FOUR
Egypt and Syria
254–92/868–905
Egypt and Syria
⊘ 254/868 |
Aḥmad b. Tūlūn |
⊘ 270/884 |
Khumārawayh b. Ahmad, Abu ’1-Jaysh |
⊘ 282/896 |
Jaysh b. Khumārawayh, Abu ’l-‘Asākir |
⊘ 283/896 |
Hārūn b. Khumārawayh, Abū Mūsā |
292/904 |
Shaybān b. Aḥmad, Abu ’l-Manāqib |
292/905 |
Conquest by the ‘Abbāsid general Muḥammad b. Sulaymān |
The Ṭūlūnids represent the first local dynasty of Egypt and Syria to secure some degree of autonomy from the caliphate in Baghdad. Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn (Ṭūlūn < Turkish dolun ‘full [moon]’, the equivalent of Ar. badr) was a Turkish soldier whose father had been sent in the tribute from Bukhara in the early ninth century. Aḥmad first came to Egypt as deputy of the ‘Abbāsid governor there, but then acquired the governorship himself, extending his power into Palestine and Syria also. His ambitions were facilitated by the preoccupation of al-Muwaffaq, – brother of the caliph al-Mu‘tamid (see above, no. 3, 1) and virtual ruler – with the Zanj rebels in Lower Iraq, which meant that Aḥmad could not be dislodged militarily from the west. Under Aḥmad’s son Khumārawayh, the Tūlūnids’ fortunes continued to be high. The new caliph al-Mu‘tadid (see above, no. 3, 1) had on his accession in 279/892 to grant to Khumārawayh and his heirs for thirty years Egypt, Syria up to the Taurus Mountains and Jazīra (northern Mesopotamia) with the exception of Mosul (Mawsil), in return for an annual tribute of 300,000 dinars. The treaty was later revised in a form less favourable to the Ṭūlūnids, but it was not until Khumārawayh’s death in 282/896 that the fabric of the Ṭūlūnid empire, weakened by Khumārawayh’s luxurious living and extravagance – he left behind an empty treasury – began to crack. The inability of the last Ṭūlūnids to keep the Carmathian radical religious sectaries of the Syrian desert in check led the caliph to despatch an army which conquered Syria and then seized the Ṭūlūnid capital of Fustāt or Old Cairo, carrying off the remaining members of the family to Baghdad and imposing a direct ‘Abbāsid rule over Egypt which was to last for thirty years.
For the mediaeval Egyptian historians, the age of the Ṭūlūnids was a golden one. Ahmad held power by means of a large multi-ethnic army, which included Bedouins, Greeks and black Nubians, but the resultant financial burden was alleviated for the people of Egypt by the ending of governmental malpractices, only under Khumārawayh did administrative chaos and insubordination in the army appear. Since Syria can best be held from Egypt by sea, Aḥmad also built a strong fleet. He was a great builder in his capital Fusṭāṭ, laying out there the military quarter of al-Qata’i‘ and constructing his famous mosque in order to accommodate all those troops who could not find room in the mosque of the conqueror of Egypt ‘Amr b. al-‘Āṣ.
Lane-Poole, 68; Zambaur, 93; Album, 20.
EI1 ‘Ṭūlūnids’ (H. A. R. Gibb)
Z. M. Hassan, Les Tulunides; étude de l’Egypte musulmane à la fin du IXe siècle, Paris 1933.
O. Grabar, The Coinage of the Ṭūlūnids, ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 139, New York 1957.
323–58/935–69
Egypt and southern Syria
⊘ 323/935 |
Muḥammad b. Ṭughj, Abū Bakr al-Ikhshīd |
⊘ 334/946 |
Ūnūjūr (? On Uyghur) b. Muḥammad, Abu ’1-Qāsim |
⊘ 349/961 |
‘Alī b. Muḥammad, Abu ’l-Hasan |
⊘ 355/966 |
Kāfūr al-Lābī, Abu ’l-Misk, originally regent for ‘Alī, then sole ruler until his death in 357/968 |
⊘ 357/968 |
Aḥmad b. ‘Alī, Abu ’l-Fawaris, d. 371/981 |
358/969 |
Conquest of Egypt by the Fāṭimid general fawhar |
Muḥammad b. Ṭughj came of a Turkish military family which had already been in the service of the ‘Abbāsids for two generations. He was appointed governor of Egypt in 323/935 and remained a faithful vassal of the caliphs. He also secured from al-Rādī (see above, no. 3, 1) the title of al-Ikhshīd. The Arabic sources are unclear about the meaning of this title, but it is obvious that Muḥammad b. Ṭughj knew that it was a title of honour in the Central Asian homeland of his forefathers (it is in fact an Iranian title meaning ‘prince, ruler’, and had been borne by the local Iranian rulers of Soghdia and Farghāna). Muḥammad b. Ṭughj defended himself against the caliph’s Amīr al-Umarā’ or Commander-in-Chief, Muḥammad b. Rā’iq, and against the Hamdānids in Syria (see below, no. 35, 2), holding on to Damascus. The two sons who succeeded him were, however, mere puppets, and real power in the state passed to Muhammad b. Tughj’s Nubian slave Kāfūr [kāfūr= ‘camphor’, a reference by antiphrasis to his black colour), whom he appointed regent for his sons just before he died.
On ‘Alī’s death in 355/956, Kāfūr became unrestricted ruler. To him belongs the credit for holding up the threatened Fāṭimid advance along the North African coast (see below, no. 27) and for containing the Hamdānids in northern Syria. It was only after his death that a weak and ephemeral grandson of Muhammad b. Ṭughj was installed in Fustāt, to go down almost immediately before the Fātimid invasion, this time successful. Kāfūr was famed as a liberal patron of literature and the arts, and it was at his court that the poet al-Mutanabbī spent some time.
Lane-Poole, 69; Zambaur, 93; Album, 20.
EI1 ‘lkhshīdids’ (C. H. Becker); EI2 ‘Kāfūr1 (A. S. Ehrenkreutz), ‘Muhammad b. Ṭughdi’ (J. L. Bacharach).
P. Balog, ‘Tables de reference des monnaies ikhchidites’, Revue Beige de Numismatique, 103 (1957), 107–34.
J. L. Bacharach, ‘The career of Muhammad b. Ṭughj al-Ikhshīd, a tenth-century governor of Egypt’, Speculum, 50 (1975), 586–612.
