Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period

Any survey of pre-modern belletristic prose in Arabic cannot avoid discussion of generic hierarchies. Such controversies and debates are deeply rooted in processes of political and cultural transformation, trends that demand, and at times instigate, new yardsticks and scales of gradation among literary genres. But even at a time in Arabic literary history when chancery interests assured prose a lofty status, there emerged a tendency, after the appearance of the Maqāmāt of al-Ḥarīrī (445–516/1054–1122),1 to assess, compare and grade clerks and scribes according to their specific vocation in state treasury departments or in the Dīwān al-inshā’, all this in spite of the frequent transfer of scribes between the two categories of post.² An illustrious figure such as Khalīl ibn Aybak Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (696–764/1297–1363) began his career as kātib darj (clerk of the roll) before being transferred to kātib dast (clerk of the bench). Others like al-Ḥarīrī himself and Muḥammad ibn Mukarram (ibn Manẓūr) (d. 711/1311), the compiler of the famous dictionary, Lisān al-‘Arab (Language of the Arabs), served as clerks in treasury departments. No less demarcated was the distinction between ‘ulamā’ (religious scholars) on the one hand and professional functionaries on the other. Chancery training and apprenticeship had become a rigorous exercise, with enormous demands on the trainee, especially if the latter had aspirations to the status of kuttāb al-dast (clerks of the bench) or ṣāḥib dīwān al-inshā’ (head chancery clerk) after a period of initiation as clerk of the roll (darj) or of bayt al-māl (state treasury). Manuals, compendia, dictionaries and works of exegesis tell us a good deal about the vicissitudes of the belletristic tradition, but we must still search within each sub-discipline for particular developments. One may suggest that the enormous output in this field was, within the framework of classical Arabism, a kind of defensive strategy against erosion, a quest for cultural survival in the context of the severe disruptions caused by the First Crusade and subsequent Mongol incursions. The course of action was also the outcome of a process of decentralization and the emergence of peripheral states that had long since become a feature within the broad range of the Islamic dominions and that served as a natural magnet for migrating intellectuals.

While compendia and encyclopedic works required a measure of stability that was almost completely absent during the Frankish and Timurid invasions, public lectures and treatises were to find a vogue following the development of Cairo as a major cultural metropolis. Intellectuals from East and West, fleeing political upheavals or settling there temporarily on their way to Mecca, saw Cairo as ‘the garden of the Universe, the orchard of the World’, as Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406) says in his Ta῾rīf.³ Both Tunis and Fez retained their positions as centres for cultural activity, but there was a perceptible move towards Cairo. Next to it in prominence was Damascus, with its famous college mosques, schools and libraries.The devastating impact of the Mongols’ sack of Baghdad in 656/1258 meant that it could no longer rival the other cities. It was the learned class of the Levant that provided almost 30 per cent of Cairene jurisprudents (fuqahā’), some of whom maintained close connections with the rulers and their viceroys. This was especially true of the office of confidential secretary (kātib al-sirr) and his staff. Dynasties, especially the Fatimids, Ayyubids and Mamluks, were well aware of the emerging state’s needs and of the important role played by bureaucracies, and were eager to identify patterns of legitimacy and effective rule. They therefore invested a good deal of energy in statecraft and its functions. The chancery itself was the central focus. Continuity between the Fatimids and Ayyubids, their institutions and administrative procedures, found no better personification than al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil (The Virtuous Judge), ῾Abd al-Raḥīm al-Baysānī (d. 596/1200). He later became Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s chief minister, thus transferring his Fatimid chancery training into the Ayyubid era.

Along with al-Qāḍī Shihāb al-Dīn al-Qalqashandī (d. 821/1418) who penned a voluminous compendium, Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā fī ṣinā‘at al-inshā’ (Dawn for the Benighted Regarding Chancery Craft) – to be discussed later – there was a large number of manuals. As chancery composition proceeded to incorporate both poetry and oratory within its purview and to buttress itself with elements of both the proverbial and anecdotal, it vied hard for a place of its own within the realms of literary prose. A major part of its achievement lies in the verbal dexterity, elegant diction and embellished figurations that emerged. However, the style varies widely. At the hands of the most competent craftsmen, it is as balanced, effective and functional as any other form of composition. Part of the confusion regarding its predominant characteristics arises from generalizations that had been essayed by previous generations of scholars. Ibn al-῾Amīd (d. 360/970) or ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (d. 597/1201), for example, are both prominent examples of prose writers whose style is engaged with the poetics of al-muḥdathūn (the moderns), namely the tropes of badī῾ (the innovative use of figurative language). However, they are just two among hundreds of other prose writers and epistolographers whose contributions need to be taken into consideration. By the end of the fourteenth century, al-Qalqashandī was so assured of the supremacy of prose that he could write ‘on the superiority of prose to poetry’, stipulating throughout that ‘prose has a higher status and more honourable position than poetry’.⁴

One way of understanding the functions of generic prioritization within the general literary context is to consider the etymology and various connotations of the word dīwān. Taqī al-Dīn al-Maqrīzī (d. 845/1441) notes in his topographical history, al-Mawā‘iẓ wa’l-i‘tibār (also known as the Khiṭaṭ), that the original meaning of the Persian word dīwān refers to a place where scribes were asked to compose certain documents. As the meanings of the word evolved, chancery itself came to have three major subdivisions: army departments; revenues and treasury; and inshā’ (letter-writing and literary composition). However, in times of political conflict the Dīwān al-inshā’ assumes tremendous importance. During the reigns of the Umayyad caliphs ‘Abd al-Malik (d. 86/705) and Hishām (d. 125/743), the chancery (dīwān al-rasā’il) developed in importance under the guiding hand of Sālim Abū᾽l-‘Alā’.⁵ The famous manual of his student ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd al-Kātib (d. 750), Risāla ilā’l-kuttāb (Epistle to Secretaries), may have initially been composed to meet the needs of chancery scribes, but their own professional interests led them to enhance the more aesthetic dimensions of the craft by placing it firmly within the realm and tradition of adab (belles-lettres). Almost every writer attempts to spell out requirements, tools and characteristics for both the art and the person of the scribe. Ibn Sahl al-Balkhī (d. 934) writes Faḍl ṣinā῾at al-kitāba (The Merit of the Craft of Writing); Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Yūsuf al-Iṣfahānī composes, along with Ṭabaqāt al-khutabā’ (Classes of Orators), another manual entitled Kitāb adab al-kuttāb (Book of Scribal Practice); Aḥmad ibn al-Faḍl al-Ahwāzī contributes Manāqib al-kuttāb (Qualities of Secretaries), and Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Naḥḥās al-Miṣrī (d. 337/949) Adab al-kuttāb (Secretarial Practice). In addition to these works there are also treatises of broader scope, including Abū Hilāl al-῾Askarī’s (d. c. 400/1009) famous work, Kitāb al-ṣinā῾atayn: al-kitāba wa᾽l-shi῾r (The Book on the Two Crafts: Prose and Poetry), where he makes specific comparisons between oratory as speech-writing and epistolography as letter-writing; ‘Alī ibn Khalaf’s (d. 455/1063) Mawādd, and the Kitāb qawānīn al-dawāwīn (Book of Rules for Diwans) by al-As῾ad ibn Mammātī, the Ayyubid minister (d. 606/1209). By the later thirteenth century, the status of the chancery was so firmly established that ῾Uthmān ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī (d. 685/1286) was able to make the chancery a career, soon honoured by Sultan Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb with the position of chief secretary in charge of all dīwāns.

When al-Akfānī (d. 749/1348) chose at a relatively late stage to depict the class of udabā’ as ‘people of sound intellect and upright minds who arranged adab’s material sources and refined its various parts’,⁶ he is merely stressing what had long since been acknowledged, thus replicating the premises of a large number of secretarial manuals. Even when specifying the ten disciplines of adab, he merely reflects what Ḍiyā᾽al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr (d. 636/1239) had already noted in his scribal training manual, al-Mathal al-sā’ir fī adab al-kātib wa’l-shā῾ir (The Popular Model for the Practice of Secretaries and Poets), as the eight prerequisites for the aspirant to proficiency in the secretarial art, namely: grammar, syntax and morphology, lexicography, proverbs and the history of the Arabs and their battles. Scribes are supposed to familiarize themselves with masterly writings in poetry and prose, and memorize a sizeable segment of each. They should also be knowledgeable in politics and public administration. Foremost among prerequisites is the memorization of the Koran and of the Prophet’s ḥadīth.

Oratory and epistolography both benefited from the movement of decentralization. Needed for communication with the public, epistolography and oratory both resort to the organic, the proverbial and the poetic. Al-Qalqashandī’s subsection on ‘The Superiority of Prose to Poetry’⁷ takes such criteria into account to justify the need for effective prose-writing.

In discussing the historical development of this tradition of manuals it should be noted that the contents of such works are based to a substantial degree on a number of precedents, collections that reach a culminating point in the writings of ῾Abd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad al-Tha῾ālibī (d. 429/1038) in his Nathr al-naẓm wa-ḥall al-‘iqd (Prosification of Poetry and the Untying of the Knot), and in Ibn al-Athīr’s Washy al-marqūm fī ḥall al-manẓūm. Indeed it can safely be assumed that, whenever the need for prose is so paramount that it subsumes the poetic and the Koranic for better effect, ancestries of this kind can be traced. In this regard Ibn ‘Abd Kān (d. 270/883), head of the first chancery of Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn in Egypt, was a pioneer, in that his style shows a distinct concentration on syntactical balance via short, terse sentences. Ibn Munjib al-Ṣayrafī (d. 542 or 550/1148 or 1155), chief chancery clerk for the Fatimid caliph, al-Ḥāfiẓ, also merits recognition, not only for his Qānūn dīwān al-rasā’il (The Canon for Chancery) but also for his own mastery of prosification. Ibn Khalaf, whose writings also belong to the Fatimid period, lays emphasis in wording a letter on its value-laden language; as he explains, codes should emerge from the addresser’s personal ideology so as to convey its message and impart its full meaning.

