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This book has interpreted the history of late Mamluk Egypt and Syria “from below,” taking into account the historical experiences of the common people, especially the urban non-elites, in elucidating both the social history and political history of the time. It has identified the range of factors that combined to make Mamluk power more diffused in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. It has described the broad transformations that affected the economic structure of the Mamluk sultanate, the Mamluk culture and society, and the relations between rulers and ruled. This chapter offers general conclusions on the transformations that occurred in Egypt and Syria during the fifteenth century and emphasizes the importance of studying urban protest in the premodern period. It shows that protest is very much alive on the streets of various Arab cities, including those of Egypt and Syria.

The first Sufis in Upper Egypt appear in the historical record at the end of the Fatimid period.1 By the early Mamluk era the region’s towns and villages boasted some of the most famous and enduring personalities of medieval Egyptian Sufism. But despite their prominence in medieval Arabic sources, these Sufis have received almost no attention in studies of Sufism or in Mamluk studies more broadly. There is no monograph in a European language on Upper-Egyptian Sufism. Apart from a few studies in Arabic there are only a handful of articles on the subject.2 This state of affairs is regrettable, although perhaps not surprising given that these Sufis left very little in the way of literature or enduring social formations. The most important source for Sufism in Upper Egypt during this period is Ibn Nūª al-Qū‚ī’s (d.708/1308) al-Waªīd fī sulūk ahl al-tawªīd (‘The Unique Guide Concerning the Comportment of the People of Unity’). This text is a large compendium of diverse biographical and doctrinal material, the publication of which is a major desideratum for the study of medieval Sufism.3 And as far as I know the existence of Sufi-related manuscripts at the shrines and mosques of Upper Egypt has not been explored. Thus, other than Denis Gril’s preliminary studies, without which my work here would have been impossible, the subject of Upper-Egyptian Sufism is mostly terra incognita.

The United Arab Emirates, the focus of the fourth chapter, provides an important contrast and counterpoint to the other examples. Established in 1971, the federation of seven emirates needed to create its national identity through a different set of paradigms than those at hand for their older neighbors. In the early years of the UAE’s existence, British and Egyptian firms played an important role in setting up institutions and government bureaucracies. The Egyptian connection also provided an intellectual armature through its deep history of Arab Islamic monarchial rule, from the Fatimids to the Mamluks. The first monumental national mosque was the Jumeirah Mosque in Dubai, built by a Cairene firm and completed in 1998. Almost a decade later, the majestic Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque was completed in the capital, Abu Dhabi. Both mosques also serve as cultural centers aimed at non-Muslim expatriates and tourists. Like the other powerful nations studied in this book, the UAE aims to increase its influence abroad through the sponsorship of ideologically powerful projects, such as the Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan Mosque in Jerusalem.

The diplomatic edition of the catalogue’s unique manuscript aims at representing to some extent its organisation and the edition thus includes information such as line breaks and the various rubrics that the scribe used. For the sake of legibility, the orthography has been standardised to bring it into a form familiar to modern readers. The text is thus reproduced with full diacritical marks, although they are rather rarely used in the manuscript. The organisation of the catalogue according to alphabet, size and themes is indicated by the catalogue’s writer in display script and indicated in the edition by setting these structural terms in bold.

This chapter provides background information on the Mamluk sultanate and its legal system. It presents Cairo and its adjacent older city of Fustat, the two cities that form the sites of the events discussed in chapters 3-9, and provides maps. It overviews the kinds of people who inhabited the cities, including the Mamluk ruling elite and their soldiers, the merchants, the jurists and learned scholars more generally, and the remaining large category of the common people. The chapter then describes the sultanate’s agricultural economy. Then, turning to the topic of Islamic legal history, it introduces the concept of Islamic law and describes its development, including the penalties and punishments, and then discusses the two types of authority, the doctrinal, fiqh-based authority of the jurists and the policy, siyasa-based authority of the sultan. Finally, it presents the institutions through which the jurists and the sultan expressed their authority, including the courts and the sultan’s forum of wrongs.

This book examines the economic, social, and political transformations that confronted the Mamluk sultanate over the fifteenth century, along with their impact on the Egyptian and Syrian societies. It argues that the multiple crises were simultaneously the outward manifestations of deeper changes and shows how they presented opportunities for various political and social groups. It also considers how the crises and political transformations led to changes and were themselves the outcome of changes in all of the domestic, regional, and international balances of power. Rather than narrate the history of this tumultuous fifteenth century solely from the point of view of the ruling dynasties, the book takes into account the perspectives of the common people, especially the urban non-elites. It considers how the transformations that rocked the Mamluk dynasty affected issues such as social mobility and concludes by discussing the development of the bourgeois trend as well as the various instances and reports of popular protest during the period.