297–567/909–1171
North Africa, then Egypt and southern Syria
Thedā‘ī or propagandist Abū ‘Abdallāh al-Shī‘ī, active in North Africa preparing the way for:
⊘ 297/909 |
‘Abdallāh (or ‘Ubaydallāh) b. Husayn, Abū Muhammad al-Mahdī |
⊘ 322/934 |
Muḥammad b. (?) al-Mahdī, Abu ’l-Qāsim al-Qā’im |
⊘ 334/946 |
Ismā‘īl b. al-Qā’im, Abū Ṭāhir al-Manṣūr |
⊘ 341/953 |
Ma‘add b. al-Manṣūr, Abū Tamīm al-Mu‘izz |
⊘ 365/975 |
Nizār b. al-Mu‘izz, Abū Manṣūr al-‘Azīz |
⊘ 386/996 |
al-Manṣūr b. al-‘Azīz, Abū ‘Alī al-Hākim |
⊘ 411/1021 |
‘Alī b. al-Ḥākim, Abu l-Ḥasan al-ẓāhir |
⊘ 427/1036 |
Ma‘add b. al-Ẓāhir, Abū Tamīm al-Mustansir |
⊘ 487/1094 |
Ahmad b. al-Mustansir, Abu ‘l-Qāsim al-Musta’lī |
⊘ 495/1101 |
al-Manṣūr b. al-Musta‘lī, Abū ‘All al-Āmir |
⊘ 524/1130 |
Interregnum; rule by al-Ḥāfiẓ as regent butnotyet as caliph; coins in the name of al-Muntazar ‘the Expected One’ |
⊘ 525/1131 |
‘Abd al-Majīd b. Muḥammad, Abu ’l-Maymūn al-Ḥāfiẓ |
⊘ 544/1149 |
Ismā‘īl b. al-Hāfiẓ, Abu ’l-Manṣūr al-Ẓāfir |
⊘ 549/1154 |
‘Isa b. al-Ẓāfir, Abu ’l-Qāsim al-Fā‘iz |
⊘ 555–67/1160–71 |
‘Abdallāh b. Yūsuf, Abū Muhammad al-‘Ādid Conquest by the Ayyūbid Salāh al-Dīn (Saladin) |
The Fāṭimids claimed ‘Alid descent, and their name derives from Fāṭima, daughter of the Prophet and wife of the fourth caliph ‘Alī (see above, no. 1). Sunnī and mainstream Shī‘ī opponents usually referred to them as the ‘Ubaydiyyūn, descendants of ‘Abdallāh (or ‘Ubaydallāh, as they termed him) al-Mahdī, explicitly rejecting any ‘Alid connection; it is unclear whether the Fāṭimid caliphs ever in fact referred to themselves as ‘the Fāṭimids’. Some of the Fāṭimids’ enemies even accused them of Jewish origins (this being, however, a standard form of calumny in mediaeval Islam). A connection with the main line of ‘Alid Imāms, through Ismā‘īl, son of the Sixth Imām Ja’far al-Sādiq, certainly seems dubious, and it is more likely that the forebears of ‘Abdallāh al-Mahdī stemmed either from ghulāt or extremist Shī’ī circles in Kūfa or else from ‘Alī’s half-brother ‘Aqīl b. Abī Ṭālib. At all events, the constituting of the Fāṭimid state represents the most successful and enduring political achievement of radical, Ismā‘īlī Shī‘ism at this time.
The first Fāṭimid caliph came from Salamiya in Syria to North Africa, where the dissemination of Shī‘ī propaganda had already made conditions propitious for his arrival. With the support of the sedentary Kutāma Berbers, his agent, the dā‘ī Abū ‘Abdallāh al-Shī‘ī, overthrew the Aghlabid goverors of Ifrīqiya (see above, no. 11) and the Khārijī Rustamids of Tahert (see above, no. 9); subsequently, the Idrīsids of Fez (see above, no. 8) became tributaries of the Fāṭimids. In 297/909 the Mahdī was proclaimed caliph, in rivalry to the ‘Abbāsids of Baghdad, at al-Raqqāda in Ifrīqiya. Subsequently, Sicily was occupied and naval operations were undertaken against the Byzantines. From their Ifrīqiyan base of al-Mahdiyya, the Fāṭimids amassed supplies and treasure in preparation for an advance eastwards, and in 358/969 their general Jawhar entered Old Cairo or Fusṭāṭ, removing the last Ikhshīdid (see above, no. 26). As they had done in the case of al-Mahdiyya in Ifrīqiya, the Fāṭimids began to build for themselves a new capital in Egypt, that of New Cairo (al-Qāhira ‘the Victorious’).
From Egypt, the Fāṭimids extended into Palestine and Syria. During the long reign of al-Mustanṣir, spanning much of the eleventh century, they reached the zenith of their power. After initially clashing with the Byzantines over Syria, the caliphs in general enjoyed peaceful relations with the Greeks; later in the century, the common threat of the Seljuqs and the Turkmen adventurers in Syria and Anatolia further drew them close together. The Ismā‘īlī dā‘īs of the Fāṭimids worked as far afield as the Yemen and Sind, and in 451/1059 Baghdad was temporarily held in the name of al-Mustanṣir. The appearance of the First Crusade at the end of the century brought about the wresting of Jerusalem from its Fāṭimid governor, but by then the Fāṭimid presence in Palestine and Syria had become essentially one in only the coastal towns there; yet on the whole, the Crusaders posed a greater threat to the various Turkish rulers of Syria than to the Fāṭimids. Certain SunnI Muslim historians allege that the Fāṭimids encouraged the Franks to land in the Levant, but this is improbable. The Fāṭimid viziers of the mid-twelfth century cooperated with the Zangid Nūr al-Dīn of Aleppo and Damascus (see below, no. 93, 2) against the Crusaders, but nevertheless lost Ascalon (‘Asqalān) to them in 548/1153. Soon afterwards, the Fāṭimid caliphate began to crumble internally; the caliphs had by now lost much of their power, and the viziers had assumed much of the executive and military leadership. Accordingly, it was not difficult for the Ayyūbid Ṣalāḥ al-Din (see below, no. 30) to end Fāṭimid rule altogether in 567/1171 as the last caliph lay dying.
In rivalry with the ‘Abbāsids, the Fāṭimids had proclaimed themselves the true caliphs and had assumed regnal titles which expressed the messianic nature of their original movement and the theocratic nature of their established rule, for example al-Mahdī, al-Qā’im and al-Zāfir. Yet the majority of their subjects remained Sunnīs and, under the Fāṭimids’ generally tolerant rule, retained most of their religious liberty. Many of the dā‘īs who were trained at the newly-founded college of al-Azhar in Cairo went to work outside the Fāṭimid dominions. Except during the first part of the unbalanced caliph al-Ḥākim’s reign, the Christians and Jews were comparatively well treated, and some of them occupied high offices in the state up to the level of the vizierate. It was during al-Ḥākim’s reign that the extremist Shī‘ī religious movement of the Druzes became implanted in southern Lebanon and Syria; because of al-Ḥākim’s encouragement of the dā‘ī al-Duruzī, the Druzes came to revere that caliph as an incarnation of God. On the death of al-Mustansir, there was a serious split in the Ismā‘īlī movement, with two opposing parties ranged behind his sons Nizār and al-Musta’lī. The partisans of the former, the more activist and extreme of the two groups, became the Assassins or Ismā‘īlīs of Syria and Persia (see below, nos 29, 101), while al-Musta’lī’s more moderate followers are the spiritual ancestors of the modern Bohrā Ismā‘īlīs of Bombay and Gujarāt. Al-Musta’lī retained the caliphate, but the spiritual basis of the Fāṭimid movement was to some extent impaired, above all after a further religio-political crisis on the death of al-Āmir in 525/1130 (the split of the Ṭayyibi Ismā‘īlīs, who were subsequently influential in Yemen and India).
