Book Description

"The Mamluk Sultanate that dominated Egypt and Syria over slightly more than two centuries and a half (647-922/1250-1517), witnessed the development of a prodigious historiographical production. While the historiography of the Turkish Mamluk period (647-792/1250-1382) has been the object of thorough analyses to determine the patterns of interrelations amongst its authors and the respective value of its most important sources, that of the Early Circassian Mamluk period (roughly, the last quarter of the fourteenth/eighth and the first years of the fifteenth/ninth centuries) has not as of yet received proper attention. In this dissertation, this historiographical production has been surveyed and subjected to an analysis, the methodology of which was pioneered by Donald P. Little, one that consists of close word-by-word comparison of individual accounts in the works of Syrian and Egyptian authors who wrote about this period. The focus here was on specifically non-biographical historical material contained in mostly annalistic works. Amongst the results obtained during this research was the ultimate reliance, at different degrees and depths, of all historians on the works of five authors, namely Ibn Duqmaq (d. 809/1407), Ibn al-Furat (d. 807/1405), Ibn Hijji (d. 816/1413), al-Maqrizi (d. 845/1441) and al-'Ayni (d. 855/1451), but especially the first three." --