Saladin's son, al-Zahir Ghazi, appear to have been inspired in large part by a desire convey a sense of their power and legitimacy as the rightful head of the Ayyubid dynasty. By examining the development of the architectural elements preferred by these men, especially their use of unprecedentedly large towers, and how their fortification designs differed from those of their predecessors, this study will reveal the extent to which both men utilised obviously grand and consistent architectural forms. These were statements of authority at a time when the right to rule Saladin's empire was contested.

- by Michael S Fulton
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- Medieval History, Crusades, Middle Eastern History, Medieval Archaeology

A review of John Man's biography on Saladin.

- by Stephen Donnachie
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- Crusades, Biography, Ayyubid history, History of Crusades

in Egyptian Archaeology Journal n°52, Egypt Exploration Society, London, 2018, pp. 15-19.

- by Stephane Pradines
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- Egyptology, Islamic Archaeology, Medieval History, Mamluk Studies

A History of the Islamic World, 600–1800 supplies a fresh survey of the formation of the Islamic world and the key developments that characterize this broad region’s history from late antiquity up to the beginning of the modern era.
Containing two chronological parts and fourteen chapters, this overview explains how different tides in Islamic history washed ashore diverse sets of leadership groups, multiple practices of power and authority, and dynamic imperial and dynastic discourses in a theocratic age. A text that transcends many of today’s popular stereotypes of the premodern Islamic past, the volume takes a holistically and theoretically informed approach for understanding, interpreting, and teaching premodern history of Islamic West-Asia. A History of the Islamic World identifies the Asian connectedness of the sociocultural landscapes between the Nile in the southwest to the Bosporus in the northwest, and the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Jaxartes (Syr Darya) in the northeast to the Indus in the southeast. This abundantly illustrated book also offers maps and dynastic tables, enabling students to gain an informed understanding of this broad region of the world.

- by Jo Van Steenbergen
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- History, Asian Studies, Ottoman History, Medieval History

September, 1219: as the armies of the fifth crusade besieged the Egyptian city of Damietta, Francis of Assisi and friar Illuminatus crossed over to the Egyptian camp to preach to the Sultan al-Malik al-Kâmil. After a number of days, the two friars returned to the crusader camp, having apparently spoken with the Sultan, though we know very little about what was said. This has not prevented writers from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, unencumbered by mere facts, from portraying Francis alternatively as a new apostle preaching to the infidels, a scholastic theologian proving the truth of Christianity, a champion of the crusading ideal, a naive and quixotic wanderer, a crazed religious fanatic, or a medieval Gandhi preaching peace, love and understanding. As for al-Kâmil, he is variously presented as an enlightened pagan monarch hungry for evangelical teaching, a cruel oriental despot, or a worldly libertine. This study of the varying depictions of this lapidary encounter throws into relief the changing fears and hopes that Muslim-Christian encounters inspire in European artists and writers over eight centuries.

- by John Tolan
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- Medieval Studies, Crusades, History of Missions, Ayyubid history

GİRİŞ Hz. Peygamberin (S.A.V) Mescid-i Nebevî'de başlattığı ve ashabının devam ettirdiği ilim halkaları oluşturma geleneği İslam dünyasında cami, mescid, kütüp-hane, han ve bimaristan gibi eğitimin gerçekleştirildiği yerlere temel teşkil etmek-tedir. (Bozkurt, Küçükaşcı: 2004) Dinî ilimlerin verildiği yerler olan cami ve mes-citlerde öğrencilere başta fıkıh olmak üzere, hadis, kıraat ve tefsirin yanında sarf, nahiv, edebiyat, belagat ve şiir okutulurdu. Müsbet ilimler ise han, bimaristan, kütüphane ve tercüme evlerinde öğretilir ve buralarda ilmin yayılmasına önem verilirdi. İlim meclisleri sadece bir âlimin öğrencilerine ders verdiği yerler olarak görülse de bu meclislere başka âlimler de gelebilmekte ve okutulan derslere dair müzakere ve münazaralar yapılmaktaydı. (Kutluer: 2000, 113) Dini ilimlerin en çok okutulduğu yerlerin mescit ve cami olması dolayısıyla yöneticiler tarafından hâkim oldukları şehirlere meşhur âlimleri cezbedebilmek maksadıyla mescitler yapılmakta ve ders veren âlimlerin isimleri buralara verilmekteydi. İbnü'l-En-bârî, (ö. 938) İbn Ebû Hüreyre, (ö.956) Ebû Ali et-Taberî, (ö.917) İbnü'l-Kattân, (ö.969) İbnü'l-Merzübân, (ö.969) Ebü'l-Kāsım ed-Dârekî, (ö.985) Ebû Hâmid el-İsferâyinî, (ö.1015) Ebû Mansûr el-Bağdâdî, (ö.1037) Ebû't-Tayyib et-Taberî, (ö.1058) Ebû İshak eş-Şîrâzî (ö. 1083) ve İbnü'l-Hal (ö.1157) gibi kendi dönemle-rinde iz bırakan âlim ve edebiyatçılar buna örnek olarak verilebilir. (İbn Hallikan:

- by Mahmut R E C E P KELEŞ
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- Ayyubid history, Islamic Studies, Islamic History, Selçuklular

Medieval Islamic unglazed molded ware is a common but little-studied type with great potential for use as an interpretive tool in Islamic archaeology. This article presents the current state of knowledge about molded ceramics by organizing and synthesizing the evidence from published sites across the Islamic world and, using the information from these sites, generates a new typology with distinct periodization between the 9th to the 13th century. This typology is then compared with stratigraphically excavated finds from a newly-discovered 13th century molded ceramic workshop at the site of medieval Bālis, Syria. Finally, the article argues that, like fine glazed ceramics, molded wares function as carriers of cultural meaning. Because they imitate more expensive luxury items made of metal, molded wares provide tantalizing clues to the taste and consumption patterns of a kind of “middle class” of urban dwellers in medieval Syria.

- by Stephennie Mulder
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- Archaeology, Islamic Archaeology, Medieval History, Pottery (Archaeology)
- by Suat Kaymak
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- Ayyubid history

During the 1982 excavations at Quseir al-Qadim on the Egyptian coast of the Red Sea, a corpus of well-preserved textiles was discovered in an area called “the Sheikh’s House.” The archaeological nature of this corpus presents two assets over
a museum collection: the possibility of close dating and contextual association with other artifacts. This article discusses the collection of textiles in the Sheikh’s House from these perspectives. The archaeological contexts allow an association
with other artifacts within architectural settings. A more important feature of these contexts is the presence of hundreds of fragments of letters written in Arabic on paper; this textual documentation allows a reconstruction of the individuals
who used the textiles and, more broadly, an extremely detailed examination of their trading community. On a larger scale, the archaeological narrative may present this community in relationship to the people of the Cairo Geniza, to the archaeology of Fustat (Cairo), and its mercantile role in the larger picture of Indian Ocean History.

- by Katherine S Burke and +1
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- Islamic Archaeology, Egyptian Archaeology, History of Textiles, Islamic Art
- by Konrad Hirschler
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- Diplomatic History, Medieval History, Middle East History, Medieval Studies
- by Sevtap Gölgesiz Karaca
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- Medieval History, Medieval Studies, Israel/Palestine, Ayyubid history

The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known, our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. The catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold very diverse titles, including Mutazilite theology, Shiite prayers, medical handbooks, manuals for traders, stories from the 1001 Nights, and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how books were thematically and spatially organised on the shelves of such a large medieval library.
Listing over two thousand books the Ashrafiya catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting it into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.

- by Konrad Hirschler
- •
- Ottoman History, Middle East History, Mamluk Studies, Manuscript Studies

The Cairo Geniza preserved thousands of Arabic-script texts, among them documents from the Fatimid and Ayyubid government administration. This essay offers a brief overview of the state document corpus from the Geniza. It also surveys previous scholarship on the documents, attempting to push the material further in two ways: by reading it as evidence of Fatimid and Ayyubid strategies of rule, and by paying attention to its material clues and what they tell us about the production, storage, retrieval, and discard of state documents. The article concludes by suggesting areas for further research and offering an edition and translation of an official memorandum intended for palace officials.