A review of cultural and bureaucratic continuity demands detailed attention to Fatimid chancery practice, especially regarding honours conferred on holders of chancery positions. The chief clerk usually held the title of ‘Exalted Shaykh’, as in the case of Abū᾽l-Ḥasan ῾Alī al-Ḥalabī (d. 522/1128). Muwaffaq ibn al-Khallal (d. 566/1171), chief scribe for the Fatimid caliphs al-Ḥāfiẓ and al-῾Āḍid, was one among many who gave the chancery its stamp of rigorous training. The already noted al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil, ῾Abd al-Raḥīm al-Baysānī, received his early training under Ibn al-Khallāl’s guidance.⁸ No less versed in prosification was Ḍiyā’ al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr, who, having cited his own samples of prosification, concludes: ‘If a person is to prosify, he should either follow this manner or else quit.’⁹ When commenting on his own method of prosifying Koranic verses, that is, using a portion of the original as either an opening or a conclusion, he is so convinced of the originality of his own method that he writes: ‘I followed a method that Ⅰ devised; Ⅰ am its pioneer.’ In view of Ibn al-Athīr’s numerous confrontations with both precursors and contemporaries, his critical method certainly deserves attention. His al-Mathal al-sā’ir (Popular Model) was subjected to constant attacks. Ibn Abī᾽l-Ḥadīd (d. 656/1257), for example, wrote al-Falak al-dā’ir ‘alā᾽l-mathal al-sā’ir (The Cosmos Revolving Around al-Mathal al-sā’ir), in which he divides his attention between the merits and vices (al-maḥmūd wa᾽l-mardūd) of the original; he approves of Ibn al-Athīr’s prose and prosification, but strongly objects to his self-aggrandizement and his tendency to underestimate worthy predecessors. Similar opinions can be found in the work of ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib, but Ibn Abī᾽l-Ḥadīd chooses to concentrate on what he calls Ibn al-Athīr’s misjudgements. Another work of this type is Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī’s (d. c. 661/1263), Nusrat al-thā’ir ‘alā al-Mathal al-sā’ir (Support for the Rebel against al-Mathal al-sā’ir). The issues raised in both books relate not only to critical debates but also to Ibn al-Athīr’s predilection for contrafaction and outspoken comment. While it is easy to regard his literary controversies as part of a romantic quest for release from the anxiety of influence, the task of justifying the professional squabbles is more difficult. Had the chancery not been a venue for challenge and reward, there would presumably have been no call for dispute or even contrafaction in the first place.

Ibn al-Athīr supplies famous texts for analysis, and then, by claiming resignation to the will of others by either contrafacting or rewriting the texts as an exercise, implies that he can improve on the original. His ghost-authorities include such illustrious names as Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī (d. 384/994), head of chancery for the Buyid sultan ῾Izz al-Dawlah, al-Ṣāḥib ibn ῾Abbād (d. 385/995), a minister to the Buyid rulers, and ῾Abd al-Raḥīm al-Baysānī, al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil himself. In tackling their writings and revealing their omissions or shortcomings, he follows a methodology of displacement, selecting a single issue (such as saj‘ (rhyming cadenced prose)) in order to prove his own broad knowledge of the topic. In spite of Ibn al-Athīr’s self-serving boasts concerning the originality of his method, it has to be acknowledged that he is certainly adept at identifying and probing the most characteristic features of his counterparts. Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī may have been admired for his balanced prose and articulate assonation, but Ibn al-Athīr aspires to outshine him. Since contrafaction includes both parody and stylization, Ibn al-Athīr’s urge to contrafact the original text should not be viewed as a sign of decadence, but rather a gesture of rejuvenation in turbulent times. Thus, in taking on the task of contrafacting al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil’s letter written on behalf of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī (d. 1193) to the caliph in Baghdad on the occasion of the recapture of Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock (583/1187), Ibn al-Athīr’s primary concern seems to be to explain the value of elaboration (iṭnāb) in the face of rhetorical objections to its overuse.

In an era of war and conquest, when both the Ayyubids and Mamluks were striving to acquire political legitimacy, the cadences of saj‘ (rhyming prose) – characterized by syntactic parallelisms, rhymes, allusions and maxims, all couched in balanced structures – provided a powerful stylistic tool, with their deeply rooted linkages to Koranic style and to the tawshīḥ practice, that is, the use of Koranic cadence, balance, brevity and interlacing. Indeed a report of Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī (581–654/1185–1256) suggests that Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn himself was well aware of the value of this particular trend in prose composition; the latter is alleged to have said: ‘Never assume that I have conquered lands with your swords, but with al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil’s pen.’¹⁰ Participating fully in the new spirit of conquest, both al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil and ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī were to reflect the mood of the times, lauding achievements, debating issues, recollecting early Islamic jihād and winning over non-Arab Muslims and newly converted communities, all through a resort to the cadenced style reminiscent of Koranic discourse. Within the realms of both epistolography and rhetoric, rhyming prose was co-opted into service under the sacred banner of faith. Especially during the Mamluk era, initiation into the Koran and ḥadīth inevitably fostered a vogue for rhyming prose, with its invocations of the Koranic, regardless of the implications of meaning. As William Brinner notes, rhymed prose was taken seriously by the Mamluks, since their bureaucrats totally despised unrhymed compositions.¹¹

From a stylistic point of view, rhymed prose was not regarded as a superficial phenomenon, particularly as practised by ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī. Sir Hamilton Gibb rejects sweepingly generalized accusations of ‘linguistic virtuosity’ and ‘hyperbolic eulogy’,¹² tracing instead the discourse’s vigour and communicative power in works such as ῾Imād al-Dīn’s al-Barq al-shāmī. The work has an ‘epic quality’ which ‘is not simply a matter of presenting the account of some incident in effective rhymed prose’, but rather of letting ‘tension, instead of concentrating on a single episode, spread over a series of episodes constituting a complex unity . . . of varying intensity’. It is, Gibb argues, particularly in battle descriptions that ῾Imād al-Dīn’s style becomes ‘more elaborately ornamental’. While Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s exploits may have inspired the epic and heroic account and provided its ‘moving spirit’, it is the role of the eloquent confidential secretary to give the account a life of its own through a blend of the biographical and autobiographical. Gibb’s apologia for ῾Imād al-Dīn’s prose suggests a direction for more nuanced readings of the Arabic poetics of this era. Exploiting dismay at servile imitations and previously voiced criticisms of specific practices, the purveyors of sweeping generalizations about pre-modern Arabic prose rarely take into account the political and cultural dynamics of the era, the invocation of a new belligerent tradition, and the tendency to accommodate newly Islamized elements that were otherwise well entrenched in all structures of leadership and power. Such generalizations may also be founded on Ibn Khaldūn’s expressed criticisms of the prose of the period, something that he associates with the East, the Mashriq. It may well be that Ibn Khaldūn has ῾Imād al-Dīn in mind when he objects to the use of ‘the styles of poetry, its metres in prose, including assonance and rhyme, and nostalgic preludes’. He strongly opposes what he regards as ‘a mingling of genres’, especially in official correspondence,¹³ and concludes that tarassul (in the form of chancery correspondence) should be free of poetic styles. While there is some justification for Ibn Khaldūn’s critique, it may be equally applied to the epistolary style of the Andalusian writer Ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1375), for example, and not only to writers of the Mashriq.

However, not all writers chose to apply this transgeneric method to their epistolography. The issue was much discussed by compilers. Al-Qalqashandī, for example, argues that, if carefully handled, both ‘assonance and doubling’ are a sign of great talent, but that ‘the best assonance is what is devoid of contrivance’. Even so, there is still a broader context for Ibn Khaldūn’s reservations, particularly regarding the reconciliation of official correspondence with the stylistic norms of other languages, a point specifically mentioned by al-Qalqashandī.¹⁴ Ibn Khaldūn discusses ῾ujma (hybridity) as a process of malign influence, one that weakens linguistic foundations and mingles structures, resulting in speech that cannot be adapted to the circumstances of discourse and leading to a palpable loss of lucidity and clarity. Al-Qalqashandī, on the other hand, draws no such conclusions, believing a careful application of the poetic to be a sign not of failure, but rather of mastery. As part of the process, he analyses five hudna (truce) letters, paying special attention to the scribes’ efforts to provide duplicate copies in two languages and to ensure through their dealings with the Franks that there is no deviation from specific points of agreement.¹⁵ Exempting one of the five, the remaining four are deemed to be written in a coarse and faulty language inappropriate for use by any scribe ‘with the slightest knowledge of the art of speech’. At the same time he does provide justification, pointing out that, because ‘the Franks were close neighbours of the Muslims in Syria, and the agreement between the two parties was struck with respect to each item, a scribe from each side recorded it quickly in coarse, unrefined language’.

Al-Qalqashandī was an important arbiter of taste. Surveying the scene as a whole with all its ups and downs and with the risāla genre, he remained totally committed to prose in preference to poetry. While recognizing the beauty and the power of the latter, he argues that prose is the proper medium for the age, acknowledging all the while that the prose writer needs to be well acquainted with poetry.¹⁶

While it is reasonable to link the stupendous growth of the risāla genre to its early (and especially Abbasid) efflorescence, Fatimid and subsequent Ayyubid and Mamluk achievements deserve particular attention. Stylists of the Abbasid period were certainly aware that their vocation required continual innovation and a quest for elegance, the goals being both utilitarian and artistic and the readerships private and public.¹⁷ However, the tendency to specialize led in different directions: here Ibn Abī Ṭāhir Ṭayfūr (d. 280/893) is a pioneer in providing an anthology of al-manẓūm wa᾽l-manthūr, with models and examples, but al-Qalqashandī was, as noted earlier, to lean heavily on ῾Alī ibn Khalaf’s (d. 455/1063) Mawādd al-bayān, along with later and more strictly utilitarian formularies such as al-῾Umarī’s Ta῾rīfand Ibn Nāẓir al-Jaysh’s (d. 786/1384) Tathqīf al-ta῾rīf. Al-Qalqashandī’s Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā was updated and completed in 1813 by the Iraqi humanist al-Suwaydī. A source work for every kind of correspondence, both official and private, it serves as a model for the stupendous encyclopedic endeavours compiled during the Mamluk period that aimed to record and preserve, all with the goal of resisting destruction and oblivion. It is also a significant attempt at summarizing the ongoing competition among different genres and the subfields within each of them. In this particular context, while the overall competition among genres had much to do with politics, what occurred within each genre involved professional issues. Episodes of bureaucratic self-assertion and dynastic glorification clearly emerge, most especially when the target is either a maqāma writer or a financial secretary. Al-Qalqashandī is no exception: he applauds the merits of chancery scribes and composers of literary prose at the expense of al-Ḥarīrī and other state treasury clerks, all the while making sure to present his own maqāma as a gesture of allegiance to his patron, al-Qaḍī Badr al-Dīn ibn Faḍl Allāh al-῾Umarī (d. 786/1384), head chancery clerk in the reign of the first Circassian sultan, al-Ẓāhir Barqūq.¹⁸

Dynasties and manuals of formularies imply a sense of continuity. Epistolography displays a similar approach to models and formulae that called for al-Qalqashandī’s classification in Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā. He was obviously intent on demonstrating his allegiance to the family of Faḍl Allāh al-῾Umarī, not only through extensive reference to Shihāb al-Dīn and his prestigious books like al-Ta῾rīf and Masālik (discussed below),¹⁹ but also through plain and direct testimony. First chosen by Badr al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ῾Alā al-Dīn ῾Alī ibn Faḍl Allāh, chief chancery clerk or confidential secretary in the chancery, to be kātib darj, al-Qalqashandī dedicates a maqāma to his master, which also summarizes his views on epistolography in relation to other genres.²⁰ Rightly described as the ‘culmination of the secretarial manuals and encyclopedias of the Mamluk period’,²¹ Ṣubḥ al-a῾shā was also compiled into a shorter version, Ḍaw’ al-ṣubḥ al-musfir (The Enlightening Dawn), dedicated to Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn al-Bārizī, kātib al-sirr (confidential secretary).