Egypt and Cairo enjoyed under the Fāṭimids an economic prosperity and cultural vitality which eclipsed those of contemporary Iraq and Baghdad. Trade links were maintained with the non-Islamic world, including India and the Christian Mediterranean countries; in this commercial activity, Jewish merchants seem to have played an important role, as also perhaps the forerunners of the Muslim Kārimī merchants known from subsequent Ayyūbid and Mamlūk times. It is from the workshops of Egypt at this time, too, that some of the finest products of Islamic art – metalwork, ceramics, textiles and glassware – were produced, while the architectural heritage of the Fāṭimids is still visible in both North Africa and Egypt.
Lane-Poole, 70–3; Zambaur, 94–5; Album, 20–1.
EI1 ‘Fātimids’ (M. Canard).
G. C. Miles, Fatimid Coins in the Collections of the University Museum, Philadelphia, and the American Numismatic Society, ANS Numismatic Notes and Monographs, no. 121, New York 1951.
H. W. Hazard, The Numismatic History of Late Medieval North Africa, 52–3.
Ḥusayn b. Fadl Allāh al-Hamdānī and Hasan Sulaymān Mahmūd al-Juhanī, al-Sulayhiyyūn wa ’l-haraka al-Fdtimiyya fi ‘l-Yaman (min sanat 628 h. ilā sanat 626 h.), Cairo 1955, with detailed table at p. 343.
F. Dachraoui, Le califat fatimide au Maghreb 296–362/909–973. Histoire politique et institutions, Tunis 1981.
H. Halm, ‘Die Fatimiden’, in Haarmann (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 166–99. idem, Das Reich der Mahdi. Der Aufstieg der Fatimiden (875–973), Munich 1991.
415–72/1024–80
Northern and central Syria
⊘ 415/1024 |
Ṣāliḥ b. Mirdās, Asad al-Dawla, previously Amīr of Raḥba since 399/1009 |
⊘ 420/1029 |
Naṣr I b. Ṣāliḥ, Abū Kāmil Shibl al-Dawla |
⊘ 429/1038 |
First Fāṭimid occupation of Aleppo |
⊘ 433/1042 |
Thimāl b. Ṣālih, Abu ‘Ulwān Mu‘izz al-Dawla, first reign |
⊘ 449/1057 |
Second Fāṭimid occupation of Aleppo |
⊘ 452/1060 |
Maḥmūd b. Naṣr I, Rashīd al-Dawla, first reign |
⊘ 453/1061 |
Thimāl b. Ṣālih, second reign |
454/1062 |
‘Atiyya b. Ṣālih, Abū Dhu’āba (in Raḥba and Raqqa until 463/1071) |
457/1065 |
Maḥmūd b. Naṣr I, second reign |
467 or 468/1075–6 |
Naṣr II b. Maḥmūd, Abu ’l-Muzaffar Jalāl al-Dawla |
⊘ 468–72/1076–80 |
Sābiq b. Mahmūd, Abu ’l-Faḍā’il |
472/1080 |
‘Uqaylid occupation of Aleppo |
The Mirdāsids were part of the North Arab tribe of Kilāb, who in the early years of the eleventh century migrated from the lands along the Euphrates in northeastern Syria to Aleppo, which their leader Ṣāliḥ b. Mirdās captured in 415/1024, thereby succeeding substantially to the heritage of the Ḥamdānids (see below, no. 35, 2). The Mirdāsid migration formed part of a general movement of Bedouins – many of them (although not the Mirdāsids) at least nominally Shī‘ī in faith into the settled fringes of Iraq and Syria during the tenth and early eleventh centuries; it is possible that the unsettled conditions in the Syrian Desert brought about by the Carmathian risings there were one of the stimuli to this process.
Once established in Aleppo, Sālih and his sons Nasr and Thimāl had to defend themselves on one side against the Fāṭimids, who were attempting to restore their control over northern Syria, and on the other against the resurgent Byzantines under Basil II Bulgaroctonus and Romanus III Argyrus, although, in general, the favourable attitude of the Greeks towards them was one of the factors enabling the Mirdāsids to survive as an independent power for half a century. For four years, 429–33/1038–42, Aleppo was occupied by the Fāṭimid governor of Damascus, Anūshtigin, and on a second occasion Thimāl was obliged to abandon Aleppo and exchange it for towns on the Syro-Palestinian littoral, on account of pressure from undisciplined Kilābl tribesmen on his position within Aleppo. The westward advance of the Seljuqs, and the appearance in northern Syria of bands of Turkmens and various military adventurers, together with the waning of Fāṭimid influence there, confronted the Mirdāsids with a new situation. They found it expedient to transfer allegiance from the Fāṭimids to the SunnI ‘Abbāsids and to submit to the Seljuq sultan Alp Arslan. Latterly, Mirdāsid influence in Aleppo was undermined by disputes between the Turkish mercenaries whom the amīrs had been compelled to recruit and the Kilābī tribesmen, and in 468/1076 a civil war broke out between the two Mirdāsid brothers Sābiq and Waththāb. Pressure on Aleppo from the Seljuq Tutush, who was trying to carve out a principality for himself in Syria (see below, no. 91, 2), drove Sābiq in 472/1080 to offer the city to the ‘Uqaylid Muslim b. Quraysh (see below, no. 38). The surviving members of the Mirdāsid family were compensated by the grant of various towns in Syria, and they played some part in the affairs of the region up to the arrival of the First Crusade.
Lane-Poole, 114–15; Zambaur, 133, 135; Album, 22.
EI2 ‘Mirdās, Banū’ (Th. Bianquis).
Suhayl Zakkār, The Emirate of Aleppo 1004–1094, Beirut 1391/1971.
Th. Bianquis, Damas et la Syrie sous la domination fatimide (359–468/969–1076). Essai d’interpretation de chroniques ārabes mediévalés, Damascus 1986–9.
