A Thirteenth-Century Scholar in the Eastern Mediterranean: Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī, Jurist,Logician, Diplomat

This essay examines the career of the Shafi?ī jurist and logician Sirāj al-Dīn Urmavī (1198–1283), who combined his scholarly and judicial activities with ambassadorial appointments to Frederick II, King of Sicily and Holy Roman Emperor, and the Ilkhan Hülegü. Originally from Azerbaijan, Sirāj al-Dīn spent most of his professional life in Ayyūbid Cairo and, from 1257, in Seljuk Konya, where he spent the final decades of his life as chief qadi. Through a contextualised reading of the extant biographical information for Sirāj al-Dīn, the article draws particular attention to two aspects of his physical and professional trajectory. First, the essay situates Sirāj al-Dīn's career in the context of processes of cultural change in thirteenth-century Anatolia. It seeks to demonstrate both the transfer and adaptation to the Anatolian urban milieu of social–cultural patterns attested for the a?yān in neighbouring predominantly Muslim societies, and the shaping of the social and cultural functions of immigrant scholars to Anatolia by local conditions. Second, the article identifies Sirāj al-Dīn as a prominent participant in an intellectual community engaged in inter-cultural exchange across political and confessional boundaries in the thirteenth-century eastern Mediterranean.