Book: Muslim Kingship. Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Polities

al-Azmeh, A. Muslim Kingship. Power and the Sacred in Muslim, Christian, and Pagan Polities, London 1997

Ref in Crone

p.140 Saladin kissing the ground where he received Caliphal greetings

p.157 Link between injustice and drought

Islamic Mirrors for Princes

Lambton, A.K.S. “Islamic Mirrors for Princes”, in Atti del Convegno Internazionale sul Tena: La Persia nel mediovo, Rome 1971, 419-42

Ref by Crone:

Contains sources for the connection between a just king and a prosperous country, and injustice with drought.

Kings, Prophets and the ‘Ulama in Mediaeval Islamic Advice Literature

Marlow, L. “Kings, Prophets and the ‘Ulama in Mediaeval Islamic Advice Literature”, Studia Islamica 81, 1995, 101-20.

Refs from Crone:

p.106 Kings on the same rank as prophets

p.108 Obedience to rulers in the Qur’an interpreted differently by ‘ulama

Book: Medieval Islamic Political Thought

Crone, Patricia. Medieval Islamic Political Thought. Edinburgh: EUP, 2004.

Chapter on ‘The Persian Tradition and Advice Literature’.

p.149 Caliph Hisham orders “…compilation and translation into Arabic of a book about Persian kings.”  Source of this is Mas’udi’s (d.345/956) Kitab al-tanbih wa’l-ishraf, though according to a conversation with Dr. Marsham, this may be spurious.

Sources on Mirrors for Princes in English given as Lambton and Danishpazhouh

p.150 likens the popularity of advice literature in this period with the popularity of self-help books today.  Argues that most of the advice given in this tradition was just as banal as its modern iterations.

Statecraft seen as existing outside religion – what is right is what works and there is no commitment to an Islamic government.  Hence the advice is free to draw on the authority of “…Sasanid kings, Greek philosophers, and sages of all kind, not just the Prophet, Companions and religious scholars…”

pp.151-52 Testaments of Persian kings were translated (ref to Ibn al-Nadim) and translations of manuals on court etiquette (Book of the Crown – see article on origins by Schoeler)

p.153 By mid-tenth century local rulers were calling themselves ‘Shah’ and ‘Malik’ – this is in contrast to an incident a century before when an Arab in Spain put on a crown (seen as a sign of going Christian).

pp.153-54 Characteristics of advice literature-

• Kings are a different rank of human beings – same as prophets (ref to Marlow)
• Kings are granted farr-i izadi by God (ref to Nizam al-Mulk’s mirror)
• One could not have religion without sovereigns (ref to the preface of Tha’alabi)
• No legal qualifications for kingship (e.g. lineage – God raised up whomsoever he willed according to Q.3:26)
• “If a king paid no heed to justice, his subjects would rebel, his kingdom would be laid waste, and his fortune would turn: this piece of wisdom, current already in the third millenium BC, was still valid.” (Ref to Driver and Miles, Babylonian Laws)

pp.154-56 On Obedience

• Up to tribal chiefs and outsiders to depose sovereigns, not subjects
• Stressed Q.4:59 commanding people to obey those in command, despite the fact that the ulama had gone to great lengths to stress that this was not the correct interpretation (ref Marlow 108)
• Tyrannical rulers should be accepted as part of God’s greater plan.
• Obedience not deification – which was to be resisted

pp.156-58 On governance

• Governance is seen by mirrors as “…the art of staying in the saddle”
• Relations with every group governed by how to maintain control – do not let women get involved, have an ethnically diverse army etc. and spy network
• Also provided advice for entourage – especially how to guard oneself against enemies
• King’s duty to make sure his public appointees do not oppress subjects (ref to Nizam al-Mulk)

pp.158-161 On justice

• Nobles are dangerous when poor
• “…as far as the common people were concerned, it was the king’s fundamental duty is (sic) to ensure that justice prevailed.”
• ref to caliph al-Mansur (from Tabari) “The masses need only three things; if someone is appointed to look into their laws so that justice is done amongst them, to make their roads safe so that they need not fear by night or day, and to strengthen their frontiers and outlying lands so that the enemy will not come upon them, then I will have done those things for them.”
• If kings failed to ensure justice, they would be expected (according to the literature) to compensate for losses
• Public money could not be used for private purposes
• Special court of redress for corrupt officials (mazalim – from Nizam al-Mulk)
• Strong link between justice and prosperity – “…injustice caused peasants to leave, so that the revenues diminished, leading to polical decline”.
• With a just king “Rain would come at the due time, springs and streams would fill up, crops would grow abundant, the roads would be safe, and the kingdom would prosper.  But if the king intended injustice, famine and barrenness would appear.” Refs Lambton, Al-Azmeh and Crone Pre-Industrial Societies (more general).
• Longevity of Persian kings put down to their love of justice (ref Nizam al-Mulk) while the Umayyads fell because their subjects were oppressed.
• p.161 Advice literature is full of stories of oppressed subjects gaining redress from their kings – which Crone likens to the use of images of children airlifted to safety makes up for the atrocities of war.

