The Chronicles and Annalistic Sources of the Early Mamluk Circassian Period


Book Description

The historiography of the Early Mamluk Circassian period is prolific but has not yet received proper scholarly attention. For the first time, this study examines in a comprehensive manner the key sources for the reign of al-Zāhir Barqūq (784-91, 792-801/1382-9, 1390-9) in terms of their originality and importance. By means of a systematic analysis of the annals of three different years, it provides a critical evaluation of published and manuscript primary sources, identifies the nature of the interdependence amongst authors, and sheds new light on the craft of historical writing. This book fills a critical gap in the scholarship on Mamluk historiography. The author not only assesses the production of well-known historians (Ibn Khaldūn, Ibn al-Furāt, al-Maqrīzī, Ibn Taghrībirdī, etc.), but also studies pivotal authors (Ibn Duqmâq, Ibn Hijjī, etc.) whose works has been up until now either ignored or unknown.




A History of Diplomacy, Spatiality, and Islamic Ideals


Book Description

Inspired by the “spatial turn,” this volume links for the first time the study of diplomacy and spatiality in the premodern Islamicate world to understand practices and meanings ascribed to territory and realms. Debates on the nature of the sovereign state as a territorially defined political entity are closely linked to discussions of “modernity” and to the development of the field of international relations. While scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds have long questioned the existence of such a concept as a “territorial state,” rarely have they ventured outside the European context. A closer look at the premodern Islamicate world, however, shows that “space” and “territoriality” highly mattered in the conception of interstate contacts and in the conduct and evolution of diplomacy. This volume addresses these issues over the longue durée (thirteenth to nineteenth centuries) and from various approaches and sources, including letters, chancery manuals, notarial records, travelogues, chronicles, and fatwas. The contributors also explore the various diplomatic practices and understandings of spatiality that were present throughout the Islamicate world, from Al-Andalus to the Ottoman realms. The book will be of interest to students and researchers in a range of disciplines, including international relations, diplomatic history, and Islamic studies.




Union in Separation


Book Description

Union in Separation presents a series of case studies on diasporic groups in the late medieval and early modern Mediterranean and Black Sea regions. It explores how Armenian, Byzantine/Greek, Florentine, Genoese, Hospitaller, Jewish, Mamluk, and Venetian communities characterized by diasporic identities and inserted into local contexts navigated religious and socio-ethnic boundaries as well as other categories of difference. The volume draws on a wide range of historical and social-scientific methods and offers new perspectives on the arbitration of difference in the wider eastern Mediterranean from Tana to Cairo and Marseille to Isfahan prior to the emergence of nation states. It provides not only an analytical toolbox for historical diaspora studies but also reveals how, under the looming threat of crusade and within the daily routines of trade, diasporic groups and their hosts negotiated modes of coexistence that oscillated between cooperation and conflict, integration and rejection, union and separation.




From Genghis Khan to Tamerlane


Book Description

An epic account of how a new world order under Tamerlane was born out of the decline of the Mongol Empire By the mid-fourteenth century, the world empire founded by Genghis Khan was in crisis. The Mongol Ilkhanate had ended in Iran and Iraq, China’s Mongol rulers were threatened by the native Ming, and the Golden Horde and the Central Asian Mongols were prey to internal discord. Into this void moved the warlord Tamerlane, the last major conqueror to emerge from Inner Asia. In this authoritative account, Peter Jackson traces Tamerlane’s rise to power against the backdrop of the decline of Mongol rule. Jackson argues that Tamerlane, a keen exponent of Mongol custom and tradition, operated in Genghis Khan’s shadow and took care to draw parallels between himself and his great precursor. But, as a Muslim, Tamerlane drew on Islamic traditions, and his waging of wars in the name of jihad, whether sincere or not, had a more powerful impact than those of any Muslim Mongol ruler before him.







Christian-Muslim Relations. A Bibliographical History. Volume 5 (1350-1500)


Book Description

Christian-Muslim Relations, a Bibliographical History 5 (CMR 5), covering the period 1350-1500, is a continuing volume in a general history of relations between the two faiths from the seventh century to 1900. It comprises a series of introductory essays and also the main body of detailed entries which treat all the works, surviving or lost, that have been recorded. These entries provide biographical details of the authors, descriptions and assessments of the works themselves, and complete accounts of manuscripts, editions, translations and studies. The result of collaboration between numerous leading scholars, CMR 5, along with the other volumes in this series, is intended as an indispensable tool for research in Christian-Muslim relations.




The Maghrib in the Mashriq


Book Description

This is a pioneering book about the impact that knowledge produced in the Maghrib (Islamic North Africa and al-Andalus = Muslim Iberia) had on the rest of the Islamic world. It presents results achieved in the Research Project "Local contexts and global dynamics: al-Andalus and the Maghrib in the Islamic East (AMOI)", funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (FFI2016-78878-R AEI/FEDER, UE) and directed by Maribel Fierro and Mayte Penelas. The book contains 18 contributions written by senior and junior scholars from different institutions all over the world. It is divided into five sections dealing with how knowledge produced in the Maghrib was integrated in the Mashriq starting with the emergence and construction of the concept 'Maghrib' (sections 1 and 2); how travel allowed the reception in the Maghrib of knowledge produced in the Mashriq but also the transmission of locally produced knowledge outside the Maghrib, and the different ways in which such transmission took place (sections 3 and 4), and how the Maghribis who stayed or settled in the Mashriq manifested their identity (section 5). The book will be of interest not only for those whose research concentrates on the Maghrib but more generally for those who want to understand the complex and shifting dynamics between 'centres' and 'peripheries' as regards intellectual production and circulation.




Studies in Islamic Historiography


Book Description

This book offers students and scholars an introduction to and insight into the wealth of historiographies produced in various Muslim milieus. Four articles deal with the classical period: archaeology and history in early Islamic Amman; an analysis of sources dealing with Muwaḥḥid North Africa; al-Maqrizī’s prosopographical production; the rise of early Ottoman historiography. Three examine sacred history as historiography: in 10th century Fatimid Egypt; in the 16th century Indian Chishtī Sufi milieu; and in the Sino-Muslim Confucian tradition in Qing China. The final two articles provide fresh approaches to historiography by respectively looking into the sijils of Ottoman Cairo as historical sources and by highlighting the regional approach to the writing of the history of the Indian Ocean. Contributors: Frédéric Bauden, Heather J. Empey, Derryl MacLean, Sami G. Massoud, Murat Cem Mengüç, Reem Meshal, Hyondo Park, Patricia Risso, Shafique N. Virani and Michael Wood.




Mamlūk Studies Review


Book Description




Studies on the History and Culture of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517)


Book Description

The general field of study of this volume is the history and culture of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517). It contains the proceedings of the First German-Japanese Workshop held at the Toyo Bunko in Tokyo, Japan. The authors write about a variety of topics from rural irrigation systems to high diplomacy vis à vis the Safavid empire and the Ottoman threat. The volume includes case studies of important personalities and families living in the centres of Mamluk power such as Cairo and Damascus as well as analyses of contemporary writers and their stance toward the ruling military class. Next to innovation in the field, this volume is an agenda of an increasing globalisation of scholarship that is fertilizing future research.