Alexandria in the Ninth/Fifteenth Century: A Mediterranean Port City and a Mamlūk Prison City

Abstract

While modern scholars, medieval European and anachronistic Arab sources paint a portrait of Mamlūk Alexandria as a bustling and thriving international port, contemporary Arabic writings of the second half of the ninth/fifteenth and the first quarter of the tenth/sixteenth centuries present quite a different image. This article analyses Arabic chronicles to demonstrate that, from the Cairene perspective, Alexandria was a frontier city that was utilised as a jail for banished political prisoners. In contrast to other parts of their realm, investment in Alexandria by the Mamlūk regime was largely limited to fortifying it against seaborne threats; the sultans did little to embellish the city for civilian or religious purposes. Thus, the city was marginalised, politically and socially, even while still maintaining its role as a gateway to Egypt.     

Some Reflections on Hagiology with Reference to the Early Mawlawī-Christian Relations in the Light of the Manāqib al-cārifīn

Abstract

Hagiographic sources are of particular value for the study of social life in historical societies. They reflect contemporary social discourses such as how to deal with members of different religious or ethnic groups or social classes. A prime Muslim example of this genre is the Persian Manāqib al-?ārifīn (Feats of the Knowers of God) of the Mawlawī-Dervish A?mad-i Aflākī written in Konya in the eighth/fourteenth century. It is dedicated to the life and deeds of the masters of the emerging brotherhood of the Mawlawiyya. This community was of outstanding importance in urban central and western Asia Minor in the eighth/fourteenth century, both as an institution of the urban middle classes and as an effective missionary, and was thus an important protagonist in the process of Islamisation. After some methodological considerations on the genre of hagiography, the article will address the issue of missionary strategies of the early Mawlawiyya on the basis of the Manāqib al-?ārifīn.     

论马尔库塞的社会批判理论

马尔库塞的社会批判理论充分吸收、解释和补充了海德格尔、马克思、黑格尔和弗洛伊德等哲学家们的存在思想,从人的压抑性心理机制的生成、病态社会的特征及其表现等方面出发。以科学技术对人的全面控制为切入点,全面地揭示了人被异化的种种状况,并主张从总体上进行革命．尤其是进行心理本能的革命。     

Muslim Persecution of Heretics during the Marwānid Period (64–132/684–750)

This article traces the emergence of a systematic approach to combating heresy during the Umayyad period. It argues that the Umayyads sought to silence religious dissent by labelling it as heresy and that the doctrinal boundaries of “orthodoxy” narrowed as the Umayyad period progressed. The article also asserts that Umayyad efforts to impose their vision of orthodoxy were an important precedent for the mi?na under the ?Abbāsids.     

“He Was a Muslim Knight Who Fought for Religion,Not for the World”. War and Religiosity in Islam: A Comparative Study between the Islamic East and West (Twelfth century)

In the second half of the twelfth century, the Maghreb and the Mashriq saw two new political and religious projects taking place, which shared a common reformist spirit. The Almohad movement and the process initiated by Zankī (r. 1127–1146) gave a crucial role to jihād, as well as introducing far-reaching religious reform, doing away with the supposed decadence that had taken hold in the years before. The combination of these two elements gave rise to a greater exchange between religiosity and war. A comparative analysis of Islamic sources from both east and west reveals this increase of religiosity in war in three different fields: the participation of religious elites in the armies; the rise in the use of rituals and religiosity while at war, by means of sermons, speeches and the use of “sacred” objects; and miraculous events related to acts of war.     

Sultans' Paradise: The Royal Necropolis of Shāla,Rabat

The following study concerns Shāla, which was the necropolis of the Marīnid rulers from 683/1284 to 752/1351. The Islamic buildings on the site have rarely received scholarly attention, although these edifices – despite their delapidated condition – are among the most important constructed by the dynasty. One of my main aims is to re-establish the buildings' chronological sequence, using the written and archaeological evidence, including publications about the site written in Arabic, which have hardly been considered so far. I also address the meaning and aims behind structure erected for each founder, which, in my view, have been misinterpreted by previous scholarship. In summary, this article attempts to revise our knowledge about the site.     

The Unratified Treaty between the Mamlūks and the Franks of Acre in 1268

In 1268, after negotiations with Baybars, King Hugh III rejected several of the sultan's terms and did not take the oath to confirm a truce. Baybars' biographer underplayed the refusal, claiming that Hugh's fear of Charles of Anjou prevented him from making a truce. Based on historical and archaeological evidence, this study draws the borders with the Mamlūks and the inner borders between the Frankish regions in 1268, 1272 and 1283, proving that the Frankish areas in 1268 were reduced to almost half of those that obtained in 1272 and 1283. Thus, this study assumes that Hugh could not have take the oath on terms that, inter alia, reduced the Frankish area to an unacceptable size. The Franks seem to have controlled more territory than they were given in the proposed 1268 treaty and it seems that Baybars' lack of interest in an attack on Acre encouraged the king to reject the truce.     

Fāṭimid Alexandria as an Entrepôt in the East–West Exchange of Islamic Scholarship

Abstract

The arrival in Alexandria of al-?ur?ūshī from Spain and al-Silafī from Iran and the settling there of both early in the sixth/twelfth century created a nucleus of Sunni learning that grew into a full-blown renaissance. Many additional scholars participated, either as students and colleagues of these two, or on their own. As one result, the city itself became, over the first half of that century, a noted entrepôt for the east–west exchange of scholarship in the Muslim world, and all this despite the core Shi‘ism of the Fā?imid dynasty that controlled Egypt, including Alexandria. This renaissance in fact continued to flourish until the Fā?imids were finally supplanted in 567/1171 by the Ayyūbids, a full two decades into the second half of the same century, at which time Cairo became once again a major centre of Sunnism.     

Christians and Muslims Faced with the Wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yuḥānisī, a Thirteenth-Century “Friend of God”

This article examines the nature of the wrath of Abū Marwān al-Yu[hdot]ānisī, a thirteenth-century Andalusi saint, and the protagonist of the Tu?fat al-mughtarib of al-Qashtālī. I have divided the study into two main parts. The first sets out and analyses various occasions on which the saint committed violent acts against Christians. Two of them died as a consequence of these aggressions. All the cases in this first part took place in the Muslim East during the saint's stay in this area. The second part examines cases of violence committed against Muslim people from al-Andalus. The victims suffered the consequences of the wrath of the saint, although he was not directly involved in the aggressions themselves. The stories are narrated by al-Yu[hdot]ānisī himself, and we do not know whether they really took place. Regarding these manifestations of violence, the hagiographic sources not only justify all the violent acts committed by the saint, murder included, but they present the saint to society as an “example” to follow, and indeed as a “hero”.     

Waṭan before Waṭaniyya: Loyalty to Land in Ayyūbid and Mamlūk Syria

This article argues that the term wa?an (“homeland”) was used in new ways in Arabic texts describing Syria from the sixth/twelfth and seventh/thirteenth centuries. The authors of these texts understood wa?an in its older sense as an affective attachment to land but assigned it new meaning as a territorial category of political and religious belonging. By analysing first the use of wa?an in Arabic literature from the third/ninth and fourth/tenth centuries and then its use in these later texts, this article proposes a re-evaluation of our assumptions about the role played by territory in defining political and religious allegiances in the pre-modern era and, thus, about the relationship between the pre-modern concept of wa?an and the modern concept of wa?aniyya, or “nationalism”.