- by Marina Rustow
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- Medieval History, Middle East Studies, Middle East History, Administrative History

This article explores the encounter between Francis of Assisi and the Ayyūbid sultan al-Malik al-Kāmil, an event that many proponents of Muslim-Christian dialogue – including Pope Francis – have invoked as a sign of hope for interreligious relations today. The first section of the article consists of a narrative summary of the encounter between saint and sultan. The second describes the effects of the voyage on Francis, particularly in transforming his understanding of the mission of the friars minor. The third discusses Arabic sources for the encounter and the effects of the event on the Sultan, arguing that the event likely left no mark on his governance, behavior, or piety. The final section explores three lenses with which to view the encounter: dialogue, friendship and kinship. The author notes the limitations of each interpretive lens but favors kinship as the key to understanding this encounter, discussing this in light of the Document on Human Fraternity signed by Pope Francis and Ahmad al-Tayyeb in 2019.

- by Ayyu Paki
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- Ayyubid history
- by Konrad Hirschler
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- Medieval History, Middle East History, Crusades, Medieval Historiography
- by Jason Welle
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- Crusades, Ayyubid history, Franciscan Studies, Sufism

In the twelfth century travelogue of ibn Jubayr, he described how the Kurds 'cut off the paths and seek only corruption in this world - They live in impregnable mountains in the regions we quoted'. In his 'Mu'djam al-Buldan', Yaqut al-Hamawi described the Kurds of the Şarezûr region in a similar way: 'the Kurds remain in the surrounding mountains terrorizing the travellers, stealing, looting, intimidations, attacks and arrests by no means stop them, because it is inherent to the nature of the Kurds. Also in his ‘Shahnameh’, Ferdowsi describes how 'Ardashir led a huge army out from Estakhr, to fight against the Kurds - He sought aid from God in his expedition to spill the blood of these thieves. Ferdowsi based this passage on an older manuscript called ‘Kar namagî Ardashîrî pabagan’, which describes this story of Ardashir in the context of conquest, rather than a anachronistic punitive campaign against merely Kurdish ‘thieves’.

- by Ariyan Newzad
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- Medieval History, Mamluk Studies, Ayyubid history, Buyids (Islamic History)
- by Cyril Yovitchitch
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- Mamluk Studies, Medieval Archaeology, Ayyubid history, Islamic Studies

While scholars may know that the 'sultan of Babylon' sent Frederick II a 'white parrot', few are aware of the existence of four sketches, indicating it was a Sulphur or Yellow-crested Cockatoo. As these were made two and a half centuries before what was thought to be the earliest European image of the Australasian cockatoo - in Andrea Mantegna's 1496 Madonna della Vittoria - the authors consider the events and shared interests that led the sultan to give this bird to Frederick and how it would have arrived on the Apennine Peninsula in the first half of the thirteenth century.
Published with Jukka Salo, Pekka Niemelä and Simo Örmä.

- by Heather Dalton
- •
- Diplomatic History, Medieval History, Indonesian History, Medieval Studies

For about a decade, Amalric, the crusader king of Jerusalem, Nur al-Din, the Turkic ruler of Damascus and Aleppo, and Shawar, the vizier of Fatimid Egypt, would vie for control over one of the wealthiest regions around the Mediterranean. In the end, it was Saladin, the nephew of one of Nur al-Din’s commanders, who would emerge as the last man standing. Contest for Egypt is the first modern study devoted exclusively to this tripartite struggle for influence. Readers are introduced to the background and aftermath, while focus is placed on examining the central actions, motives and ambitions that shaped events between 1164 and 1174.

- by Michael S Fulton
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- Military History, Medieval History, Ayyubid history, Byzantine Studies

Addition number 9 to Qāniṣawh's library: Laleli 1685, another Fürstenspiegel for the sultan. As the first part is an almost verbatim yet unacknowledged reproduction of the waṣīya of the early 13th-century sheikh al-Harawī, it is tempting to accuse the author of Laleli 1685—either mamlūk Tamur or the anonymous author he was copying—of plagiarism. However, truth be told, the dividing line between sariqa and ilmām is a thin one indeed...