In his contribution to the maqāma genre, al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī᾽l-manāqib al-Badriyya (The Shining Stars on the Merits of Badr al-Dīn), al-Qalqashandī provides an overview of the genre.²² While his decision to take a position as kātib darj serves to illustrate his own participation in chancery structure during the Mamluk period, his maqāma also reveals a sense of resignation; he acts as a detached observer, assessing the situation and drawing conclusions. Here, too, as in several other places, he discusses the three major aspects of chancery practice: prerequisites and methods in both knowledge and practice; hierarchical structure; and, third, the position of epistolography vis-à-vis other genres. In the first place, he illustrates what is already known about prerequisites, ‘ulūm (sciences) and rusūm (goals, general knowledge, calligraphy, rhetoric and so on). First come the Islamic sciences, especially memorization of the Koran and the study of ḥadith and theology. Next comes the Arabic language, it being the scribe’s principal ‘capital’. Subsections deal with every other category of learning, ranging from theology, logic and disputation to geography and politics. Al-Qalqashandī, it appears, regards the kātib as both humanist and functionary.²³ Chancery’s hierarchical structure moves beyond the simple subdivision of dast and darj to subsume two other factors that, in final analysis, involve matters of apprenticeship. First, nepotism is a given; this is the case, for example, whenever mention is made of Banū (dynasty or family) Wahb, or, in the Mamluk period, the families of ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir or Faḍl Allāh al-῾Umarī.²⁴ Qalāwūn (678–91/1240–92) appointed Fatḥ al-Dīn ibn ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir as his kātib sirr (confidential secretary), and al-Nāṣir ibn Qalāwūn (693–74/1294–1340) enhanced the position of kātib sirr by abolishing the post of wazīr in 710/1310 and devoting its functions to four other officials, including the confidential secretary. Second, patronage was no less influential than nepotism, for scribal families were also on the look-out for brilliant clerks. Some, like Zayn al-Dīn ‘Umar al-Ṣafadī, the kātib sirr of Ṣafad, were devoted to belles-lettres, while others such as Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Faḍl Allāh al-῾Umarī were scholars of fiqh and ḥadīth.

Within such perspectives epistolography emerges as an inclusive genre; its subdivision into ikhwāniyya (private/personal) and dīwāniyya (official, chancery) correspondence is merely one of convenience. The ikhwāniyya letter or epistle could involve expression of affection, compassion, protestations of various kinds, congratulations, condolences, declarations of solidarity, nostalgia, solicitude, gratitude, mutual pleasantry or exchange of gifts. Almost every writer of repute has his own ikhwāniyyāt. Ibn Nubāta (d. 768/1367), for instance, wrote letters of congratulations on behalf of the viceroy of Damascus, the sultan’s deputy, that attempt to bridge the gap between the official and private. What is remarkable about these letters is Ibn Nubāta’s assimilation of Koranic discourse in letters of ostensibly intimate expression.²⁵

Shihāb al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Ḥalabī, known as Ibn Fahd (d. 725/1325), is regarded as the worthy successor of al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil. Working in the Damascus chancery for eight years, Ibn Fahd had a distinctive mode of writing; his prefatory phrases and paratextual formulae have passed into common use.²⁶

Since chancery correspondence involved both that of the sovereign (commands and explications) and responses to issues of public or private concern, the variety in dīwāniyya correspondence is enormous. Al-Qalqashandī cites epistles of conquest and war as the most exalted,²⁷ especially those composed by al-Qāḍī Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir. As an example, he cites Ibn ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir’s letter on the recapture of land from the Tartars, addressed to Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Ḥannā, the wazīr in the time of al-Malik al-Ẓāhir.²⁸ The letter is intentionally elaborate and descriptive, depicting the stages of the conquest in a lucid and clear style, then describing people’s reactions and the scenes of jubilation, all presided over by the Mamluk sultan himself, as both hero and sovereign. Another pattern is set by Badr al-Dīn ibn Faḍl Allāh, during al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Abū Saʿīd Barqūq’s reign, in reply to a letter from Timur Lang (Tamerlaine). The response resorts to reprimand since Timur’s letter is characterized by both arrogance and implicit threats. Following the sequence of the initial letter, the response focuses on specific wording with connotations of disparagement. Badr al-Dīn invokes literary resources from both proverbial and Koranic discourse to undermine the letter’s structure, exposing its pretensions and undermining defensive strategies and faulty rhetoric. It concludes with a Koranic verse of triumph and prosperity for the Muslim community.²⁹

However, when the writer pens his epistle as a decree to discourage certain practices while approving others, the entire tone and argument are changed. Such is the case, for example, with a call issued during the reign of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn for an increase in the importation of mamlūks. Rather than a mere warning to competitors among Egyptians, the decree, in the form of a letter, was meant to channel profit from such trade to the Mamluk household. This warning is part of the sultan’s strategy for retaining a strong Mamluk army, one that proved successful when in 701/1302 the Franks were expelled. Muḥammad ibn al-Mukarram, Ibn Manẓūr, at the time a chancery scribe (678–89/1280–90), cited this as ‘The Memorandum of the Wise’ written by his then master, Fatḥ al-Dīn ibn ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir.³⁰

Although ostensibly satisfied with his position as kātib darj, al-Qalqashandī was personally concerned with hierarchy. Indeed, in his maqāma merit as the criterion for appointment is a given, for his patron Badr al-Dīn ‘deserves the position by merit, even though it belongs to him in the first place’. Al-Qalqashandī uses the work, with its panegyric of the Faḍl Allāh family and his patron in particular, to challenge the status of financial secretary or accountant (kātib al-amwāl), noting that such a position is of lower rank compared with epistolary scribes or chancery secretaries.³¹ Many of these financial secretaries may also have been udabā’ (littérateurs), making important contributions to belles-lettres (Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī, for example, and Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mukarram ibn Manẓūr), but al-Qalqashandī still considers the position less prestigious. His criteria are a mixture of prerequisite skills and means of advancement or power. Epistolography as a literary art demands learning and originality, but familiarity with the sovereign, responsibility and privilege are also factors. By contrast, the awlād al-nās (sons and descendants of mamlūks), figures such as al-Ṣafadī or Ibn Taghribirdī, ‘had wealth and privilege but rarely held military or political offices of any significance’.³²

Yet, despite this Mamluk discrimination between the two dīwāns (duly noted by al-Maqrīzī), it was also the practice that, if the wazīr was ‘a man of the pen’, he was to be seated ‘between the sultan and the secretary’. It thus becomes easy to understand why the chancery had for some time seemed such an attractive place for littérateurs, not only for ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib himself during Nūr al-Dīn’s reign (before he joined Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s chancery) but also for others from among the margins like al-Wahrānī. ῾Imād al-Dīn’s mastery of style provoked much jealousy. Following Nūr al-Dīn’s death (569/1174) and during Ismā’īl’s reign, his role was ‘limited to chancery letter-writing’. Even al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil could not escape such jealousies.³³ On the other hand, chancery secretaries never tired of making the sovereign aware of their loyalty and indispensability; ῾Imād al-Dīn, for example, constantly makes allusions to the fact.³⁴To defend their status they are constantly striving to enhance the value of their craft, not only through the manuals and compendia that are part of the stock in trade, but also through specific comments to ‘men of the sword’ regarding their status. Al-Qalqashandī himself wrote Ḥilyat al-faḍl wa-zīnat al-karam fī᾽l-mufākhara bayna᾽l-sayf wa’l-qalam (The Ornament of Merit and the Charm of Benevolence in the Debate Between the Sword and the Pen), dedicated to the dawādar (bearer of the royal inkstand), Zayn al-Dīn al-Ẓāhirī, upon his being appointed to this office by Sultan al-Ẓāhir Barqūq (d. 794/1392).