pp.162-164 Conclusion

• The transformation of the caliph from ordinary person to a more Persianate concept appears to have begun under Umayyad ‘Abd al-Malik (685-705) where correspondence can be seen to become more grandiose.
• Saladin kissed the ground where he received Caliphal greetings (al-Azmeh, Muslim Kingship)
• “The basic assumption behind these ideas is that the regularities of nature depended on a moral order which it was the duty of the king to maintain.”  This assumption was pagan as it pre-dated monotheism – emphasised well-being in this world and idolized a single being
• The monotheist conception of a clean seperation between man and God became muddied in the centuries after the Arab conquest as the pre-Islamic beliefs of the conquered people resurfaced; divinity was graded, with those in power closer to God
• “To early Muslims, kings were usurpers of God’s power.  To later Muslims, by contrast, they typified it.”

Book: The Mahabharatum with the Bharata Bhadweepa Commentary of Nilakantha

Nilakantha. The Mahabharatum with the Bharata Bhadweepa Commentary of Nilakantha. ed Pandit Ramchandrashastri Kinjawadekar, 6 vols. New Delhi: Oriental Books Reprint Corporation, 1979.

Source: Adarkar. “Turning a Tradition into a Text.” Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wurzberg, 2007. 133-146

In the 17thC, Nilakantha gathered “many manuscripts (of the Mahabharata) from different regions and critically established the best readings.” (Vol.1, Introduction, verse 6 – quote from Adarkar 143)

Bal’ami’s Account of Early Islamic History

Daniel, Elton. “Bal’ami’s Account of Early Islamic History.” Culture and Memory in Medieval Islam: Essays in Honour of Wilfred Madelung. Eds. Farhad Daftary and Josef Meri. London: IB Tauris, 2003.  163-189.

Source: Mentioned by Peacock with regards to the issue of passages which editions of Bal’ami claim to be absent from Tabari (101)

Manuscripts and Editions of Bal’ami’s Tarjama-yi Tarikh-i Tabari

Daniel, Elton. “Manuscripts and Editions of Bal’ami’s Tarjama-yi Tarikh-i Tabari.” JRAS 1990, 3rd series, 2:282-321.

Source: Mentioned by Peacock as the “scholar who has done most to improve our understanding of the complex manuscript history of this work” (96) though he highlights shortcomings in his tripartite division of redactions.

Book: Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature

Reynolds and Wilson. A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature. Oxford: OUP, 1968.

Referenced by Peacock when talking about horizontal and vertical transmission (though he references the 1991 edition).

pp.143 “Readers in ancient and medieval times did not necessarily copy a text from a single exemplar; as their texts were often corrupt, they compared different copies, entering in their (144) own manuscripts good readings or interesting variants as they found them.  In some traditions – an example is Xenophon’s Cyropaedia – the process was undertaken so often that the tradition has been hopelessly contaminated by the date of the earliest extant manuscripts.”

p.144 Mentions the problems caused by manuscript traditions, and the appearance of what appear to be interpolations but could be accurate in mediocre manuscripts.

The Medieaval Manuscript Tradition of Bal’ami’s Version of al-Tabari’s History

Peacock, Andrew. “The Medieaval Manuscript Tradition of Bal’ami’s Version of al-Tabari’s History.” Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wurzberg, 2007. 93-105.

Notes

Peacock looks at the chaotic manuscript tradition of Bal’ami’s translation and argues that this “…shows us exceptionally clearly the futility of attempting to establish stemmata in the case of many Islamic textual traditions.” (103)

p.96 Mentions Elton Daniel as “…the scholar who has done most to improve our understanding of the complex manuscript history of this work” but says that his plan to divide the manuscript tradition into three (late, full and abbreviated) fails because within each of these redaction one can find manuscripts that vary amongst eachother more than those in other redactions.

p.97 Argues that a Cambridge University manuscript (Add 836) should be regarded as an accurate.  Is in Arabic and dates from 1471, though the colphon claims it is a copy of a 1229 manuscript which in turn is a copy of a 1050 manuscript.

p.98 Problems of an Arabic copyist dealing with Persian names – ‘Parviz’ becomes ‘Barwin’ and etymology of Jamshid mangled.

p.99 Tabari mentions Dahhak – Vol.1:103 in Rawshan’s edition of Tabari on the origin of the Kurds.