29
THE CHIEF DĀ‘IS OF THE NIZĀRĪISMĀ‘ĪLĪS OR ASSASSINS IN SYRIA
Early sixth/twelfth century to the mid-eighth/fourteenth century
The mountains of western Syria
c. 493/c. 1100 |
al-Ḥakīm al-Munajjim, d. 496/1103 |
496/1103 |
Abū Ṭāhir al-Ṣā‘igh, d. 507/1113 |
c. 507/c. 1113 |
Bahrām, leader of the Syrian Ismā‘īlī community, d. 522/1128 |
522/1128 |
Ismā‘īl al-‘Ajamī, d. 524/1130 |
524/1131 |
Abu ’l-Fatḥ |
? |
Abū Muḥammad |
? |
Khwāja ‘Alī b. Mas‘ūd |
557/1162 |
Sinān b. Salmān or Sulaymān al-Basrī, Abu ’l-Hasan Rashīd al-Dīn, d. 588/1192 or 589/1193 |
589/1193 or 590/1194 |
Abū Mansūr b. Muhammad or Nasr, al-‘Ajamī |
620–56/1223–58 |
al-Ḥasan b. Mas‘ūd, Kamāl al-Dīn, together with Majd al-Dīn; Muẓaffar b. al-Ḥusayn, Sirāj al-Dīn; Abu ’l-Futūh b. Muḥammad, Tāj al-Dīn; and Abu ’l-Ma‘āll, Radi ‘l-Dīn |
660/1262 |
Ismā‘īl b. al-Sha’rānī, Najm al-Dīn, d. 672/1274, aided by Shams al-Dīn b. Najm al-Dīn and Mubārak b. Raḍī ’l-Dīn, Ṣārim al-Dīn |
669/1271 |
Shams al-Dīn b. Najm al-Dīn |
|
Submission of the Ismā‘īlī fortresses to the Mamlūk Baybars by 671/1273 |
The Nizārī da’wa arose out of a split within the Fāṭimid caliphate at the death in 487/1094 of al-Mustanṣir, when his heir Nizār was set aside in a putsch in favour of his brother, who became the caliph al-Musta’lī and continued the Fāṭimid line (see above, no. 27). Nizār’s cause was taken up by the dā‘ī Ḥasan-i Ṣabbāḥ, who had already towards the end of al-Mustanṣir’s lifetime established Ismā‘īlī power in certain regions of Persia (see below, no. 101, for the heads of this da‘wa, the subsequent Grand Masters and the history of the movement in Persia). The now independent Nizārī da‘wa jadīda or ‘new mission’ was then implanted in Syria by agents from Alamūt, and Ismā‘īlism henceforth played a role in the tortuous political rivalries and strife of the Syrian cities, although it was not until the mid-twelfth century that the Syrian Ismā‘īlīs succeeded in acquiring fortresses, as in Persia, but here in the mountains of western Syria, the later Jabal Ansāriyya.
These garrisons and communities at times played a role in the struggles of the Crusaders and the Muslim principalities. Under their greatest head, the Iraqi dā‘ī Rashīd al-Dīn Sinān, they achieved in effect independence from the Persian Ismā‘īlī leadership which normally controlled the Syrian movement. The leaders of the latter tended to have friendly relations with the Ayyūbids (see below, no. 30). They survived the Mongol onslaught on Syria but became tributary to the Mamlūks, and their fortresses were gradually reduced by Baybars, that of Kahf surrendering in 671/1273. Nevertheless, the Syrian Ismā‘īlī community itself survived largely intact, though with its centre subsequently at Salamiya to the east of the Syrian mountains, maintaining its cohesion and traditions through the succeeding centuries, whereas the Persian Ismā‘īlī communities never really recovered from the violence of the Mongol invasions.
Zambaur, 103.
EI2 ‘Ismā‘iliyya’ (W. Madelung).
Farhad Daftary, The Ismā‘īlīs: Their History and Doctrines, Cambridge 1990, 357–61, 374–80, 396–403, 419–21, 430–4.
564 to end of the ninth century/1169 to end of the fifteenth century
Egypt, Syria, Diyār Bakr, western Jazīra and Yemen
⊘ 564/1169 |
al-Malik al-Nāṣir I Yūsuf b. Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb b. Shādhī, Abu ’l-Muẓaffar Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) |
⊘ 589/1193 |
al-Malik al-‘Azīz I ‘Uthmān b. al-Nāṣir I Salāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf, Abu ’l-Fath ‘Imād al-Dīn |
⊘ 595/1198 |
al-Malik al-Manṣūr Muḥammad b. al-‘Azīz ‘Imād al-Dīn ‘Uthmān, Nāṣir al-Dīn |
⊘ 596/1200 |
al-Malik al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad b. Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb, Abū Bakr Sayf al-Dīn, of Damascus |
⊘ 615/1218 |
al-Malik al-Kāmil I Muḥammad b. al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad Sayf al-Dīn, Abu ’l-Ma‘ālī Nāṣir al-Dīn, of Damascus |
⊘ 635/1238 |
al-Malik al-‘Ādil II Abū Bakr b. al-Kāmil Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn, Sayf al-Dīn, of Damascus, d. 645/1248 |
⊘ 637/1240 |
al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ II Ayyūb b. al-Kāmil Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn, Najm al-Dīn, of Damascus |
⊘ 647/1249 |
al-Malik al-Mu‘aẓẓam Tūrān Shāh b. Yūsuf Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn II b. Muḥammad Ghiyāth al-Dīn, of Damascus |
⊘ 648–50/1250–2 |
al-Malik al-Ashraf II Mūsā b. al-Mas‘ūd Yūsuf Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. al-Kāmil Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn, Muẓaffar al-Dīn |
650/1252 |
Power seized by the Mamlūk Aybak, but with al-Malik al-Ashraf II’s name retained in the khuṭba until 652/1254 |
⊘ 579/1183 |
al-Malik al-Zāhir Ghāzī b. al-Nāṣir I Yūsuf Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Abu ’l-Fath or Abū Manṣūr Ghiyāth al-Dīn I, as governor for his father |
579/1183 |
al-Malik al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad b. Ayyūb Najm al-Dīn, Abū Bakr Sayf al-Dīn |
⊘ 582/1186 |
al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī b. al-Nāṣir I Yūsuf Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Abu’l-Fath or Abu Manṣūr Ghiyāth al-Dīn I |
⊘ 613/1216 |
al-Malik al-‘Azīz Muḥammad b. al-Ẓāhir Ghāzī Ghiyāth al-Dīn I, Ghiyāth al-Dīn II |
634–40/1236–42 |
Regency of Day fa Khātūn bt. al-Malik al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad Sayf al-Dīn |
⊘ 634–58/1236–60 |
al-Malik al-Nāṣir II Yūsuf b. al-‘Azīz Muḥammad Ghiyāth al-Dīn II, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn |
658/1260 |
Mongol and then Mamlūk conquests |
574/1178 |
al-Malik al-Qāhir Muḥammad b. Shīrkūh I Asad al-Dīn b. Shādhī, Nāṣir al-Dīn |
581/1186 |
al-Malik al-Mujāhid Shīrkūh II b. al-Qāhir Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn |
637/1240 |
al-Malik al-Manṣūr Ibrāhīm b. al-Mujāhid Shīrkūh II Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Nāṣir al-Dīn |
644–62/1246–63 |
al-Malik al-Ashraf Mūsā b. al-Manṣur Ibrāhīm Nāṣir al-Dīn, Muẓaffar al-Dīn, also lord of Tell Bashīr 646–8/1248–50 |
|
Direct rule by the Mamlūks |
6. The line in Diyār Bakr (Mayyāfāriqīn and Jabal Sinjār)
⊘ 581/1185 |
al-Malik al-Nāṣir I Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin) b. Ayyūb Najm al-Dīn |
⊘ 591/1195 |
al-Malik al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad b. Ayyūb Najm al-Dīn, Abū Bakr Sayf al-Dīn, of Damascus |
⊘ 596/1200 |