This particular epistle of al-Qalqashandī is by no means the first of its kind; Aḥmad ibn Burd al-Aṣghar (d. 445/1053) had found the Andalusian court replete with examples of this linkage between warrior and writer.³⁵ Another possible precedent is Ḍiyā’ al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr’s on the merits of both.³⁶ Written at a crucial phase in the development of epistolography, Ibn al-Athīr’s work strives to show that competence in the field is not derived from ‘embroidery of cloth or tasty food’, but in the domains of writing and war. Surveying the entire literary scene – with its many opportunists and claimants – he jokingly demands the appointment of a muḥtasib (market inspector) to supervise the profession and exclude counterfeiters and pretenders; for him, at least, the cultural milieu of the time ‘was a marketplace for bargaining and commercial dealings’.³⁷

THE STATUS OF THE MAQĀMA: THE INTELLECTUAL SCENE AND PROSE WRITERS’ CONCERNS

The sense of rivalry and competition, coupled with a desire to enhance the vogue for epistolography, may help explain the surprising attack mounted against Abū᾽l-Qāsim al-Ḥarīrī, who was, in Ibn Khallikān’s words, ‘one of the imams [masters] of his era’.³⁸The publication of al-Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt is often seen as a major turning point in literary history because of the association, strongly upheld at the time, between risāla and maqāma.³⁹ It is thus predictable that upholders of the primacy of epistolography should be annoyed at the widespread admiration for al-Ḥarīrī’s masterpiece. Al-Qalqashandī himself was unable to escape the influence of Ibn al-Athīr’s discourse; thus the latter’s insinuations regarding al-Ḥarīrī’s performance are also to be found in al-Qalqashandī’s Ṣubḥ al-a῾shā, most especially in the introductory note to his own maqāma which is ostensibly engaged with al-Ḥarīrī’s al-Maqāma al-furātiyya in which the narrator finds himself up the Euphrates in the company of landowners who are surveying property.⁴⁰ In al-Ḥarīrī’s maqāma they discuss the comparative merits of secretaries and state financial officials. The narrator responds in rhyming prose, invoking elaborate ornaments of style and using eloquence and wit to illustrate the equal merits of both.⁴¹

By his choice of style, characterization and anecdote, al-Ḥarīrī draws attention to a rapidly changing scene (see further the section by Stewart on the maqāma in this volume, Chapter 7). Eloquence is no longer an attribute of the elite and privileged alone, but a means of making a living. The maqāma may offer people ‘a measure of deceit and lies’, as the ‘hero’ argues in his Maqāma mawṣiliyya, but he cannot earn a living without mastering the various fields of adab and possessing a wide knowledge of Arabic and Islamic culture. The implications of this character bring us face to face with problems of identity formation beginning in the eleventh century. The marginalized intellectual, as portrayed in the maqāmāt, arrives on the cultural scene with a cynical mindset needed to confront a sham society of stupendous pretensions. Al-Ḥarīrī’s stylistic virtuosity and consummate artistry anticipate a vogue for belletristic prose in decentralized cultural domains, a phenomenon that was only increased by competition, especially among the Ayyubids and the Mamluks with their kingship titles and claims of both secular and Islamic identity. It was now the function of prose writers to illustrate and confront the needs and demands that were to be a prominent feature of a crucial period of transition.

One way of understanding the continuing interest in al-Ḥarīrī’s maqāmāt is to regard his eloquent rogue-cum-stylist, Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī, as the prototype for destitute intellectuals at large. Nobody, with the exception perhaps of Rukn al-Dīn al-Wahrānī (d. 574/1179), felt at ease in the company of such a figure. Searching for employment and perhaps learning as well, al-Wahrānī left Algeria for Egypt. Unable to compete with the illustrious names at the court of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn such as al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil and ῾Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, he embarked on an opportunistic career in favour of al-Qāḍī᾽l-Fāḍil. He composed an epistle, for example, against the renowned littérateur, Tāj al-Dīn al-Kindī of Damascus (d. AH 613), in which he showed how the latter had composed a poem of self-glorification that ‘proved he was shameless’.⁴² The renowned grammarian ῾Uthmān ibn ῾Isā al-Balaṭī (d. 599/1203), who migrated from Mosul to Damascus and eventually settled in Cairo, was certainly also on al-Qādī᾽l-Fāḍil’s side against al-Kindī, and al-Wahrānī was pleased to cite his criticisms of al-Kindī, evoking in the process every imaginable kind of coarse language against the latter.

The maqāma genre, firmly established by al-Ḥarīrī’s masterpiece, provided the basis for a continuing tradition. The Andalusian al-Ḥarīzī (d. 622/1225), Ibn Ṣayqal al-Jazarī (d. 672 or 701/1273 or 1301) and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505) were among its later practitioners. Attracting the talents of al-Zamakhsharī (d. 538/1144) and al-Saraqusṭī (d. 538/1143) among many others, it earned a central place in the circles of the learned. Its appropriation of other genres and its easy fusion into epistolography made maqāma composition no less attractive than epistolography itself. It is thus not surprising that, at a much later stage, a philologist and littérateur such as al-Zabīdī (d. 1206/1791), well known as the compiler of the dictionary, Tāj al-῾arūs (The Bridal Crown), is both an authority on al-Ḥarīrī and an advocate of his art in his popular majlis (assembly).

Among prominent contributors to the maqāma genre during the central period of this long era was al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505). His contribution to the genre, Rashf al-zulāl min al-siḥr al-ḥalāl, bridges the gap between post-classical and pre-modern, especially the later maqāmāt of Shaykh Ḥasan al-῾Aṭṭār (d. 1834, a student of al-Zabīdī), Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī (1800–71) and Muḥammad al-Muwaylihī (1858–1930). Echoing al-Hamadhānī’s al-Maqāma al-bishriyya, al-Suyūṭī also follows al-Zamakhsharī’s bent for edification. These maqāmāt are narrated by twenty learned men, all married to young women. They therefore expound on the merits of marriage, each one using his own professional register to elaborate on the attractions of the female body and to commend the institution of marriage against the rival claims of illicit love, adultery and homosexuality. As emerges from his own autobiography, al-Taḥadduth bi-ni‘mat Allāh (Bearing Witness to God’s Munificence), al-Ṣuyūṭī was never reluctant to show his admiration for physical love within its legitimate Islamic context. Shaykh Ḥasan al-῾Aṭṭār’s later al-Maqāma fī᾽l-Faransīs also concerns itself with physical attraction, but now it is for the French body, and indeed the male rather than female. Reflecting perhaps encounters with members of the French expedition or simply following convention, Ḥasan al-῾Aṭṭār penned his maqāma along the lines of the gay (ghilmānī) literature of the Abbasid and later periods. However, the maqāma is not used solely to deviate from official and orthodox discourse. The genre was also used for more personal causes, lending greater efficacy to retorts in classical style, as, for example, with Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Khafājī (d. 1070/1659) in his al-Maqāmāt al-Rumiyya where he criticizes both society and era for failing to acknowledge his talents. Al-Yāzijī used his Majma῾ al-Bahrayn as a means of asserting Arab identity against the Ottoman occupiers of his homeland. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, the genre was to develop further, at the hands of Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī (in his renowned Ḥadīth ‘Isa ibn Hishām, with its pungent criticisms of urban life) as a middle ground between the conventions of the heritage of Arabic prose and the modern novel.

In retrospect, a consideration of the way in which al-Ḥarīrī’s maqāmāt succeeded in incorporating within their framework, whether by design or implication, the intellectual scene of the era, serves to reveal a great deal about self-consciousness among writers, their sense of insecurity and the strategies they adopt in order to retain a position within frequently precarious political systems. The very gesture of writing now becomes an act of intense documentation, intended to establish a presence against not only the process of erosion within the public domain but also against oblivion and neglect on the personal level. Indeed, at times there is no line of demarcation between the public and the personal; the biographical and the autobiographical fuse, as, for example, in the writings of the above-mentioned ῾Imad al-Dīn al-Iṣfahanī. In both al-Barq al-shāmī (Syrian Lightning) and al-Fatḥ al-qussī fī᾽l-fatḥ al-qudsī (Eloquent Rhetoric on the Conquest of Jerusalem) he blurs generic characteristics, as his sense of insecurity and competition prompt him to articulate an elaborate style which reflects his own skills and professional concerns. At a later stage al-Suyūṭī feels himself impelled to protect, preserve and disseminate the variety of knowledge assembled within the Islamic intellectual tradition. He thus sets himself to explore every conceivable discipline, including such topics as erotica, pharmacopoeia and geography. All this occurs in a context marked by rampant ignorance and corruption, which, together with the de facto power of the Mamluks, led him to assemble huge amounts of information and opinion, thus prefiguring in his enthusiasm for manuals and compendia the goals of the nineteenth-century renaissance (al-nahḍa). These trends can be seen in his philological treatises, such as al-Ashbāh wa᾽l-naẓī’ir and al-Muzhir fī ‘ulūm al-lugha, works that form an important part of a wider concern with Arabic as the language of the Koran. Many other scholars were to follow suit, including al-Khafājī with his Shifā’ al-ghalīl fī ma fī kalām al-῾Arab min al-dakhīl and his commentary on al-Ḥarīrī’s grammatical treatise, Durrat al-ghawwāṣ fī lughat al-khawāṣṣ.

The combination of eloquence and masterly discourse on the one hand and playfulness and excessive humour on the other could be more than a personal trait. In times of upheaval and challenge, it could also become a defensive strategy. Such a mode of writing was no mere passing phase in belles-lettres. Abū᾽l-Makārim As῾ad ibn al-Muhadhdhab ibn Mammātī (d. 606/1209), ‘a highly respected writer, who worked in the diwans and later became a head chancery clerk’,⁴³ wrote al-Fāshūsh fī ḥukm Qarāqūsh, a biting satire of Bahā’ al-Dīn Qarāqūsh, the Mamluk to whom Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn entrusted important matters while he was away on campaigns. Qarāqūsh, described by Ibn Khallikān as ‘well disposed and of good intentions’, became the butt of Ibn Mammātī’s satire, and since that time the very name has become a byword for a mercurial statesman.⁴⁴ Real or imaginary narratives of this type are numerous, but the satirical trend provides prose with a vituperative mode whose many sub-genres and functions rival that of hijā’ (lampoon) in poetry. Zayn al-Dīn al-Jawbarī, for example, wrote al-Mukhtār fī kashf al-asrār wa-hatk al-astār to satisfy his patron’s demands; it and other similar works reflect an interest in the medicant’s code – with a rich repository of ruses, tactics and sheer fun – that is of long duration. Among many other examples of compendia, we may mention the following: Ibn Abī Ḥajala’s (d. 776/1374; also written as Abī Ḥijla) Dīwān al-ṣabāba, which includes examples of poetry, anecdote and love narratives, while the same author’s Sukardān al-sulṭān (written for his patron, al-Malik al-Nāṣir) includes humour, sermons and literary anecdotes; Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad al-Ibshīhī’s (d. 850/1446) al-Mustaṭraf; ῾Alī al-Shirbīnī’s (d. 1044/1634) Maṭāli῾ al-budūr; and Shihāb al-Dīn al-Bishārī’s (eighteenth century) Bughyat al-jalīs al-musāmir. These compendia of entertainment illustrate the various ways in which littérateurs responded to new communal needs and expectations. Between them and satire proper there exists a further large body of literature, one that was subsumed in no less a compendium than Alf layla wa-layla, equally renowned throughout the world through its translation into European languages as the tales of A Thousand and One Nights, a huge compilation of narrative that found in Shaykh Muḥammad al-῾Adawī a person, albeit one with a somewhat squeamish attitude, who oversaw its publication in two volumes at the newly established Bulaq Press in the nineteenth century (see Reynolds’ contribution in this volume, Chapter 7).