This chapter examines the transformations in the state structure and organization of power that occurred in Egypt and Syria in the late Mamluk period. It considers the various economic and political challenges that the Mamluk sultanate faced and the ways that the rulers dealt with them, including the recurrent waves of plague, gold shortage, and currency devaluation. It shows that the responses of the Mamluk sultans to these economic crises and challenges resulted in long-term transformations that changed the nature of the state and of the Mamluk institutions. Many of these responses have been viewed as deviations from the proper norm of rule and governance, as signs of the corruption and greed of the amirs and administrators, and as causes for the “decline” of the Mamluk state. In particular, the chapter looks at the policies adopted by Mamluk sultans and the Mamluk administration to address the economic challenges, such as trade monopolies and additional taxation.

This chapter examines the social transformations that arose in the Mamluk sultanate during the fifteenth century that allowed room for social mobility. It begins with a discussion of population and demographic changes across the landscape of Egypt in particular, and to some extent Syria. It then considers the rise of the Bedouins and Bedouinization during the Mamluk period, with particular emphasis on the Bedouin tribes' increasing authority in many areas of the countryside and their impact on both peasant communities and urban life. It also explores the move of different racial groups from the peripheries of society closer to the core, including the habashis. Finally, it explores other social changes during the period, such as the emergence of a new landowning class and a new type of social integration, the spread of Islam, and an increase in social mobility. The chapter shows that all of these changes caused social anxiety and tension throughout the Mamluk sultanate, acutely reflected in frequent protests, especially on the streets of important cities.

The last patriarch of the period, John XIII, was repeatedly pressed for funds in order to finance the wars of Sultan Qaitbay and his successors against the Ottomans (from 1484) and the Portuguese. Those wars would be in vain. The patriarch's humility is a recurring theme: not humility wrapped in signs and wonders but humility of a tough, practical sort well suited to the times. Christians were not specially singled out by Mamluk revenue collectors, any more than they were singled out by the effects of insufficient Nile flooding and famine or outbreaks of plague. The constant pressure on the Coptic elite meant ongoing conversions to Islam and, for the Coptic community as a whole, the loss of prominent members and their wealth.

Personal knowledge of three archaeological sites in different contexts in Jerusalem offered a rare opportunity for an overview of life in the city during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. This has permitted a study of intra-site variation, hinting at different communities and their lifestyles. In particular, aspects of craft and trading activities illustrate the economy of the city. The importation of luxury ceramics from Italy and from Syria, and a suggestion of a role in the important silk trade between East and West, illustrate part of a trading network in which pilgrimage to Jerusalem played a significant role. Local commodities, health and the processing and consumption of food also illustrate living standards in a city where there was considerable poverty.

Chapter 5 provides an annotated translation of each entry in the catalogue identifying the titles. Each translated entry provides brief information on the author (who is sometimes named in the catalogue), the modern edition (if existing), the book’s thematic field as well as further information that is occasionally provided (e.g. number of quires and name of copyist).

This chapter introduces the waqf system and its relation to maintenance and repair activities from a historical perspective, using specific examples from the Mamluk period (1250–1517). It alludes briefly to the conflict between the Ministry of Endowments and the Supreme Council of Antiquities with regard to waqf properties, especially those buildings that are registered as historic monuments. It emphasizes the benefits to be gained by scholars and restoration-conservation specialists from the study of waqf documents and guiding principles. More specifically, it highlights the beneficial and valuable ideas that inhere in the traditional system and which can be useful for the protection of the built heritage. It also attempts to demonstrate that the fundamental principles of the waqf system with regard to maintenance and protection of property are in line with many of the current conservation protection laws of the built heritage.

The citadel of Cairo is a monument that has been studied extensively by many scholars, especially for the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. In 569/1174 Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, founder of the Ayyubid dynasty, ordered one of his ablest amirs, Qaraqush, to start building the citadel between the two cities of al-Qahira and Misr al-Fustat. The citadel of Cairo is divided into two sections: a northern and a southern one. The towers of Salah al-Din were semicircular towers with a rectangular rear wall projection. The radical change in military architecture in the late twelfth-thirteenth centuries has been recorded by several authors. Taking the citadel of Cairo as a prototype for investigating the reasons behind the shift of Islamic military architecture in the thirteenth century allows us to propose an alternative hypothesis of what may have initiated that shift.

Tracing the role of the Egyptians in the study of Egyptology requires an insight into the political and social forces that forged modern Egypt. Like Alexander the Great, who presented himself as Egypt's liberator from Persian rule, Napoleon Bonaparte, is said to have unchained the opening to Egypt's past. French rule is considered to be one of the most significant contributions of France to Egypt's development. Unfortunately, the period of French rule ended early thanks to the British fleet under Lord Nelson which arrived off the Egyptian coast in 1801 and sank the French fleet at anchor in Abukir Bay. In spite of their short rule, French influence had a lasting effect on Egypt and its development of national identity. Furthermore, Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman officer, set out to modernize the country by introducing European technology and he crushed rival Ottoman and Mamluk commanders.