al-Malik al-Awhad Ayyūb b. al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad Sayf al-Dīn, Najm al-Dīn |
⊘ 607/1210 |
al-Malik al-Ashraf I Mūsā b. al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad Sayf al-Dīn, Abu ’l-Fath Muẓaffar al-Dīn |
⊘ 617/1220 |
al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Ghāzī b. al-‘Ādil I Muḥammad or Aḥmad Sayf al-Dīn, Shihāb al-Dīn |
(628/1231 |
Temporary Mongol conquest) |
⊘ 642–58/1244–60 |
al-Malik al-Kāmil II Muḥammad b. al-Muẓaffar Ghāzi Shihāb al-Dīn, Nāṣir al-Dīn |
|
Definitive Mongol conquest |
7. The line in Diyar Bakr (Ḥisḥ Kayfa, Āmid and Akhlāṭ)
⊘ 569/1174 |
al-Malik al-Mu‘aẓẓam Tūrān Shāh I b. Ayyūb Najm al-Dīn, Shams al-Dīn |
⊘ 577/1181 |
al-Malik al-‘Azīz Tughtigin b. Ayyūb Najm al-Dīn, Abu ‘l-Fawāris Ẓahir al-Dīn Sayf al-Islam |
⊘ 593/1197 |
Ismā‘īl b. al-‘Azīz Tughtigin, Mu‘izz al-Dīn |
⊘ 598/1202 |
al-Malik al-Nāṣir Ayyūb b. al-‘Azīz Tughtigin |
611/1214 |
al-Malik al-Mu‘aẓẓam (? al-Muẓaffar) Sulaymān b. Shāhanshāh Sa’d al-Dīn, d. 649/1251 |
⊘ 612–26/1215–29 |
al-Malik al-Mas‘ūd Yūsuf b. al-Kāmil I Muḥammad Nāṣir al-Dīn, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn |
627/1229 |
Succession of the Rasūlids, apparently maintaining during 628/1230 at least the nominal authority of the Ayyūbids, including mention of them on coins |
9. The minor branches of the family in Ba‘lbakk, Karak, Bāniyās and Subayba, and Busrā (for details, see Zambaur, 98–9)
Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb and Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh b. Shādhī, the progenitors of the dynasty, were from the Hadhbānī tribe of Kurds, although the family seems to have become considerably Turkicised from their service at the side of Turkish soldiers. The Turkish commander of Mosul and Aleppo, Zangī b. Aq Sonqur (see below, no. 93, 1) recruited large numbers of bellicose Kurds into his following, including in 532/1138 Ayyūb, and soon afterwards his brother Shīrkūh entered the service of Zangi’s famous son Nūr al-Dīn. In 564/1169, Shīrkūh gained control of Egypt on the demise of the last Fāṭimid caliph al-‘Ādid (see above, no. 27) but died almost immediately, and his nephew Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb (Saladin) was recognised by his troops as Shīrkūh’s successor.
The celebrated foe of the Frankish Crusaders, Saladin, was accordingly the real founder of the dynasty. He extinguished the last vestiges of Fāṭimid rule in Egypt and replaced the Ismā‘īlī Shī’ism which had prevailed there for two centuries by a strongly orthodox Sunnī religious and educational policy; the great wave of Ayyūbid mosque- and madrasa-building in Egypt and Syria was one aspect of this. The Ayyūbids were in this way continuing the policy of the Zangids in Syria and were acting in a parallel manner to the Great Saljuqs before them, who had inaugurated a Sunnī reaction in the Iraqi and Persian lands taken over from the Shī‘ī Būyids (see below, no. 75). Although the Ayyūbids were in fact less enthusiastic pursuers of jihād than the Zangids had been, Saladin is associated in Western scholarship with his successes in Palestine, for his enthusiasm enabled him to weld together armies of Kurds, Turks and Arabs in a common cause. With his victory at Ḥaṭṭīn in 583/1187, the holy city of Jerusalem again became Muslim after eighty years in Christian hands; the Franks were driven back essentially to the cities and fortresses of the Syro-Palestinian littoral, and, apart from their briefly restored rule in Jerusalem and the other lost districts, mentioned below, were unable to recover most of their losses.
Before his death in 589/1193, Saladin granted out various parts of the Ayyūbid empire, including the cities of Syria, Diyār Bakr, western Jazīra and Yemen, as appanages for various members of the family, the intention being that the supreme sultan should normally reside in Egypt. A reasonable sense of family solidarity was maintained under al-Malik al-‘Ādil Sayf al-Dīn Muḥammad or Aḥmad and his son al-Kāmil Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad until the latter’s death in 635/1238. Under these two sultans, Saladin’s activist policies gave place to ones of detente and peaceful relations with the Franks, especially as the northern branches of the Ayyūbids in Diyār Bakr and Jazīra were now feeling pressure from the Rūm Seljuqs and the Khwārazm Shāhs (see below, nos 107, 89). The culmination of these new policies was al-KāmiPs offer of Jerusalem and the territories conquered by Saladin a generation before to the Emperor Frederick II (626/1229); in fact, the Crusaders recovered only the Holy City and one or two other towns, including Nazareth, and ten years later al-Nāṣir Dāwūd b. al-Mu‘aẓẓam ‘Isa of Damascus was to regain it. The period of peace did, however, bring economic benefits to Egypt and Syria, including a revival of trade with the Christian powers of the western Mediterranean.
After al-Kāmil, internal quarrels among the Ayyūbids intensified. The supreme sultan in Egypt had never been an autocrat, and the Ayyūbid empire was more a confederation of local principalities, those in Syria and Diyār Bakr often with unstable and shifting borders; these principalities resisted attempts by the supreme sultans to impose a more centralised authority. The Franks‘ Sixth Crusade was mastered and its leader, the French King St Louis (IX), captured, but soon after al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb’s death the Turkish Bahrī slave troops seized power in Egypt, making their leader Aybak first Atabeg and then sultan in 648/1250. Al-‘Ādil I Sayf al-Dīn Muḥammad or Aḥmad had sent out his young grandson al-Mas‘ūd Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Yūsuf with an Atabeg or tutor to continue Ayyūbid rule over Yemen, but the dynasty were unable to maintain themselves there and the region passed to their former servants, the Turkish Rasūlids (see below, no. 49).
The appearance of the Mongol armies of Hülegü (see below, no. 133) was disastrous for the northern petty lines of Ayyūbids, and the Il Khān personally killed the prince of Mayyāfāriqīn and his brother. In Syria, only the branch at Ḥamāt survived, because of its obscurity and docility, until the mid-fourteenth century, although it did produce, as its penultimate amir, the historian and geographer Abu ’l-Fidā‘. However, in Diyār Bakr a local Kurdicised Ayyūbid principality around Ḥiṣn Kayfā survived the Il Khānids and Tīmūrids, and these amīrs were only extinguished by the ‘White Sheep‘ Turkmens in the later fifteenth century.