The engagement of scholars and renowned humanists with the satirical and comic is well suited to the maqāma trend, with its mediating function among genres. It also attests to the increasing power of story-telling, something that induced al-Suyūṭī to write a treatise concerning the substantial impact that story-tellers and popular preachers were wielding on the populace. Change and mobility, especially in Mamluk Egypt, made it impossible to sustain a unitary discourse. While, as elite scholars, the ‘῾ulamā’ continued to be involved in scrupulous studies of ḥadīth (traditions), the mass audience was obviously drawn to a more popular Islam, one that has better met their needs ever since. It is in this context that we may share Berkey’s view that medieval Islam was ‘the creative interaction of the spirit of the traditionalists and the less restrictive tendencies of the Muslim population as a whole’.⁴⁵

Discursive middle grounds vary in their scope, and the maqāma genre itself was to be accompanied by a number of developments in other directions. Al-Wahrānī’s maqāmāt and manāmāt are a case in point, in that he deliberately resorts to coarse and vulgar language as though in a desperate revolt against refined prose. The conscious violation of the codes and standards of elite prose occurs as part of a carnivalesque pattern in which the assembly is re-enacted in the epistle or the maqāma, and eloquence is juxtaposed with the grotesque. In one faṣl (chapter) he details the various paths that lead to the underground world of Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo, while in another he gives free rein to his frustrations: ‘poetry’, he claims, ‘is in recession and disuse’ and ‘poets are destitute and introverted’, all this in lands where ‘rhyming prose is useless for earning a living’.⁴⁶ This same sense of discontent may have served as a trigger for other patterns of dissent in the form of religious practices, each with its own language of deviation; thus, for example, the rapid expansion of mystical Sufi orders from the twelfth century onwards when such practices as saint-worship, the offering of oblations, and visitations became more popular,⁴⁷ even though the Ayyubids and the Mamluks were more attuned to religion as homogeneous practice. Records of Baybars’ reign as al-Malik al-Ẓāhir (658–76/1260–77) recreate him in popular memory as a legendary hero,⁴⁸ not only for his victories against the Mongols (the battle of ῾Ayn Jālūt in 1260) and the Crusaders, but also for his piety.

During the Baḥrī period (to 784/1382), intellectuals were often co-opted because of ‘their function as devotional and educational intermediaries with the public’.⁴⁹ Al-Maqrīzī associates the growth of the ῾ulamā’ class with the Baḥrī period when every Mamluk had to acquire an adequate education in Koran and ḥadīth at the hands of a faqīh before being initiated into the rigours of military life.⁵⁰ During this period the turbaned classes included dīwān scribes, theologians, preachers and littérateurs at large. However, especially when closely tied to the practice of religion and law, the ‘ulamā’, as Lapidus notes, ‘played a crucial role’ in social, religious and cultural communication.⁵¹ Whether they are included as part of the chancery profession or of the religious institution (including the system of justice), their discourse is intended to both inform and control. The resort to prosification and citation, coupled to which is a blending of both writing and speech with Koranic discourse, signifies a quest for homogeneity in the face of dissent and heterodoxy. The ῾ulamā’ also played the role of transmitting ‘legitimate religious knowledge’.⁵² Invoking the rich Islamic homiletic tradition (one that assumes great significance in times of strife), many pre-modern preachers developed a style of exhortation that utilized a growing prose repertoire and manipulated a public that was not only thirsty for knowledge, but also anxious to curb their exploitation by rulers. In such a context, the story of the Hanbali preacher Shihāb al-Dīn ibn ῾Alī al-Shīshīnī (late fifteenth century) is instructive.⁵³ A popular preacher of ḥadīth and Koran, he found himself despised and his life endangered when he chose to side with the sultan’s intention to raise taxes.

During the Mamluk period, efforts were made to incorporate the ῾ulamā’ within the system. In his Khiṭaṭ, al-Maqrīzī details the Baḥrī Mamluks’ lavish spending on madrasas, mosques, schools, orphanages, ḥadīth assemblies, khānqāhs (Sufi sites) and zāwiyas (small mosques or prayer rooms) and ribāṭ (accommodation for Sufis).⁵⁴ However, preachers, writers and other people from the learned classes could also secure a living from their own professions as retailers and artisans. Making sure to maintain a secure distance from every religious or educational building that was endowed by the state, they survived all attempts at imposing homogeneity and from time to time managed to produce their own particular modes of disapproval and dissent.⁵⁵ Although some scholars might at times veer towards more orthodox postures, others would revive or encourage popular practices, such as prayers for the Prophet’s intervention, saintly mediation and belief in magic, the evil eye, portents and benedictions, all of which have a literature of their own. Indeed, the popular belief in certain practices, as part of a popular Islam, found a major supporter in ‘Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1050–1143/1641–1731). An authority on Hanafi fiqh and ḥadīth, he argues in Kashf al-nūr ‘an aṣḥāb al-qubūr (The Unveiling of Light from the Occupants of Graves) that tomb visitations, building domes and rituals at large are not contrary to Sunna as long as innovation agrees with the objectives and dictates of the Sharia law.

Historical and biographical narratives had a strong appeal for the elite. They were, however, composed to conform to a series of guidelines, standards, and obligations. In matters of narrativity, for example, they never lost sight of what was considered acceptable discourse, the primary emphasis being on clarity and restraint. While dissent was certainly present, there were also theoretical underpinnings no less cogent than the obligation to a particular sovereign. Al-Maqrīzī’s interpretation of history, for instance, shares elements with Ibn Khaldūn’s (also noted by Irwin, in his contribution to this volume, Chapter 5), especially in the search for the causes of socio-economic rise and fall, but his mind remains that of a political scientist willing to probe the ideology of history. Indeed, al-Maqrīzī provides two examples to argue against one-sidedness in historiography. One concerns the entire cycle of usurpation:⁵⁶ any regime that resorts to dislodging people and confiscating their belongings is employing a system of theft. The whole dynastic succession since the Ayyubids had been ‘nothing but one thief robbing another, one usurper replacing another’.⁵⁷ The second excoriates those who practise opportunism in general. Al-Maqrīzī regards affluence and justice as salient aspects of sound government; he therefore supports his topographical and annalistic record with views intended to uncover bias and subordination to the state, a posture that since then has become a distinctive feature of historiography.⁵⁸

Al-Maqrīzī’s politics tend to lump together the religious (divine), the natural and the human. The entire phenomenon is informed by a Divine Will ‘which you cannot change’. Thus, in surveying the year 805/1402, the Nile flood and the devastation involved in the invasions of Timur Lang, he also expresses his dismay at ‘oppression of so many types’ to be found in Egypt, where ‘those in charge confiscated property, tracked down the wealthy’ and interfered with trade and business.⁵⁹ And yet, this mode also incorporates its own informative strategies. Al-Maqrīzī is not alone in designing his Khiṭaṭ and other works to appeal to readers, by including ‘entertaining accounts and pleasing maxims, without undue elaboration or inconvenient intrusion or brevity, but using a middle road between the two’. This appeal by al-Maqrīzī to the goals of entertainment and edification is in line with traditional forms of biography and historiography; Ibn Khallikān had already invoked such a method as the ‘most effectual inducement to reading’.⁶⁰ Ibn Khaldūn’s perspective on this issue is somewhat different, being governed by a theory of history that led him to cite every detail, even Timur Lang’s habit of passing out food among his own warriors. Such detail is of direct relevance to his theory of tribal solidarity and allegiance. More concerned with his theory of history (leading him to explain it to Timur Lang himself and to cite examples from Mongol practice in order to support it), he adopts a style that is clear and functional.

During the lengthy period under review many works with a historical intent sought to blend into a single work aspects of different genres. Notable among later examples during this period are Ibn Iyās’ (d. 930/1523) Badā’i῾ al-zuhūr fī waqā’i῾al-duhūr (The Choicest Blooms Concerning the Incidence of Dooms) and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān al-Jabartī’s (d. 1238/1822) ‘Ajā’ib al-āthār fī᾽l-tarājm wa᾽l-akhbār (Remarkable Reports on Biography and History), to be discussed below. Their importance in the context of a consideration of the role of historical writing within a survey of belletristic literature lies not only in their mode of ‘self-presentation and self-perception’, something that can be noted in historical and biographical narratives in general,⁶¹ but also in their substantial reliance on antecedent authorities and on standards, methods and codes that had for some time been the mainstay of elite tastes and writing.

While the Mamluk period may have experienced a heyday in biographical and historical writing (648–918/1250–1512), the Ottoman era in Egypt (918–1226/1512–1811) also witnessed significant contributions to the tradition which were to have a significant influence on trends in the modern period. The Damascene historian al-Murādī (d. 1206/1791) wrote Silk al-durar fī a‘yān al-qarn al-thānī ‘ashar, a biography of eighteenth-century notables. Following the collaborative trends of the earlier Mamluk period, al-Murādī arranged with Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī, the versatile compiler of the dictionary, Tāj al-῾arūs (The Bridal Crown), to compile a history of Egypt during the Ottoman era. The latter asked his student, al-Jabartī, to help. Both mentors died in the same year, leaving al-Jabartī as sole author of ‘Ajā’ib al-athār fī᾽l-tarājim wa᾽l-akhbār, a historical work covering the period 1100–1237/1688–1821. Using reports, anecdotes and his own eyewitness accounts, he offers the most detailed account available of the arrival of the French expedition in 1798 and subsequent events. Although appreciative of French achievements (as his description of the Institute makes clear), he was also very critical of French policy in Egypt. Indeed, though one may agree with Moreh that he is ‘the first herald of the Arab renaissance who opposed popular Sufism and superstition’, al-Jabartī also shows how Bonaparte himself manipulated religious sentiment and posed as a neo-patriarch who chose to abandon all the principles of the French Revolution as he addresses the Egyptian community as the vicar of God, for ‘our acts are His will and divine decree’.⁶² As David Ayalon notes, al-Jabartī identifies and analyses the socio-political factors that had brought about radical transformations in post-Mamluk Egypt, where infiltration into the fabric of Mamluk households had brought the native population to the very centres of power, thus influencing henceforth the very mechanism of political authority.⁶³

