'Mamlukisation' between social theory and social practice: an essay on reflexivity, state formation, and the late medieval sultanate of Cairo

This working paper is a reflexive essay that tries to think with and beyond one of the basic assumptions upon which the field of late medieval Syro-Egyptian ‘Mamluk’ studies is built: the idea that all late medieval Syro-Egyptian objects of study are by default first and foremost connected, circumscribed and distinguished by some agency of dominant military slavery, of Mamluk-ness. Acknowledging that there may be different ways to pursue such an epistemological exercise, this essay opts for re-imagining the historical agency of what traditionally tends to be subsumed under the phenomenon of the Mamluk state. It is argued that the notions of state in modern research and of dawla in contemporary texts remain an issue of related analytical confusion. Engaging with this confusion in the generalising fashion of a historical sociology of late medieval Syro-Egyptian political action, this essay proposes an alternative analytical model that is inspired by Michael Chamberlain’s prioritisation of social practices of household reproduction and by Timothy Mitchell’s related understanding of the state as a structural effect of practices of social differentiation. The proposed model sees sultanic political order —the state— as process, in constant flux as the structural effect and structuring embodiment of constantly changing practices of social reproduction, of elite integration and of political distinction, in contexts that range between multipolar and unipolar social organisation at and around Cairo’s court and its military elites. The essay ends with summarily suggesting from this model how the socio-culturally structured and structuring memories of dynastic political order that had remained politically dominant for most of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were all but obliterated in the fifteenth century by a new layer of particularly ‘Mamluk’ socio-political meaning

Qalāwūnid discourse, elite communication and the Mamluk cultural matrix: interpreting a 14th-century panegyric

This article analyses a brief panegyric text from mid-14th-century Egypt, authored by the court scribe Ibrāhīm b. al- Qaysarānī (d. 1352) and dedicated to the Qalāwūnid Mamluk sultan al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl (r. 1342-5). It challenges this panegyric’s standard treatment as a work of history and as a product of court propaganda and connects it to wider issues of Mamluk literary production and social organisation. In doing so, a new understanding of this panegyric emerges within a specific context of Mamluk elite communication and social performance, demonstrating at the same time how such a social semiotic reading of Mamluk cultural expressions generates further insights into the symbiotic interactions between Mamluk culture and society

Een nieuwe geschiedenis van de islamitische wereld : Rijks- en identiteitsvorming in islamitisch West-Azië (7de-18de eeuw)

De wereld die zich uitstrekt tussen de Middellandse Zee en de Centraal-Aziatische steppes, kent van oudsher een rijke en bepalende geschiedenis. Dit was niet anders toen Arabieren in de zevende eeuw, Turken in de elfde eeuw en Mongolen in de dertiende eeuw hier eigen wereld- rijken uitbouwden. Diverse dynamieken van rijks- en identiteitsvorming gingen telkens opnieuw in interactie met de almaar diepere islamitische kleurschakeringen van deze rijke geschiedenis van volkeren en gemeenschappen, en van stedelingen, boeren en nomaden. Een nieuwe geschiedenis van de islamitische wereld beschrijft de twee grote golfbewegingen: de eerste van het zevende-eeuwse Arabië tot het tiende-eeuwse Irak, en de tweede van de elfde-eeuwse steppes in het noordoosten tot de achttiende-eeuwse mediterrane kusten. Telkens wordt er ruim aandacht besteed aan speci eke socio-culturele en politieke verande- ringen, altijd met oog voor historische en globale verbanden en continuïteiten. Op basis van de recentste inzichten in het historisch onderzoek werd zo een geheel nieuwe geschiedenis van deze wereld neergeschreven. Traditionele narratieven die vertellen over uitzonderlijkheid, verstarring en verval, ruimen hier plaats voor meer complexe, omvattende en verbindende contexten. Dit boek is daarom aanbevolen lectuur voor al wie de historische gelaagdheid van de huidige wereld beter - en anders - wenst te begrijpen

Īnāl al-Ajrūd, al-Malik al-Ashraf

Al-Malik al-Ashraf Sayf al-Dīn Abū l-Naṣr Īnāl b. ʿAbdallāh al-ʿAlāʾī al-Ẓāhirī al-Nāṣirī (b. c.784/1382, d. 15 Jumādā I 865/26 February 1461), known as al-Ajrūd (“the beardless”), was sultan of Mamlūk Egypt and Syria (r. 1 Rabīʿ I 857–14 Jumādā I 865/12 March 1453–25 February 1461), following a long career of military slavery and leadership, court service, and family entrepreneurship, in Egypt (Cairo) and in Syria (Gaza, Safed), southeastern Anatolia (Edessa), and the eastern Mediterranean (Cyprus, Rhodes)

From Temür to Selim : trajectories of Turko-Mongol state formation in Islamic West-Asia’s long fifteenth century

This chapter offers an historical contextualization for the volume’s specific case studies in parts two and three. It presents a new introductory interpretation of the entanglement and particularities of the elites, the institutions and practices, and the transformations that, since the days of Temür (r. 1370-1405), left their marks on the rough political landscapes of Muslim West-Asia. Emphasizing the segmented nature of Turko-Mongol politics and socio-economic organization it describes ongoing dynamics of expansion, fragmentation, and circulation and recurrent attempts at Ottoman, ‘Mamluk’, Timurid and Turkmen political stabilization and administrative penetration. It also argues that widely used binaries, such as those of ‘Turks’ and ‘Tadjiks’, ‘elites’ (khāṣṣa) and ‘commoners’ (ʿāmma), or commanders and administrators, pertained to claims and explanations that contributed to the many appearances of social order across West-Asia, amidst those highly complex Ottoman, Timurid, Turkmen and Syro-Egyptian realities of segmentation, fragmentation, and competitive empowerment