Tales of reverence and powers : Ibn Ḥajar’s narratives of religious charismatic authority

This article examines the ways in which Shihāb al-Dīn Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, the well-known ninth/fifteenth-century muḥaddith and chief Shafiʿi qadi of Cairo, organized the writing of his main historiographical work, the Inbāʾ al-ghumr bi-abnāʾ al-ʿumr, an annalistic chronicle covering a period between the years 773/1372 and 850/1446. It considers the Inbāʾ al-ghumr as a deliberately constructed set of narratives displaying various layers of meaning, going well beyond the mere description and documentation of Ibn Ḥajar’s own times. I will particularly focus here on the crafting of what will be called the religious and charismatic layer of the socio-political order that is presented in the Inbāʾ al-ghumr, anchored in the display of religious charismatic authority and leadership, namely—following Katherine Jansen and Miri Rubin—a layer which demonstrates authority by “preaching, creating and demanding new obligations, while at the same time evoking and associating with the sacred symbols of the shared religious culture.

AMRI Nelly, 2019, Croire au Maghreb médiéval. La sainteté en question (xive-xve siècle)

Dans le prolongement de ses nombreux travaux sur le soufisme et le culte des saints en Islam, Nelly Amri présente ici une réflexion foisonnante sur la sainteté et son dispositif de croyance dans le Maghreb médiéval tardif (viiie-ixe/xive-xve siècle), à partir de l’étude de la figure du « ravi en Dieu » (majdhūb, pl. majādhib). Type spirituel majeur dans l’élaboration doctrinale de la sainteté à l’époque médiévale, le ravi, « désiré par Dieu » (murād), personnage extatique, excentrique et tran..

Fifteenth-century Arabic historiography : introducing a new research agenda for authors, texts and contexts

The Arabo-Islamic world of the later medieval period (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries) witnessed substantial transformations in the writing and reading of Arabic literary texts. For a long time, the study of these texts and of their diversity and changes was determined by the model of a “post-classical” literary field in fossilizing decline. In the twenty-first century, however, new trends in literary and historical scholarship have been disengaging from these old, but still widespread, negative paradigms. They have managed to replace a condescending insistence on what Arabic literary texts no longer represented, or could no longer do, for more critical appreciations of what they really were, did, and meant for contemporaries. This special journal issue brings together five articles that were written in the context of a collaborative research project that aims to remedy this challenging situation in current understandings of late medieval Arabic history writing. This project, funded by the European Research Council and entitled “The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate-II (MMS-II): Historiography, Political Order, and State Formation in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria,” runs for five years (2017–21) at Ghent University (Belgium). MMS-II is aiming to tackle this challenge by arguing with and beyond, instead of against or irrespective of, this historiographical production’s vexed interests and related subjectivities. The MMS-II project studies more specifically how not just fifteenth-century historians’ truth but also the political order of their courtly surroundings were constructed in textual practice. This introduction seeks to explain in more theoretical, programmatic, and empirical detail why and how MMS-II considers this textual relationship between history writing and dynamics of power to be a valid and valuable—yes, even a necessary—research perspective in the study of fifteenth-century Arabic historiography. It furthermore aims to explain how MMS-II research is unfolding in practice, and how this journal issue’s five articles tie in with this approach as well as with their wider context of fifteenth-century history writing. This introduction pursues these goals by first explaining how MMS-II considers the construction of political order, within the wider framework of a revaluation of the concept and reality of state formation in fifteenth-century Syro-Egypt. It then presents the texts of history with which MMS-II engages, focusing especially on sketching the current state of scholarship on these texts. Third, this introduction explains in more detail how MMS-II research takes up a particular position within that scholarship and aims to connect the study of history writing with that of state formation. Finally, the fourth part summarizes not just how the five articles in this issue of MSR fit into this research program, but also what they contribute to it, both individually and collectively

Tales of Reverence and Powers: Ibn Ḥajar’s Narratives of Religious Charismatic Authority