In spite of these developments in historical writing, the predilection for combining history and biography continues. As noted earlier, these two closely linked modes are already seen to coexist in such pioneering works as al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī’s (d. 463/1071) Ta’rīkh Baghdād and Ibn ‘Asākir’s Ta’rīkh Dimashq. In the contents of such works, littérateurs and poets find a place alongside caliphs, descendants of the Prophet, legists and other dignitaries. Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (d. 681/1282) was particularly concerned with the biographical aspect, and his comprehensive project of compilation, Irshād al-alibbā’, involved the inclusion of significant personages, with particular emphasis on the learned. Yet scholars give still greater credit to Ibn Khallikān (d. 681/1282), whose biographically organized work, Wafayāt al-a῾yān (Obituaries of the Notables), was to serve as a model for further research by al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) in his Siyar a῾lām al-nubalā’ (The Biographies of the Foremost among Nobles) and by Muḥammad ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1362) in al-Wāfī bi᾽l-wafayāt. To Ibn Khallikān’s sourcework, Ibn al-Ṣuqā῾ī (d. 725/1325) contributed a completion and addendum, Tālī wafayāt al-a῾yān, while Ibn Shākir al-Kutubī (d. 764/1363) composed his Fawāt al-wafayāt to fill gaps in the original. At a still later date Muṣṭafā ibn ῾Abdallāh al-Rūmī Mulla Kātib al-Chalabī, Ḥājj Khalīfa (1017–67/1608–56), composed his Kashf al-ẓunūn which focuses in the main on information regarding bibliographical sources. Biographical dictionaries devoted to specific professions such as ‘Uyūn al-anbā’ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbā’ (Best Reports on Classes of Physicians) by Ibn Uṣaybi‘a suggests a characteristic level of interdisciplinarity. Al-Suyūṭī’s Ḥusn al-muḥādara fī akhbār Miṣr wa᾽l-Qāhira (The Appealing Ensemble concerning Records of Egypt and Cairo) may be seen as an illustration of yet another trend that is indebted to earlier patterns while still maintaining its author’s links to a particular place and time. Here al-Suyūṭī is keen to associate himself with Cairo, as he portrays an intellectual climate through descriptions of patterns of learning, disputation and intellectual progress among the elite.

At times the role of literary discourse, and especially poetry, in such writing becomes pronounced. Of such a trend ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr’s (d. 630/1233) al-Kāmil fī᾽l-tārīkh (Summa Historica) is a good example. He enlists stories, anecdotes, local details and circumstantial evidence as tools now at the disposal of every historian, but is still more intent on explaining outcomes and suggesting rationales for the events that he recounts.

In the particular realm of royal biography, a genre which, almost ipso facto, sits at the very centre of the tradition of belles-lettres, mention needs to be made, among others, of the works of: ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (519–97/1125–1201), Shihāb al-Dīn Abū᾽l-Qāsim Abū Shāma (599–665/1203–67), Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ῾Abd al-Ẓāhir (620–92/1233–93), his nephew Shāfi῾ ibn ῾Alī (649–730/1252–1330), Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād (539–632/1145–1235), ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn Shaddād (613–84/1217–85), Ibn Ḥabīb (710–79/1310–77), and Ibn Abī Ḥajala (725–77/1325–75). ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī’s masterly prose had for a long time posed a challenge to chancery secretaries; both al-Barq al-shāmī (Syrian Lightning) and al-Fatḥ al-qussī fī᾽l-fatḥ al-Qudsī (Eloquent Rhetoric on the Conquest of Jerusalem) were intended not only to record Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s attributes and achievements but also to cite letters, poems and anecdotes with no direct bearing on Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. While the previously mentioned al-Kāmil fī᾽l-tārīkh (Summa Historica) of ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn al-Athīr made use of ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib’s work, it clearly avoids his stylistic virtuosity and develops a less sympathetic view of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn.

With royal biography there is often an anticipatable tendency to lavish compliments on its subject, to accommodate his particular vision of himself, and to highlight glorious details that justify particular feats and achievements. Writers who seek to assess rulers while they are still in office pay little or no regard to the means by which power was obtained and seem prepared to take violence, murder, treachery and fraud for granted.⁶⁴ Ibn Taghrībirdī (d. 874/1470) is a case in point, although in his al-Nujūm al-zāhira (Bright Stars) he seems reluctant to side completely with his subject. Al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh is portrayed as a person of conscience, initially unwilling to condemn al-Nāṣir Faraj to death, not only out of loyalty to ‘his master, al-Malik al-Zāhir Barqūq’ (d. 801/1399) but also because his son, al-Nāṣir Faraj (d. 815/1412), spared them more than once.⁶⁵ Ibn Taghrībirdī finds himself needing to depict a ruler in action, someone possessed of a particular frame of mind and vision through which to implement his views and exercise his sovereign rights. Thus, he is said to be ‘of lofty ambition’ and ‘expert in planning’. In domestic and foreign politics he has ‘complete knowledge, adroitness, sagacity and good judgement’. The ruler’s traits are thus presented in congenial terms, to such an extent that the reader is persuaded to accept his handling of the chief amirs, no matter how cruel it might seem. In other words, Ibn Taghrībirdī utilizes reason and discourse to present an image of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh as a just and efficient ruler. However, such a view of Ibn Taghrībirdī’s work should not cause us to overlook his critical views on Mamluk ‘corruption and factionalism’ as seen in his Ḥawādith al-duhūr. In resorting to such criticism, he was not alone. Biographical writings, such as Ibn ‘Arabshāh’s (791–854/1392–1450) ῾Ajā’ib al-maqdūr, may show their subject in a negative light. He, for example, can present a very hostile picture of Timur Lang, whereas his life of Jaqmaq, his contemporary and the Sultan of Egypt presents the latter as exemplary in every respect.

The tendency to include autobiographical sketches in compendia is a salient feature in the writings of the period.⁶⁶ While specifically concerned with biographical entries or overviews of the cultural scene, writers have a habit of inserting their authorial presence into the text and providing information about themselves. Examples can be found in the works of Abū᾽l-Khayr Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Jazarī (d. 833/1429), al-Yūninī (640–725/1242–1325/6), Abū᾽l-Fidā’ (672–732/1273–1331), Baybars al-Manṣūrī (d. 725/1325), Muḥammad ibn ῾Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī (d. 902/1496) and al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505).

In Ghāyat al-nihāya fī ṭabaqāt al-qurrā’ (The Ultimate on Classes of Reciters), al-Jazarī (658–739/1260–1338) provides an overview of his own upbringing, training and career. His autobiographical sketch may not manifest the characteristics of a distinctive prose genre, but its goal of illustrating a career for emulation is always present. This autobiographical element so evident in prefaces and introductions to compendia is an indication of the commitment that writers felt to their cultural milieu. Even when trying to stress their independence, as Ibn Taghrībirdī does in al-Manhal al-ṣāfī, writers betray a great deal about their own role and their sense of vulner ability.

Topographical narratives constitute a particular kind of writing, in that they are a blend of history, geography and city planning. While Ibn Abī Ṭahīr Ṭayfūr’s (d. 280/893) Kitāb Baghdād (Book on Baghdad) was a pioneer work in this genre, it was al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī (d. 464/1071) whose Ta’rīkh Baghdād (History of Baghdad) offered a model for later writings by discussing the life of a city – its topography, characteristics and history, and biographies of its notables. A focus on topographical detail requires a different kind of prose style, one that emphasizes description, spatial images and city layout. Within their own specific historical contexts, the significance of such accounts of urban topography transcends the means that they adopt in the process of recording physical details of urban design and city structures. In most cases, for example, they provide lively portraits of marketplaces, mosques, baths and madrasas, and especially of dominant modes of exchange and discourse. Other types of survey provide insights into the life of the lower strata of society, the activities of preachers and story-tellers in mosques and marketplaces, professionals, artisans and ‘ulamā’ of every kind, and into the lifestyle of the court. Biographical compendia and surveys of notables and dynasties vary in value. ῾Izz al-Dīn ibn Shaddād’s (d. 684/1285) al-A῾lāq al-khaṭīra fī dhikr umarā’ al-Shām wa᾽l-Jazīra provides significant information on troop contingents and taxation policy, but the coverage that it devotes to baths, mosques and madrasas is particularly important in any quest for details regarding the lifestyle of the time. Similar works would follow. ‘Abd al-Qādir al-Nu῾aymī’s (d. 927/1521) Tanbīh al-ṭālib wa-irshād al-dāris is specifically concerned with madrasas and mosques in Damascus. ‘Alī al-Hārawī (d. 611/1215) includes a chapter on Damascus in Kitāb al-ishārāt ilā ma῾rifat al-ziyārāt, but his primary focus is on sacred sites in Syria, Palestine, Iraq and North Africa.

It is yet another sign of the decentralization already noted that, from the twelfth century onwards, compilers of biographies were also involved in the process of regionalization and the development of a more local sense of identity. Along with biographies of notables and rulers, the tendency to claim some particular regional distinction was present even in writings on the prophet. While the traditional authority of Ibn Isḥāq (d. 150/767) and his editor Ibn Hishām (d. 218/833) continue to be cited, this regionalizing trend is notable in Muḥammad al-Ṣāliḥī’s (d. 942/1535) biography of the Prophet, entitled al-Sīra al-shāmiyya (The Syrian Biography).

In addition to a contest among the major cities for works that would celebrate their fame, there is also a desire to capture the more physical aspects of the socio-political scene. With al-Maqrīzī’s (d. 845/1441) al-Mawā‘iẓ wa᾽l-i‘tibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa᾽l-āthār (Teachings and Lessons Drawn from the Mention of Sites and Remains, usually known under the abbreviated title of al-Khiṭaṭ), already often cited during this survey, topography offers the prose tradition a new and distinctive level of detailed description of Mamluk Cairo within a particular political context. Needless to say, his work makes use of other types of writing, but the exceptional value of al-Khiṭaṭ lies in the way he combines a discussion of sites with details of economic growth and decline and of the nature of political authority. His detailed coverage of areas, districts, squares, mosques and marketplaces has an anecdotal quality that places human beings firmly in the context of daily transactions. Even so, he does not lose sight of the need to pay necessary attention to educational and religious institutions, well aware that the Baḥrī Mamluks continued to be acutely involved in the education of young mamlūks before permitting them access to the third level, the one at which they could communicate with amirs. In fact, the situation changed during the reigns of al-Ẓahīr Barqūq and his successors: mamlūks were allowed to mingle with people, ‘to marry city women’ and to lead a ‘life of idleness’. Al-Maqrīzī was clearly not in favour of such trends, believing that the former elitism should have been maintained.