A striking feature of Ayyūbid titulature was the rulers‘ adoption of titles comprising al-Malik ‘prince, ruler‘ plus a qualifying adjective expressing such qualities as power, honour, piety, justice, etc., hence al-Malik al-Mu‘aẓẓam, al-Malik al-Kāmil, etc. These usually appear on the coins minted by ruling princes, but the use of such titles extended to distinctly minor members of the Ayyūbid family also. This practice was inherited, together with much other Ayyūbid administrative and ceremonial practice, by their successors the Mamlūks (see below, no. 31).
Justi, 462–3; Lane-Poole, 74–9; Sachau, 19 nos 36–8 (branches in Ba’lbakk, Karak and Ḥiṣn Kayfā); Zambaur, 97–101 and Table H; Album, 22–3.
EI2 Ayyūbids‘ (Cl. Cahen), ‘Hamāt‘ (D. Sourdel), ‘Ḥimṣ‘ (N. Elisséeff), ‘Mayyāfārikīn. 2‘ (Carole Hillenbrand).
H. A. R. Gibb, ‘The Aiyūbids‘, in K. M. Setton et al. (eds), A History of the Crusades. II. The Later Crusades 1189–1311, Philadelphia 1962, 693–714.
H. F. A. al-Hamdānī and Ḥ. S. M. al-Juhanī, al-Ṣulayhiyyūn wa ‘l-haraka al-Fātimiyya fi ‘l-Yaman, table of the Yemen Ayyūbids at p. 347.
G. R. Smith, The Ayyūbids and Early Rasūlids in the Yemen (567–694/1173–1295), 2 vols, London 1974–8, with a table of the Yemen Ayyūbids at II, 50.
R. S. Humphreys, From Saladin to the Mongols. The Ayyubids of Damascus, 1193–1260, Albany 1977, with tables at 88–91.
P. Balog, The Coinage of the Ayyūbids, Royal Numismatic Society, Special Publication, no. 12, London 1980.
N. D. Nicol, ‘Paul Balog’s The coinage of the Ayyūbids: additions and corrections‘, NC, 9th series, vol. 146 (1986), 119–54.
H. Halm, ‘Die Ayyubiden‘, in Haarmann (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 200–16.
648–92/1250–1517
Egypt and Syria
1. The Baḥrī line 648–792/1250–1390
2. The Burji line 784–922/1382–1517
The Mamlūks succeeded to the dominant position formerly held by the Ayyūbids in Egypt and Syria. Like most major Islamic dynasties of the age, the Ayyūbids had found it necessary to buttress their power with professional slave soldiers inherited from the Zangids (see below, no. 93) and other local powers of the Fertile Crescent, and the Mamlūks (mamlūk, literally ‘one possessed, slave‘) arose from the Turkish troops of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb of Egypt and Damascus (see above, no. 30, 1–2). Within the two and a half centuries of independent Mamlūk rule, two lines of sultans are somewhat artificially distinguished: the Baḥri ones, so-called because these guards of the Ayyūbids originally had their barracks on the island of al-Rawda in the Nile (al-Bahr), and the Burjī ones, thus named because Sultan Qalāwūn had quartered his guards in the citadel (al-Burj) of Cairo. Various of the Baḥrī sultans, such as Baybars I and Qalāwūn (whose descendants managed to succeed him over three generations), tried to establish personal, hereditary dynasties, but not with much success, and in the last fifty years or so of Baḥrī rule a dozen sultans followed in rapid succession. Within the Burjīs, the pattern of rule tended to be that a great Mamlūk commander would usurp the throne and then at his death pass it on to his son; but within a few years another usurper would take it over. These leading commanders came mostly from the military households of previous sultans, with the followings of Barqūq and Qāyit Bay being especially productive of subsequent rulers.
Ethnically, the Baḥrīs were mainly Qïpchaq Turks from the South Russian steppes, with an admixture of other races, including from the Wāfidiyya, Kurds, other Turks and even Mongols arriving from the East to join the Mamlūk army. The Burjīs, on the other hand, were primarily Circassians (Charkas, Jarkas) from the Christian areas of the northern Caucasus. Up to the end of the Mamlūks as a social group in Egypt in the early nineteenth century, Circassia provided most of their manpower. Pace the assertions of some earlier historians of the Mamlūks that this class failed to perpetuate itself more than two or three generations, it seems that Mamlūk families reproduced themselves all right but that succeeding generations from them no longer followed a military career; instead, they fell back into civilian life, seeking careers in the ranks of groups like the ‘ulamā‘ and religious lawyers and the administrators of awqāf or charitable endowments. Fresh importations of slave soldiers were accordingly necessary to maintain the ruling élite of Mamlūk military leaders.
The slave origins of the Mamlūks were reflected in the rather complex system of nomenclature which evolved for them, the sultans included. The mamlūk fresh from the South Russian steppes started off with simply a personal name, generally a Turkish one, such as Azdamur/Özdemür, ‘choice iron’ = ‘best-quality iron’, or Mankūbars/Mengü-bars ‘eternal tiger‘, or Taghrībirdī/Tangrï-verdi ‘God gave’. But once within the Islamic military hierarchy, he could acquire a nisba relating to the slave merchant who had imported him into Egypt, such as al-Mujīrī, from the name Mujīr al-Dīn, or the circumstances of his purchase, such as al-Alfī ‘bought for 1,000 [dinars]’; then a nisba relating to the amīr of whose household or nexus of clientage he formed part, such as al-Sayfī, from Sayf al-Dīn, or al-Ṣaliḥī, from al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ‘ and finally, if he rose to eminence, a laqab or honorific of his own, such as Ḥusām al-Dīn ‘sword of religion’ or Badr al-Dīn ‘full moon of religion‘.
This ruling institution was a hierarchical construction, with the sultan’s own mamlūks at the apex of the structure. An origin in the non-Muslim lands of the north and slave status were essential for success in the power struggle, for the free elements, including the progeny of former mamlūks, had only an inferior place in the armed forces (a similar position obtained regarding the Ottoman Turkish slave institution, where in the heyday of the empire the Qapï Qullarï or ‘Slaves of the Porte’ had superior opportunities for advancement compared with free elements). The sultans’ arbitrary power was checked by the chief amīrs and the bureacracy, and the basic instability of the sultanate is seen in the rapid turnover of rulers at most periods and the three separate reigns of a sultan like Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn.