This article examines the ways in which Shihāb al-Dīn Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī, the well-known ninth/fifteenth-century muḥaddith and chief Shafiʿi qadi of Cairo, organized the writing of his main historiographical work, the Inbāʾ al-ghumr bi-abnāʾ al-ʿumr, an annalistic chronicle covering a period between the years 773/1372 and 850/1446. It considers the Inbāʾ al-ghumr as a deliberately constructed set of narratives displaying various layers of meaning, going well beyond the mere description and documentation of Ibn Ḥajar’s own times. I will particularly focus here on the crafting of what will be called the religious and charismatic layer of the socio-political order that is presented in the Inbāʾ al-ghumr, anchored in the display of religious charismatic authority and leadership, namely—following Katherine Jansen and Miri Rubin—a layer which demonstrates authority by “preaching, creating and demanding new obligations, while at the same time evoking and associating with the sacred symbols of the shared religious culture.

Sacred spaces and blessed lineages in the Yimeni Tihàma : society, identities and powers (6th-9th / 12th-15th siecle)

Entre la chute de la dynastie mahdide en 569/1174 et celle de la dynastie tahiride en 923/1517, les espaces sacrés se multiplièrent au Yémen et les pratiques religieuses évoluèrent considérablement, phénomène particulièrement visible dans la région du littoral de la mer Rouge, la Tihama yéménite. À la fin du VIIIe /XIVe siècle, la multiplication des tombes d'hommes bénis et des visites pieuses apparaissent comme une donnée fondamentale de la société tihamie, dans le contexte de l'affaiblissement progressif du sultanat rasulide (626-858/1229-1454), dont l'influence s'étendit du Higaz à Zafar et à la vallée du Hadramawt. Cimetières, mausolées, mosquées, ribat-s, madrasa-s funéraires : une grande partie de ces lieux, porteurs d'un lien fort avec la puissance divine, se constituèrent au cours de cette période et émergèrent graduellement comme des espaces centraux du développement social, politique et culturel de la société tihamie. Cette recherche tente de définir les processus et les étapes de la sacralisation des espaces religieux en Tihama. Elle s'intéresse au rôle social, mémoriel et politique des savants et des lignages bénis, ainsi qu'à leur place dans les rapports d'autorité et de domination, dans le contexte de la multiplication des lieux du sacré et de la fragmentation croissante des identités territoriales. Elle s'appuie sur un corpus de sources narratives en langue arabe d'époque médiévale, et plus particulièrement sur les dictionnaires biographiques et hagiographiques (tabaqat) produits au Yémen au cours du VIe-IXe/ XIIe-XVe siècle.Between the end of the Mahdid dynasty in Yemen in 569/1174 and the fall of the Tahirid dynasty in 923/1517, sacred spaces multiplied and religious practices changed dramatically, especially in the Red Sea coastal plains of Tihama. By the end of the 8th/14th century, shrines of holy men were scattered across the whole region of this territory controlled by the Rasulid sultanate (626-858/1229-1454), whose influence spread from Higaz to Zafar and the valley of Hadramawt. Cemeteries, mausoleums, mosques, ribat-s and funerary madrasa-s: most of these places conveyed a strong bond with the divine and progressively emerged as central locations in the development of new social, political, religious and cultural behaviours. This research attempts to define the steps in the sacralization of religious spaces in Tihama. It stresses the social, memorial and political role of religious scholars and blessed lineages, and their place in regional relationships of authority and dominance, in a context of gradual multiplication of sacred places and increasing fragmentation of territorial identities. It is based on a large body of medieval narrative sources in Arabic and focus more specifically on the biographical and hagiographic works (tabaqat) produced in the Yemeni context during the 6th-9th /12th -15th centuries

The Venture of Islam, M. G. S. Hodgson

Issu des notes laissées par M.G. S. Hodgson[1] à sa mort, en 1968, l’ouvrage posthume The Venture of Islam : Conscience and History in a World Civilization[2] est une somme de près de 1700 pages retraçant la genèse et le développement historique du monde musulman. Il cherche à analyser la place de celui-ci dans l’histoire mondiale. Très marquée par la personnalité de M. G. Hodgson, un des précurseurs de la World History[3] et grand spécialiste de l’histoire de l’islam, cette œuvre constitue u..