Al-Maqrīzī’s description of Cairo’s sites and his meticulous anecdotal survey of scenes of roguery capture the historical moment and use its socio-political implications to reflect on the Mamluk dynasty.⁶⁷ While less concerned with drawing attention to virtues and merits, this kind of urban historiography shares common ground with Mujīr al-Dīn al-‘Ulaymī’s (d. 928/1522) al-Uns al-jalīl bi-tārīkh al-Quds wa᾽l-Khalīl (The Exalted Company in the History of Jerusalem and Hebron), for example, a trend that may be traced back to Ibn ‘Asākir and his al-Mustaqṣā fī faḍā’il al-Masjid al-Aqṣā. Here the concern is to establish a connection between Jerusalem and neighbouring cities and to survey politics during the reign of Sultan Qā’it Bey. In so doing, the author manages to blend genres, styles and documentation within a single work. Its significance lies in the author’s aspiration to re-establish a sense of al-Quds’ topography following the destruction of its fortifications (616/1219), an event supervised by al-Mu῾aẓẓam ‘Īsā (d. 624/1226) prior to surrendering it to Frederick Ⅱ.⁶⁸

Prose-writing varies in accordance with the status and professional activities of its practitioners. Such divisions and deviations also pervade the realm of religion and jurisprudence. In fact, the growing taste for elite prose cannot be viewed in isolation from a developing taste for refinement at the expense of sincerity of emotion, a point with which, as we have already observed, Ibn Khaldūn took issue not only in his theory of history and society but also in his despondent view of the state of epistolography and refined prose. Affected conduct and an elevated prose style were both disturbing to newcomers to the East, and yet, as Ibn Khaldūn argues, the very dynastic nature of rule involves repetition and conventional practice, leading inevitably to decadence. When the same phenomenon occurs in nepotistic chancery appointments, the result is imitation, ornamentation and an emphasis on virtuosity. On Ibn al-῾Arabī’s arrival in Cairo in 598/1200, for example, he was dismayed to encounter Cairene Sufis whose ‘overriding concern and chief preoccupation was cleaning their clothes and combing their beards’ and who ‘decked themselves out in gowns worn by fityān [chivalrous young men], while neglecting all question of obligatory and supererogatory acts’.⁶⁹ In Ibn al-῾Arabī’s view, Sufism is no less deviational than popular rituals, heterodox visitations to tombs of saints and other practices that were to appal the conservative theologian Ibn Taymiyya (d. 728/1328).

Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn al-῾Arabī (560–638/1165–1240) of Murcia encapsulates the journey from West to East in Arabic. His writings had an abiding influence on writers of both prose and poetry. One such was ‘Abd al-Wahhāb ibn Aḥmad al-Sha‘rānī (897–973/1492–1565), as is clear from his al-Yawāqīt wa᾽l-jawāhir (Emeralds and Jewels). Ibn al-῾Arabī’s thought is clearly summarized, making it accessible to the underprivileged people to whom the work is addressed. Although an adherent of the Shadhili sect of Sufism, al-Sha‘rānī avoids particularizing statements and thus represents a middle ground that manages to accommodate the mainstream, a position that was intended to confront the fundamentalist position of Ibn Taymiyya. Al-Suyūṭī’s application of Ibn al-‘Arabī’s Sufism had a more political goal. In the context of his clashes with Sultan Qā’it Bey and his rejection of Sultan al-Ghawrī’s offers, al-Suyūṭī was more committed to the application of the fatwā, an institution that enabled the individual jurisconsult (faqīh) to make judgements concerning the abuses of Islamic legal practice. In so doing, he established a precedent that was to be followed by sixteenth-century Sufi scholars such as Najm al-Dīn al-Ghaytī and Ibn Ḥajr al-Haytamī. Al-Suyūṭī also undertook to compose apologias for the writings of Ibn al-Fāriḍ and Ibn al-‘Arabī. When, for example, Burhān al-Dīn ‘Umar al-Biqā’ī (d. 885/1480) wrote his Tanbīh al-ghabī ilā takfīr Ibn ‘Arabī (A Warning to Simpletons Concerning Ibn ‘Arabī’s Apostasy), al-Suyūṭī wrote a retort, Tanbīh al-ghabī fī takhṭī’ Ibn ‘Arabī (A Warning to Simpletons Who Find Fault with Ibn ‘Arabī), a work that serves as a model for future apologias in defence of Sufism against fundamentalist attacks, such as those of Ibn ῾Abd al-Wahhāb. The great eighteenth-century Syrian sage ῾Abd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (mentioned above) was yet more committed to his great Sufi forebears, such as Ibn al-Fāriḍ, Ibn al-῾Arabī and al-Jīlī. Indeed the record of his travels shows how much he tried to emulate Ibn al-῾Arabī’s great work, al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya (Meccan Revelations). Like its model, al-Nābulusī’s al-Ḥaqīqa wa᾽l-majāz fī riḥlat bilād al-Shām wa-Miṣr wa᾽l-Ḥijāz is composed as a literary work, embellished with anecdotes, poems and elevated literary passages.

Between Sufi discourse and oratory there is a common ground of religious referentiality, although each fulfils its purposes in different ways. Ibn Khalaf put oratory second only to literary prose or epistolography as inshā’. In this context, the work of Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī (d. 654/1256), Mir’āt al-zamān (The Mirror of the Times), is often cited. In 605/1208, for example, one of his Friday sermons advocating the continuance of a campaign to free Jerusalem is said to have driven Damascene ladies to send him their hair, 300 braids’ worth, to be used for reins and bridles for horses in the campaign.⁷⁰ Another sermon in 626/1229 was equally effective: dismayed and angered by al-Malik al-Kāmil ibn Ayyūb’s (d. 635/1237) surrender of the demolished Jerusalem to Frederick Ⅱ, Ibn al-Jawzī protests as follows:

Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn Zakī, the chief Shafii judge of Aleppo (550–98/1155–1201) was chosen by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn to deliver the first Friday sermon in Jerusalem upon its deliverance from the Franks (583/1187). He begins with recitations from the Koran, then offers his own expressions of gratitude to God, couched in balanced, rhymed prose, and imbued with allusions to Koranic discourse. The names of the first four caliphs are included as preparation for the mention of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn as one of the heroes of Islam.

In addition to sharing a primary register characterized by Koranic vocabulary and imagery, sermons and epistles both incorporate other genres within their frame of reference and then emerge in hybrid forms of a transgeneric nature. They adopt the prevalent mode of discourse to address specific occasions, in the process making use of official dispatches, memoirs, poems, other sermons and anecdotes. Both categories envelop their exordia and conclusions in Koranic salutations, admonitions and prayers, and both extend themselves beyond the limits of any one specific genre, to represent literary prose in its inclusive function, combining differing themes, disciplines and concerns with the basic art of address. Sermons are more limited by their religious or political functions, but chancery correspondence, along with less official types of rasā’il, have a broader scope.

Although the demarcation in prose between mystical and earthly love is usually not difficult to establish, at times it is blurred. Taking the form of anecdotes and historical accounts and often lapsing into sentimentalism regarding chaste love, the Muslim tradition also builds on significant antecedents, seen most notably in the work of Ibn Ḥazm (d. 456/1064). In his renowned treatise on love, Ṭawq al-ḥamāma (The Dove’s Neckring), the Andalusian imam, jurisprudent, essayist and poet set the tone for a new line of discussion, one in which the sacred is fused with the profane in a natural flow of argumentation, analysis and polished description. However, his separation of hawā or ‘ishq (desire and passion) from love was later to be rejected by conservative thinkers, most notably Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya (d. 751/1350) in his Rawḍat al-muḥibbīn wa-nuzhat al-mushtāqīn (Lovers’ Meadow and the Entertainment of the Infatuated). Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya offered a counter-reading to Ibn Ḥazm, one that conformed with the more orthodox modes of analysis being advocated by both Ibn Qayyim and Ibn Taymiyya which unequivocally rejected any implications of physical infatuation or contact.

For several reasons it was the western regions of the Arab world that offered more in the analysis of the love theme in prose. The Tunisian al-Tifāshī (d. 651/1253), for example, composed Nuzhat al-albāb fī mā lā yūjad fī kitāb (Delight of the Hearts at What is Never Found in Books), a work that serves to complement treatises that had been lost and to which new detail was added concerning the notions of love and passion. But it was Shaykh῾Umar Ibn Muḥammmad al-Nafzāwī who, upon the wish of his patron, Muḥammad al-Zawāwī, the wazir of Tunis, wrote al-Rawḍ al-῾āṭir fī nuzhat al-khāṭir (The Perfumed Garden) as a study on sexual intercourse; the challenge involved was tactfully broached through no less an authority than the Koranic verse, ‘Your womenfolk are a field for you, so go to your field as you wish.’

The period from the mid-twelfth century onwards witnesses an enormous growth in the composition of erudite treatises and compendia. Aside from the understandable fear of losing contact with the past, represented by the legacy of books and authoritative documents passed from one generation to the other, the decentralization of the caliphate itself and the resurgence of peripheral dynasties throughout Dār al-Islām demanded archival and secretarial activity; and not only in order to collect scattered documents and record professional expertise in the craft of prose-writing, but also to make such compiled material available to the newly emerging leisured classes. Aside from these readerships, the administrative class and the court were both in need of a cultural apparatus through which to communicate with society in times of war and peace, upheaval and stability. A trend that has often been accused of lack of originality is better viewed and evaluated as a post-classical endeavour that combines fact, commitment and erudition within a consultative literary milieu that was characteristic of Mamluk culture, involving the combined arts of bibliographic research and compilation.