The Mamlūks continued the strongly Sunnī policy of the Ayyubids, with sultans, governors and amīrs founding numerous mosques, madrasas and other religious and charitable buildings in Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and other towns. They derived great prestige from their role as defenders of Islam against the infidel Mongols, against the remnants of the Frankish Crusaders (see below) and against heterodox Muslims like the Nuṣayrīs and Ismā‘īlīs of the mountains of western Syria. The Mamlūks’ maintenance in Cairo of a line of fainéant ‘Abbāsid caliphs (see above, no. 3, 3) is probably to be connected with this zeal for the Sunna.
The might and the achievements of the Mamlūk state were impressive and were lauded by contemporary historians, who stressed the role of the Turks as a people sent by God to preserve the fabric of the Dār al-Islām. Qutuz defeated Hülegü’s Mongols at ‘Ayn Jālūt in Palestine in 658/1260, and his successors consolidated the victory and set the new régime on its feet, although the threat from the Mongol Il Khānids did not recede until early in the fourteenth century. By the end of the thirteenth century, the last Crusader fortresses of the Syro-Palestinian coast had been mopped up; in the next one the Rupenid kingdom of Little Armenia or Cilicia was ended; and in the fifteenth century the Christian kingdom of Cyprus was made tributary for a time. The territories of the Mamlūks extended to Cyrenaica in the west, to Nubia and Massawa (Masawwa‘) in the south and to the Taurus Mountains in the north, while in Arabia they claimed to be protectors of the Holy Cities. In the course of the fifteenth century, however, the Ottomans emerged as the Mamlūks’ main enemies in place of the Mongols. Foes of the Ottomans like the Qaramānids (see below, no. 124) were supported and the Turkmen principality of the Dulghadïr Oghullarï or Dhu ’l-Qadrids (see below, no. 129) maintained in western Diyār Bakr as a buffer-state. But the superior élan and vigour of the Ottomans, and their well-developed use of artillery and hand-guns, worked in their favour, while the Mamlūks were still wedded to the ideal of the armed cavalryman with his lance and sword. The penultimate Mamlūk sultan, Qānṣawh II al-Ghawrī, died in battle with the Ottomans at Marj Dābiq near Aleppo in 922/1516, and in the next year Sultan Selīm I defeated the last Mamlūk ruler in Egypt. Syria and Egypt now became governorates of the Ottoman empire, although the military and social caste of the Mamlūks continued virtually to control Egypt internally until Muḥammad ‘All Pasha (see below, no. 34) destroyed their power in 1226/1811.
Certainly until the economic and demographic crisis of the fifteenth century, Egypt and Syria under the Mamlūks enjoyed considerable prosperity, and there was a great cultural and artistic efflorescence, with special achievements in the fields of architecture, ceramics and metalwork; the development of the science of heraldry goes back to Ayyūbid and especially Mamlūk times. There were close commercial links with the Christian powers of the Mediterranean, such as Aragon, Sicily and other Italian states, despite strongly anti-Christian policies in the Near East, so that the Mamlūk period as a whole saw a distinct worsening of the position of the Dhimmīs in Egypt, above all, of the Christians. However, the reckless spending and ambitious building policies in Cairo of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn overstretched the state’s resources for the future, and the Black Death affected Egypt and Syria particularly severely. Under the later Baḥrī and then the Circassian sultans, the revenue from land taxation shrank, while public security declined in the face of Bedouin depredations. The Mamlūks had further to bear expenses in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean region in a fruitless endeavour to check Portuguese expansion there and to preserve Mamlūk trade connections with India and the lands beyond, so that the failure of the once mighty Mamlūk state to withstand the onslaught of Ottoman imperialism becomes understandable.
Lane-Poole, 803; Zambaur, 103–6; Album, 23–6.
EI2 ‘Mamlūks‘ (P. M. Holt).
P. Balog, The Coinage of the Mamlūk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, ANS Numismatic Studies, no. 12, New York 1964.
idem, Supplement to The Coinage of the Mamlūk Sultans of Egypt and Syria, in ANS Museum Notes, 16 (1970), 113–71.
P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades. The Near East from the Eleventh Century to 1517, London 1986, with genealogical tables at pp. 229–31.
R. Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages. The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382, London 1986, with a list of rulers at p. 161.
U. Haarmann, ‘Der arabische Osten im späten Mittelalter 1250–1517’, in idem (ed.), Geschichte der arabischen Welt, 217–52.
Tenth century to 1109/sixteenth century to 1697
Southern Lebanon
|
‘Uthmān Ma‘n b. al-Hājj Yūnus, Fakhr al-Dīn I, d. 912/1506 |
|
Yūnus Ma‘n b. ? ‘Uthmān Fakhr al-Dīn, d. 917/1511 |
c. 922/c. 1516 |
|
? |
Qorqmaz II b. Fulān b. ? Qorqmaz I, d. 993/1585 |
993/1585 |
Fakhr al-Dīn II b. Qorqmaz II |
1042/1633 |
Mulḥim b. Yūnus |
1068–1108/1658–97 |
Aḥmad b. Mulḥim |
1108/1697 |
End of the direct Ma‘nid line and succession of the Shihāb family |
The Banū Ma‘n were an Arab Druze family of feudal chiefs in the Shūf region of southern Lebanon who were prominent in political life under the Ottomans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Ma‘nids replaced the Buḥtur family of the Gharb when the Ottomans took over Syria in 922/1516, and members of the family now begin to have firm historical attestation. Fakhr al-Dīn II was a tax-farmer for the Ottomans and governor of the sanjaqs of Sidon-Beirut and of Safad. Through skilful political manoeuvring, in which he enlisted the help of the Maronites of Kisrawān and even of an external power like the Medici Dukes of Tuscany (he spent several years in exile in Italy), he eventually became master of most of Syria as far east as Palmyra and as far north as the fringes of Anatolia. These ambitions inevitably provoked an Ottoman reaction, leading to his military defeat and execution. Although a bloody tyrant, Fakhr al-Dīn II did improve agriculture and trade, with the aim of raising more revenue, and his inauguration of a tradition of Druze-Maronite cooperation was a factor in the subsequent formation of a Lebanese national identity, so that Lebanese have come to regard him, somewhat anachronistically, as the founder of their modern country.
After his death, his descendants retained what was in effect autonomy in Mount Lebanon by acting as governors there for the Ottomans, but the direct line of the Ma‘nids ended with Aḥmad b. Mulhim in 1108/1697, their power in the region being replaced by that of their kinsmen, the Banū Shihāb (see below, no. 33).
Zambaur, 109.
EI2 ‘Fakhr al-Dīn’, ‘Ma‘n, Banū’ (K. S. Salibi).
Adel Ismail, Histoire du Liban du XVIIe siécle à nos jours. Le Liban au temps de Fakhr-ed-Dīn II (1590–1633), Paris 1955.
P. K. Hitti, Lebanon in History, London 1957.
P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516–1922: A Political History, Ithaca and London 1966, with a genealogical table at p. 311.
