In the 'encyclopaedic' fourteenth century, Arabic chronicles produced in Mamluk cities bore textual witness to both recent and bygone history, including that of the Fatimids (969–1171CE). For in two centuries of rule over Egypt and North Africa, the Isma'ili Fatimids had left few self-generated historiographical records. Instead, it fell to Ayyubid and Mamluk historians to represent the dynasty to posterity. This monograph sets out to explain how later historians preserved, interpreted and re-organised earlier textual sources.
Mamluk historians engaged in a sophisticated archival practice within historiography, rather than uncritically reproducing earlier reports. In a new diplomatic edition, translation and analysis of Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat's account of late Fatimid rule in The History of Dynasties and Kings, a widely known but barely copied universal chronicle of Islamic history, Fozia Bora traces the survival of historiographical narratives from Fatimid Egypt. Through Ibn al-Furat's text, Bora demonstrates archivality as the heuristic key to Mamluk historical writing.
This book is essential for all scholars working on the written culture and history of the medieval Islamic world, and paves the way for a more nuanced reading of pre-modern Arabic chronicles and of the epistemic environment in which they were produced.
Author(s): Fozia Bora
Series: The Early and Medieval Islamic World
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Year: 2019
Language: English
Pages: xviii+250
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of Illustrations
Figures
Table
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Note on Terminology,Transliteration and Dates
Notes
Introduction
Ibn al-Furāt: A hidden figure of Mamluk historiography
Inscribing with a date: Historiography as documentation
Reading Mamluk historians as archivists
Mamluk chronicles as documentary narratives
An archival turn in Mamluk letters
Capturing epistemic moments in Islamic history
New light on archival practices in the Mamluk chronicle
Epistemology or confession: The priorities of the Mamluk historian
The chapters and appendices of this book
Notes
Chapter 1: The Archival Function of Historiography
Fatimid history refracted through a Mamluk lens
Documenting the past as archival exigency
Knowing through archives
Reversing traditional ways
Document–narrative bifurcations and symbiosis
The ‘authenticity’ debate in Arabic historiography
The archival ethos in an encyclopaedic age
Notes
Chapter 2: An Exemplary Chronicle as Archive: Ibn al-Furāt’s Ta’rīkh al-duwal wa ’l-mulūk
The material archive: Inside a fourteenth-century chronicle
Tracing the life of Ibn al-Furāt
Clean copy or draft: Ontology of the chronicle as archive
Reflections on the spatial textual archive
Ibn al-Furāt’s contributions to later historiography
The afterlives of Ibn al-Furāt’s textual archivalia
Archival casualties: Texts chosen and not chosen in Ibn al-Furāt’s compilation
Notes
Chapter 3: Fatimid Archivalia: Narratives and Documents in Late Fatimid Egypt
Dynastic, regional, confessional or social history: Framing the Fatimid past
The percolation of Fatimid-era chronicles into post-Fatimid accounts
A map of the scope and survival of late Fatimid historiography
The life cycles of Fatimid documents
The imam and his historians: Relations and tensions
Archival origins: Records from the court
Notes
Chapter 4: Mamluk Archivalities: Late Fatimid History in Ibn al-Furāt’s Chronicle
Ibn al-Furāt’s archivalia: Sources from the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk eras
Illuminating archival choices: The sources adduced for comparison
Egyptian and Syrian traditions in a trans-metropolitan archival outlook
Modes of attribution in the chronicle: Archivality as conservation
Ibn al-Furāt’s archival strategies
Notes
Chapter 5: A Micro-Historical Analysis of Ibn al-Furāt’s Archive (Part 1): Two Fatimid Vizierates
The vizierate of al-AfḊal
The vizierate of al-Ma’mūn al-Baṭā’iḥī
Notes
Chapter 6: A Micro-Historical Analysis of Ibn al-Furāt’s Archive (Part 2): Fatimid Caliphs and Viziers to the Rise of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn
The caliphate of al-Āmir and the succession crisis after his death
The caliphate of al-Ḥāfiẓ and the vizierates of Kutayfāt, Hazārmard, Yānis, Ḥasan b. al-Ḥāfiẓ, Bahrām and RiḊwān
The caliphate of al-Ẓāfir and the vizierates of Ibn Maṣāl, Ibn al-Sālār and ‘Abbās al-Ṣanhājī. Usāma b. Munqidh’s sojourn in Egypt
The caliphate of al-Fā’iz and the vizierates of Ṭalā’i‘ b. Ruzzīk and al-‘Ādil Ruzzīk. The rise of the vizier Shāwar
The vizierates of Shāwar and Ḍirghām. The arrival of Shīrkūh and the Syrian army in Egypt. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s acquisition of Bilbays and the siege of Alexandria
Notes
Chapter 7: Concluding Remarks: The Value of Chronicles as Archives
Notes
Appendix A: Ibn al-Furāt’s Use of Reports for Late Fatimid Egypt (1094–1166)
Appendix B: Diplomatic Edition of Selected Extracts from Ibn al-Furāt’s Ta’rīkh al-duwal: Arabic Text
Methodology of text edition and translation
Appendix C: English Translation of Selected Extracts from Ta’rīkh al-duwal
[Vol. I: 165b, l.12] sub anno 515/1121
[Vol. II: 17b, l.2] sub anno 524/1129
[Vol. III: 21a, l.5] sub anno 544/1149
Notes
Bibliography
Primary sources
Secondary sources
Index