Krachkovski relies on Martin Hartmann’s earlier verdict on Mamluk Egypt in order to argue that at this point in time Egypt possessed a literature unequalled anywhere else in the East.⁷² Al-Qalqashandī notes that at the time Cairo ‘benefited from the most honourable of writers as no other kingdom did’, and that ‘it had the kind of notables and men of letters that no other country had’.⁷³ Encyclopedic works such as al-Qalqashandī’s Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā, al-Nuwayrī’s (677–732/1279–1332) Nihāyat al-arab and Muḥammad Ibn Ibrāhim al-Waṭwāṭ’s (d. 718/1318) Mabāhij al-fikr wa-manāhij al-῾ibar (The Delights of Thought and Means of Edification), are all cases in point. The last of these works is important for the art of writing because its encyclopedic wealth is presented in literary format. Written in a refined style and illustrated with examples of poetry and literary prose, the book is an excellent example of the aesthetic principles of the era, challenging negative verdicts on the cultural climate of the period. No less important, and indeed of even greater literary value, is Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ῾Abd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī’s Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab (The Ultimatum of Intent in Literary Arts), a work whose significance lies in its concentration on epistolographers’ needs in the natural and social sciences, they being fields in which the kātib should be adept in order to discharge his responsibilities in the best manner. In al-Ghuzūlī’s (d. 815/1412) Maṭāli῾al-budūr fī manāzil al-surūr (Shining Full Moons in the Abodes of Delight) he offers ‘delights’ in the form of a house with many rooms and parts; each site accommodates something special, while adjoining sections and structural properties satisfy worldly delights by invoking selections from literature at large. As one section specifically notes, al-Ghuzūlī’s target readership is the leisured classes; indeed the entire work is intended to highlight such a coterie. Shihāb al-Dīn ibn Faḍl Allāh al-῾Umarī (700–49/1301–49) composed two works of this type. The first, al-Ta῾rīf, is specifically addressed to epistolographers, whereas the second, al-Masālik, is more general in focus. The successful way in which al-Ta‘rīf establishes terms and format for the discipline was to engage the attention of trainee epistolographers for a long time; in a form updated by Ibn Nāzir al-Jaysh (fifteenth century), Tathqīf al-Taʿrīf bi᾽l-Muṣṭalaḥ al-Sharīf, it continued to serve as an authoritative source.

Arabic travel literature, especially that focusing on journeys from West to East, was often propelled by both the desire for knowledge and the obligation to perform the pilgrimage. One such long-distance traveller, Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217), had an observant eye, and during his visits to cities on his long journey to Mecca he would take notes on amazing sites and sights. His yet more renowned successor in travel, Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (d. 779/1377), offers details of his visit to China. He adopts a pleasant style to describe the habitats, lifestyles, trade and morals of the peoples whose lands he visits. These accounts however (and in all likelihood their sources) also manage to tell us a great deal about the needs of Dār al-Islām. While the comparative approach is used in most accounts of other lands and their inhabitants, the perspective and the nature of information reflect the narrator’s view of his own society, its aspirations and intentions, with respect to the rest of the world. This very interest reveals a degree of affluence, in that prosperous societies look for exchange and expansion. This applies to both the Baḥrī Mamluk Egypt, as described by al-Maqrīzī,⁷⁴ and to Morocco during the reigns of Abū᾽l-Ḥasan al-Marīnī (731–49/1331–48) and Abū ῾Inān (749–59/1348–58) in Ibn Baṭṭūṭa’s account.

The accounts of Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, along with other works of travel literature, can be subsumed under the rubric of interculturality, since each one projects a particular perspective on the conditions of other peoples. However, the same does not apply to other categories of work that focus on particular aspects of knowledge and empirical experience, those on topography, for example, navigation and geography at large. One case of some relevance is that of Aḥmad ibn Mājid (d. 905/1500). Although he is usually mentioned in relation to the Portuguese discovery of the Ivory Coast and the Gulf, his books on navigation (including those in rhymed prose) were of great significance to navigational adab in that they brought together a number of sciences within a single work.

The sheer variety of prose-writing surveyed in this chapter attests to the existence of a dynamic culture characterized by the active involvement of littérateurs, widespread networks and a magnanimous devotion to the world of writing. Incorporating varieties of narrative, histories, biographies, autobiographies, chancery compendia, topographical writing, travel accounts, epistles, and works on every social or natural and pure science, the literary output is enormous. Criticism, rhetoric, grammar and linguistics, not to mention biographies of notable poets, such as Ibn al-‘Adīm’s Inṣāf al-taḥarrī on al-Ma῾arrī and al-Badīʿī’s al-Ṣubḥ al-Munbī on al-Mutanabbī, provide yet another significant chapter in belles-lettres. In these writings, as in biographical and historical writing in general, the prose tends to be lucid, clear and readable. The few instances of ornateness, as with ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, should not be considered to be general features of a literary tradition that included such variety and wealth. At times epistolography needs embellishment, and for specific reasons, especially in the context of its drive for ascendancy among competing professions and genres. When we survey the entire scene, its dynamic forces and modes of expression, within such a rich and diversified output, belletristic prose appears to be so called more as a matter of convenience than as a designation of contrivance. Its variety, richness and energy defy sweeping generalizations. Indeed it calls for a more serious and careful analysis that is freed from both the trammels of ‘Romantic authority’⁷⁵ and a too easy surrender to modes of analysis that choose to evaluate literary traditions only within the optic of centralized systems and states.

¹ For a discussion of al-Ḥarīrī and the maqāma genre, see Beeston, ‘Al-Hamadhānī, al-Ḥarīrī’; also Kilito, Les Séances.

² For a survey of these transfers and the controversy over the scribe and the maqāma writer, see al-Musawi, ‘Vindicating a Profession’.

³ See Petry, The Civilian Elite of Cairo, p. ⅹⅺ. Also, Ibn Khaldūn, al-Ta‘rīf bi-Ibn Khaldūn.

⁴ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-a῾shā, vol. I, p. 89.

⁵ See J. D. Latham’s contribution in CHALUP, ch. 3.

⁶ Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism, pp. 93–4.

⁷ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-a ῾shā, vol. I, section 3, pp. 89–92.

⁸ Abū Shāma,‘Uyūn al-rawḍatayn, vol. I, p. 192.

⁹ Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-sā’ir, vol. I, p. 107.

¹⁰ Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-zamān, vol. Ⅷ, p. 472.

¹¹ See Guo, ‘Mamluk Historiographic Studies’, 43.

¹² Gibb, ‘al-Barq al-shāmī’.

¹³ Ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, vol. I, p. 567.

¹⁴ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-a‘shā, vol. ⅩⅣ, pp. 140, 82.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 83.

¹⁶ Ibid., vol. I, pp. 89–92.

¹⁷ See e.g. Yāqūt, Irshād, vol. Ⅴ, p. 351. See vol. I, p. 387, on Aḥmad ibn Ṭahir Abū᾽l-Faḍl, and his 14 vols. on prose and prosification, and vol. Ⅲ, pp. 402–3, on Sinān ibn Thābit ibn Qurrah and his letter on the difference between the epistolographer and the poet. The risāla genre is also the subject of a detailed treatment by Hämeen-Anttila in this volume, Chapter 6.

¹⁸ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, vol. ⅩⅣ, pp. 89–92.

¹⁹ See al-‘Umarī, al-Taʿrīf; also Ibn Nāẓir al-Jaysh, Kitāb tathqīf al-taʿrīf.

²⁰ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-a῾shā, vol. ⅩⅣ, pp. 126–45.

²¹ Bosworth, ‘al-Kalkashandī’, p. 510.

²² Bosworth, ‘A Maqāma on Secretaryship’, pp. 292–3.

²³ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, vol. ⅩⅣ, pp. 134–40.

²⁴ The Banū Faḍl Allāh family was in charge of chancery for a century. It was to the credit of the family that the Qāḍī Shihāb al-Dīn put chancellery terminology into practice. See al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, vol. Ⅶ, p. 332 n.

²⁵ Ibid., vol. Ⅸ, pp. 10–12.

²⁶ Ibid., vol. ⅩⅣ, p. 18.

²⁷ Ibid., p. 157.

²⁸ Ibid., pp. 157–88.

²⁹ Ibid., vol. Ⅶ, p. 341.

³⁰ Lewis, Islam, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 166–8.

³¹ Escovitz, ‘Vocational Patterns’, 43.

³² Holt, Age of the Crusades, p. 141.

³³ Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, vol. Ⅳ, p. 221.

³⁴ al-Iṣfahānī, Sanā al-barq, pp. 193–4.

³⁵ See Cachia, ‘Andalusī Belles Lettres’, p. 209.

³⁶ Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-sā’ir, vol. I, pp. 132–5.

³⁷ Ibid., p. 133.

³⁸ Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, vol. Ⅳ, p. 63.

³⁹ Arazi and Ben Shammay, ‘Risāla’.

⁴⁰ Ibn al-Athīr, al-Mathal al-sā’ir, vol. I, p. 86; and al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, vol. ⅩⅣ, p. 125.

⁴¹ See Preston, Makamat, p. 484 n.

⁴² al-Wahrānī, Manāmāt al-Wahrānī, p. 222.

⁴³ Yāqūt, Irshād, vol. Ⅱ, p. 179.

⁴⁴ Ibn Khallikān, Wafayāt, vol. Ⅳ, pp. 91–2.

⁴⁵ Berkey, ‘Tradition, Innovation and the Social Construction of Knowledge’, 64.

⁴⁶ al-Wahrānī, Manāmāt al-Wahrānī, pp. 108–10, 114–16.

⁴⁷ Nicholson, Literary History, p. 343.

⁴⁸ Ibid., pp. 447–8.

⁴⁹ Petry, The Civilian Elite of Cairo, p. 20; also Little, ‘Historiography’, p. 413.

⁵⁰ al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 212–14.

⁵¹ Lapidus, Muslim Cities, p. 108.

⁵² Berkey, Past and Present, pp. 54–5.

⁵³ See Berkey, ‘Storytelling, Preaching, and Power’, 58.

⁵⁴ al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 212–14.

⁵⁵ Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 202.

⁵⁶ al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 203–4.

⁵⁷ Ibid., p. 480.

⁵⁸ Ibid., vol. I, pp. 348–9.

⁵⁹ Ibid., p. 365.

⁶⁰ Nicholson, Literary History, p. 451.

⁶¹ See Cooperson, Classical Arabic Biography, p. 16.

⁶² See al-Jabartī, Napoleon in Egypt, pp. 108–10, 184, 112–13.

⁶³ See Ayalon, ‘Studies in al-Jabarti’, pp. 313–15.

⁶⁴ Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 140.

⁶⁵ Ibn Taghrībirdī, al-Nujūm al-zāhira, p. 139.

⁶⁶ Many examples of such autobiographical writing in Arabic from the pre-modern period can be found in Reynolds (ed.), Interpreting the Self.

⁶⁷ al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 29, 164, 410.

⁶⁸ Little, ‘Mujīr al-Dīn’.

⁶⁹ Cited from Rūḥ al-Quds in Addas, ‘Andalusī Mysticism’, p. 909.

⁷⁰ See Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī, Mir’āt al-zamān, vol. I, pp. 43–4.

⁷¹ See Gabrieli, Arab Historians, pp. 273–4.

⁷² Krachkovski, Istoria, p. 435.

⁷³ al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-a῾shā, vol. I, p. 31.

⁷⁴ al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 212–14.

⁷⁵ Homerin, ‘Reflections on Arabic Poetry’, 71.