- by Kristof D'hulster
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- Mamluk Studies, Ayyubid history, Mamluk History, Islamic Manuscripts

الوثيقة المدروسة في هذا البحث فريدةٌ من نوعها من عدة نواحٍ، أولاً: من ناحية
الموضوع لإنها فتحت لنا نافذةً جديدة على الجانب الاقتصاديّ في دمشق خلال
القرن السابع الهجريّ/ الثالث عشر الميالديّ، وصوَّرت لنا مجريات الحياة العمليّة
اليوميَّة داخل إحدى الأسواق الدمشقيَّة، إضافةً إلى إبرازها شطراً من لغة التجَّار، كما
أنها أول وثيقة تُنشر من هذا النّوع قبل الحقبة العثمانيّة، ثانياً: من ناحية الممارسات
الإرشيفية والكتابية، فقد منحتنا هذه الوثيقة فرصة استثنائيّة في التعرف على كيفيّة
إنتاج الأعمال الورقيّة ودورة حياتها، والتفكير في الممارسات الكتابيّة والإرشيفيّة في
سياقات غير إداريّة وغير رسميّة، ثالثاً: من ناحية المصدر لإنها وثيقة من قبة الخزنة
في الجامع الأمويّ بدمشق.

- by Konrad Hirschler
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- Economic History, Mamluk Studies, Manuscript Studies, Medieval Islam

After the conquest of Islam, scholars argue for a ‘crisis of the Coptic identity’. With a major focus on the Mamluks’ period, they propagate that the Mamluks imposed strict restrictions upon Copts which turned them into a marginalized minority. The historical sources of that period are loaded with intercommunal tensions among the ‘ordinary people’ which increases suspicion and tension between both communities in our modern times.
In order to get a deeper insight into the reasons behind the turbulent intercommunal relations, and highlight the social change in medieval Egyptian society, I will analyze the religious speech of both Muslim and Christian communities, using Bourdieu’s habitus theory.
This study argues that the fading boundaries, resulting from the period of the Shi‘i Fatimids’ rule, led to a struggle of religious identities among both the Sunni Muslims and the Christians. Upon the succession of the Sunnis to power, Sunnis emphasized their religious identity, in relation to the other, based on what is not, rather than what it is. A strategy which was followed by the Christians as well. This led to reciprocal hatred and interreligious violence which brought the Coptic Christians to a low point in their history under the rule of the Mamluks. Consequently, a ‘Coptic’ Christian identity emerged in order to face the developing Sunni Muslim identity.

- by Sally Adel
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- Ayyubid history, Pierre Bourdieu, Mamluk History, Muslim-Christian Relation

The city of Belinas (Bānyās), located at the foot of Mount Hermon, was one of the three walled inland urban sites of the Frankish Kingdom of Jerusalem. Its position, on the frontier between the Muslim principality of Damascus and the Latin kingdom, conferred a strategic importance to the site, as it controlled the main road from Damascus to Palestine. Both Arabic and Latin documents relay the site’s reputed strength and give detailed descriptions of the struggle for control of the town. No less than twelve sieges are recorded in the chronicles between 1129, when it was acquired by the Franks, and 1260, when Mamluk hegemony extended to Bānyās.
This paper proposes to establish a chronology of building activities in the town through a close examination of the siege accounts and of the rich epigraphic material discovered at the site. Attention will be paid to patrons and to the political significance of the works in their regional context. A detailed analysis of the settings of the sieges will also be
provided, allowing for considerations regarding the way in which the topography of the site influenced construction choices and the methods used to besiege the city.

- by Simon DORSO
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- Mamluk Studies, Ayyubid history, Crusader Archaeology, History of Crusades

The architectural and archaeological survey of the Qubahan School near Amêdi enabled a detailed reconstruction of the building development beginning with the foundation of the complex in the 12th century AD. The monument is a rather rare... more