The Abyssinian connection?

Under the Rasūlid sultans of Yemen (r. 626-858/1229-1454), Abyssinia was famed for its gold, slaves and eunuchs, with a taste for imported cotton clothes and precious fabrics. It became an important partner of Yemen with the rise of the Wālāsmāʿ Sunni dynasty (r. 684-966/1285-1559) in Ifāt and their control of the port of Zaylaʿ, the main Abyssinian maritime outlet to the Red Sea. But relationships between Abyssinia and Yemen were not only anchored in trade and political considerations: Islamic scholars also interacted together extensively. This article proposes a first assessment and analysis of the scholarly relations between Yemen and Abyssinia in the 7th-9th/13th-15thcenturies. Despite the scarcity of historiographical narrative sources, it illustrates that, on the one hand, Yemeni scholars participated time and again in the spread of Islam in Abyssinia between the 6th/12th and the 9th/15th century. On the other hand, the importance of scholars from Abyssinian origin in Yemen itself seems to have been greatly overlooked, even though many prominent Yemeni ʿulamāʾ and mystical figures of the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries had Abyssinian roots and played a considerable role in shaping the local Yemeni and regional scholarly environment. In this dual process of interactions and migrations emerge a glimpse of the Red Sea scholarly circulations and their dynamism, an Abyssinian connection with distinct channels of knowledge transmission and specific networks maintained between the two shores of the Red Sea

Fifteenth-Century Arabic Historiography: Introducing a New Research Agenda for Authors, Texts and Contexts

The Arabo-Islamic world of the later medieval period (thirteenth–sixteenth centuries) witnessed substantial transformations in the writing and reading of Arabic literary texts. For a long time, the study of these texts and of their diversity and changes was determined by the model of a “post-classical” literary field in fossilizing decline. In the twenty-first century, however, new trends in literary and historical scholarship have been disengaging from these old, but still widespread, negative paradigms. They have managed to replace a condescending insistence on what Arabic literary texts no longer represented, or could no longer do, for more critical appreciations of what they really were, did, and meant for contemporaries. This special journal issue brings together five articles that were written in the context of a collaborative research project that aims to remedy this challenging situation in current understandings of late medieval Arabic history writing. This project, funded by the European Research Council and entitled “The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate-II (MMS-II): Historiography, Political Order, and State Formation in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria,” runs for five years (2017–21) at Ghent University (Belgium). MMS-II is aiming to tackle this challenge by arguing with and beyond, instead of against or irrespective of, this historiographical production’s vexed interests and related subjectivities. The MMS-II project studies more specifically how not just fifteenth-century historians’ truth but also the political order of their courtly surroundings were constructed in textual practice. This introduction seeks to explain in more theoretical, programmatic, and empirical detail why and how MMS-II considers this textual relationship between history writing and dynamics of power to be a valid and valuable—yes, even a necessary—research perspective in the study of fifteenth-century Arabic historiography. It furthermore aims to explain how MMS-II research is unfolding in practice, and how this journal issue’s five articles tie in with this approach as well as with their wider context of fifteenth-century history writing. This introduction pursues these goals by first explaining how MMS-II considers the construction of political order, within the wider framework of a revaluation of the concept and reality of state formation in fifteenth-century Syro-Egypt. It then presents the texts of history with which MMS-II engages, focusing especially on sketching the current state of scholarship on these texts. Third, this introduction explains in more detail how MMS-II research takes up a particular position within that scholarship and aims to connect the study of history writing with that of state formation. Finally, the fourth part summarizes not just how the five articles in this issue of MSR fit into this research program, but also what they contribute to it, both individually and collectively