1109–1257/1697–1842
Lebanon
1109/1697 |
Bashīr I b. Ḥusayn, of Rāshayyā |
1118/1707 |
Ḥaydar b. Mūsā, of Ḥāṣbayyā |
1144/1732 |
Mulḥim b. Ḥaydar |
1167/1754 |
Manṣūr b. Ḥaydar |
1184/1770 |
Yūsuf b. Mulḥim |
1203/1788 |
Bashīr II b. Qāsim b. Mulḥim |
1256/1840 |
Intervention by the Allies and Turkey against Ibrāhīm Pasha of Egypt |
1256–7/1840–2 |
Bashīr III b. Qāsim b. ‘Umar as amīr under Allied aegis |
1257/1842 |
Imposition of direct Ottoman rule |
The Shihāb family of Sunnī Muslim notables rose to power as amīrs of Lebanon when the main line of the Ma‘ns (see above, no. 32) came to an end in 1109/1697, Bashīr I Shihāb being a maternal grandson of Aḥmad Ma‘n b. Mulḥim. The amirate which the Shihābs ruled was in fact largely controlled by Druze feudal lords, increasingly rent by rival factions, while from the later eighteenth century onwards the numbers and strength of the Maronites increased; a reflex of these processes was the adoption of Christianity by Mulḥim’s sons and the accession of Yūsuf b. Mulḥim as the first Maronite Shihāb amīr. The Shihābs managed to maintain themselves in Mount Lebanon against Aḥmad Jazzār Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Sidon and the coastal towns. Bashīr II operated within the increasingly complex politics of the Near East after the Napoleonic invasion and carefully conciliated Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha (see below, no. 34), but became isolated in his own land by 1840 and fell from power when the Egyptian cause in Syria was lost; after a brief interlude, Ottoman direct rule in Lebanon was restored in 1257/1842.
Zambaur, 108 and Table K.
EI1 ‘Bashīr Shihāb IF (A. J. Rustum).
P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516–1922: A Political History, with a genealogical table at p. 312.
K. S. Salibi, The Modern History of Lebanon, London 1965.
1220–1372/1805–1953
Egypt
1220/1805 |
Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha |
1264/1848 |
Ibrāhīm Pasha b. Muḥammad ‘Alī |
1264/1848 |
‘Abbās Ḥilmī I Pasha b. Ṭūsūn Pasha |
1270/1854 |
Muḥammad Sa‘īd Pasha b. Muḥammad ‘Alī |
1280/1863 |
Ismā‘īl Pasha b. Ibrāhīm (assumed the title of Khedive in 1284/1867), d. 1312/1895 |
1296/1879 |
Muḥammad Tawfīq b. Ismā‘īl |
1309/1892 |
‘Abbās Ḥilmī II b. Tawfīq, d. 1364/1944 |
⊘ 1333/1914 |
Ḥusayn Kāmil b. Ismā‘īl (asumed the title of Sultan), d. 1335/1917 |
⊘ 1335/1917 |
Aḥmad Fu‘ād I b. Ismā‘īl (assumed the title of King in 1340/1922) |
⊘ 1355/1936 |
Fārūqb. Fu‘ād I, d. 1384/1965 |
1371–2/1952–3 |
Aḥmad Fu‘ād II b. Fārūq |
1371/1953 |
Republican régime established |
Muḥammad ‘Alī (b. c. 1180/late 1760s) was a commander from Kavalla in Macedonia who went with local forces as part of the Ottoman-Albanian army sent by the Porte to dislodge the occupying French from Egypt. With great adeptness he contrived to stay there as de facto ruler, forcing the sultan to recognise him as governor or pasha and bloodily disposing of the old ruling class of the Circassian Mamlūks (see above, no. 31, 2). Muḥammad ‘Alī was thus one of a type which had been not uncommon in the eighteenth-century Ottoman empire, that is, a governor who tried to establish the hereditary rule of his family in his governorship; but he was unusual in successfully founding an autonomous and hereditary dynasty, with an increasingly centralised administration, in a century when the Porte was successfully reasserting its authority in many other parts of the Turkish and Arab lands of the empire. Once firmly in power, Muḥammad ‘Alī realised that Egypt could best flourish and progress if the military and technical advances of the West, and its educational practices, could be emulated; he therefore ranks with his contemporaries the Ottoman sultans Sellm III and Maḥmūd II as a pioneer westerniser in the Middle East. A newly-raised conscript army was raised to subjugate the Sudan and tap the rich slave markets there; higher educational institutions were set up, with European staff and advisers; fiscal policy was reformed and modified to meet the increased revenue needs. Externally, Muḥammad ‘Alī and his capable son Ibrāhīm intervened on the Ottoman side in the Greek War of Independence and carried on successful campaigns against the Wahhābī rulers in eastern and central Arabia, overthrowing the first Su‘ūdī state and almost annihilating the Su‘ūd dynasty (see below, no. 55) there.
But by the end of Muḥammad ‘Alī’s reign, Egypt was already acquiring a burden of indebtedness, despite his immediate successors’ abandonment of attempts to maintain the pace of reform. This burden was accentuated by extravagance and the desire of rulers in the mid-nineteenth century to imitate European royal standards. Ismā‘īl was the first of his family to secure from the sultan the title of khedive, one of ancient Iranian origin, and also the promise of his descendants’ hereditary succession in Egypt. It was under Ismā‘īl also that work on the Suez Canal was completed, but imperialist Egyptian ventures in Ethiopia and the Sudan shattered Egypt’s financial stability. Like Turkey itself, Egypt now came under the financial control of European creditor nations. After the proto-nationalist revolt of ‘Urābī Pasha in 1299/1882, Britain assumed control of Egyptian finances and installed a permanent garrison there; not until 1340/1922 did the British Protectorate end.
The reigns of the last two significant members of the dynasty, Fu’ād I and Fārūq, were dominated internally by struggles with the majority political party of the Wafd and, externally, by the struggle to throw off the remaining vestiges of British control. Just before the end of the monarchy, Naḥḥās Pasha abrogated the Condominium Agreement over the Sudan and proclaimed Fārūq ‘King of Egypt and the Sudan’. Nevertheless, discontent mounted, especially after the Arab-Israeli débâcle of 1947, widely attributed to royal corruption and incompetence. The monarch had always been felt as more Turkish than truly Arab, and in 1952 Fārūq was forced by the Free Officers’ movement under Muḥammad Najib (Neguib) and Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir (Nasser) to abdicate. His infant son remained nominally on the throne under a regency, until the monarchy was finally abolished in June 1953.
Muḥammad ‘Alī and his descendants minted Ottoman coins in Egypt, with the names on them of their suzerains the sultans alone, right up to the First World War and the final severing of all constitutional links with Istanbul, after which Husayn Kāmil and his successors placed their own names on the Egyptian coinage.
Lane-Poole, 84–5; Zambaur, 107.
EI2 ‘Muḥammad ‘Alī Pasha’ (E. R. Toledano).
P. M. Holt, Egypt and the Fertile Crescent 1516–1922: A Political History, with a genealogical table at p. 312.
P. J. Vatikiotis, The History of Egypt from Muhammad Ali to Sadat, London 1980.