Late medieval Arabic societies were highly literate. The central significance of the written word entailed a rich production of narrative and normative texts in which medieval authors made sense of past and present. Such texts, especially chronicles and biographical dictionaries, have come down to us in large numbers and they have held a central position in the writing of medieval Middle Eastern history. 1 The sheer mass of these texts has given the field outstandingly rich quantitative and qualitative data, which are now increasingly exploited by digital text-mining. 2 On account of their central position, these texts have themselves become the subject of historiographical inquiries and there is a sophisticated debate on their meanings, either focusing on individual authors 3 or through consideration of a larger number of texts as a historiographical field. 4 For most of the last century, the study of medieval Middle Eastern history has primarily relied on such narrative and normative sources as the sheer mass of chronicles, treatises, biographical dictionaries and similar texts almost inevitably foregrounded them. By contrast, documentary material such as contracts, petitions, edicts and deeds—the products of pragmatic litera-cy—have played a relatively minor role in the historical practice of scholars of the medieval Middle East compared with fields such as Ottoman history or medieval Latin European history. 5 Within this non-documentary research paradigm, historians formed a rather pessimistic outlook of what was actually researchable; Roy Mottahedeh 6 famously claimed that 'ulamology', the

- by Konrad Hirschler
- •
- History, Islamic Law, Archival Studies, Medieval History

This article proposes a new approach to the question why so few Arabic documents have survived in their original archival context. Taking the Mamluk period as a case study it argues that the category ‘archive’ itself needs to be reconfigured away from the idea of fixed archival spaces, or even a Mamluk State Archive, towards archival practices. These archival practices were spread across the Mamluk realms and involved numerous actors including the central bureaucracy in Cairo, individual secretaries and most importantly the small-scale administrations of officers. These archival practices emerge not from the normative and narrative texts, but primarily from a consideration of archival traces on surviving documents.

- by Konrad Hirschler
- •
- History, Archival Studies, Medieval History, Middle East History

This study publishes a newly identified letter to Moses Maimonides reconstructed from three Geniza fragments. The letter describes an inheritance dispute over real estate in the Egyptian delta town of al-Mahalla. Having a letter written by a litigant provides information on what took place outside of court, information that is often missing from legal records. This allows us to explore the dynamics of a dispute in which one side makes a legal move, and the other counters with a move outside of court, and vice versa. These manoeuvrings included action in Jewish and Muslim courts, appeal to a jurisconsult, social pressure and performative disregard to the boundaries of the religious communities. As a result, we can conceive of the legal arena not only as encompassing different legal institutions but also as a social space constituted by the ways litigants experienced and interacted with legal institutions.

- by Oded Zinger
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- Law and Society, Jewish History, Religious Conversion, Ayyubid history

Le franchissement de la frontière entre la principauté ayyoubide de Damas et le royaume latin de Jérusalem, au côté d’Ibn Ǧubayr, est l’occasion de s’interroger sur la conception des limites spatiales et territoriales dans cette région du Proche-Orient des croisades. Plusieurs échelles sont considérées. Tout d’abord celle de la frontière extérieure, marge d’une certaine épaisseur, espace du conflit mais aussi de compromis, caractérisé par des limites ambigües, une résistance à la fortification et une temporalité propre. Dans un second temps, on évoquera la fabrique des territoires et les mécanismes à l’œuvre lors de l’établissement d’un royaume féodal en Palestine, mécanismes qui tiennent compte à la fois d’enjeux très concrets, qu’il s’agisse de la répartition de la terre ou de la redéfinition des limites diocésaines, et de la force des représentations alors que le couronnement d’un roi à Jérusalem convoque l’avènement de la Terre Promise. Enfin, on s’intéressera aux modes de démarcations des terres villageoises, tels qu’ils apparaissent dans les documents latins et arabes ou grâce aux bornes découvertes en prospection.

- by Simon DORSO
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- Palestine, Ayyubid history, Frontier Studies, Crusades and the Latin East

The article offers an overview of the reception of Neo-Ashʿarism, above all the works of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1210), among Christian authors during the Copto-Arabic and the Syriac Renaissances. See also my "The 13th Century Copto-Arabic Reception of Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī: Al-Rashīd Abū l-Khayr Ibn al-Ṭayyib’s Risālat al-Bayān al-aẓhar fī ’l-radd ʿalā man yaqūlu bi-’l-qaḍāʾ wa-’l-qadar" in Intellectual History of the Islamicate World 2 (2014).

- by Harun Yılmaz
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- Ayyubid history, Islamic Historiography, Madrasa, Zengids