pp.99-101 Demonstrates that when ostensibly ‘copying’ Bal’ami’s work, copyists would draw on other Persian sources if they felt the original was deficient and from Tabari’s Arabic original.

p.101 Copyists probably did not distinguish between Bal’ami and Tabari – blamed the latter for ommissions when it was probably due to lacunae in the former.

p.102 Argument for horizontal transmission – adapted from concepts in Reynolds and Wilson

pp.102-04 “To conclude, I believe that the case of al-Tabari and Bal’ami shows us exceptionally clearly the futility of attempting to establish stemmata in the case of many Islamic textual traditions.  Not only were distinctions between original and translation considerably more fluid in the Middle Ages than now, but even those between translator, scribe and author were blurred.”

Khaleghi-Motlagh’s introuction to the Shahnameh

Ferdows, Abu’-l-Qasem (d. 411/1020).  The Shahnameh (Book of Kings), Vol.1. Ed Djalal Khaleghi Motlagh. New York, Mazda Publishers,1988.

K-M’s introduction looks at the Shahnameh manuscript tradition – Bundari’s Shahnameh was also used.

A manuscript copied in teamwork?

Quiring-Zoche, R. “A manuscript copied in teamwork?” Manuscripta Orientalia: International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research, vol. 9, no. iv, pp. 65-72, 2003

Source: II

Book: From Saladin to the Mongols

Humphreys, R. From Saladin to the Mongols. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1977.

p.1 Saladin’s reign “…represents the culmination of a process already half a century old..” which begun with his predecessors and led to “…a profound transformation in the very structure of Syro-Egyptian politics, one which divides quite abruptly the later Middle Ages from all that preceded it.”

pp.3-4 The change was threefold

1. “…within the membership of the ruling elite, one can detect a growing (if uneven) tendency to exclude civilian and religious elements from the higher levels of decision making.”
2. “…the key institution within the ruling class, the army, begins to change from a mixed corps containing a large and influential body of free-born men into a corps whose elite units and highest commands were were reserved for men of slave origin.”
3. “…the army becomes aware that its monopoly of force makes it the final arbiter of politics, and it ceases to be bound by loyalty to a hereditary dynasty.”

pp.4-5 “…local leaders were high administrative and religious officials or chiefs of local militias…” and “(a)tive indigenous support was essential to survival.”

p.5 During Saladin’s time their position began to transform, and were becoming primarily propagandists.  After his death erosion of their power began, culminating in their emasculation in the Mamluk period.

pp.11-13 Importance of Damascus

• Under siege 12 times between 1193 and 1260
• only major principality not to establish a stable hereditary succession
• agriculturally wealthy
• termination point of the major trade routes of southwest Asia – including the northern end of the Persian Gulf-Euphrates River route to India
• was the linking point between Egypt, the Arabian peninsula, northern Syria and the Jazira (during the period of Frankish control “…there was really no other way to get from one region to the other.”

pp.125-192 Two chapters of Al-Mu’azzam ‘Isa

p.125 son of al-’Adil (brother of Saladin), made prince of Damascus 1198 though al-’Adil made Damascus his second city and was dominant there.

p.145 “The basic characteristics of al-’Adil’s regime in Damascus are easily defined: puritanism in public morality, careful financial administration, and a commitment to public works.”

p.149 Apart from minor projects, al-Mu’azzam did not play a major role in public works – “…not a single inscription in Damascus dating from the reign of al-’Adil carries the name of al-Mu’azzam.” Al-Adil died in 1218.

pp.150-153 Inscriptions in the region from al-’Adil’s reign mentioning al-Mu’azzam.

pp.188-192 Character and interests of al-Mu’azzam

• permissive to an extent – reinstituted illegal taxes (e.g. on vice and gambling)
• lack of ostentation – would visit teachers on foot “…like any ordinary student.”
• Very popular among all sectors of Damascene society – Humphrey’s argues that this popularity was a political weapon as active loyalty of subjects was necessary tool in defending himself against adversaries.
• Educated – most princes of this period were well-educated in Arabic and Islamic sciences “…but it is doubtful that any so fully immersed themselves in these studies and became so competent at them as al-Mu’azzam.”
• Educated in grammar and adab by Taj al-Din al-Kindi and in fiqh by Jamal al-Din al-Hasiri.
• Major sponsor of Hanafis
• Ordered the creation of a great compilation of Arabic grammar
• p.190 “Nor were his literary interests entirely confined to these purely Arabic subjects, for it was at his court that Fath al-Din al-Bundari made his abridgement of ‘Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani’s famous history of the Seljukids and an Arabic translation of the Shahnameh (source Brockelmann).

p.184 died in Dhu-l-Qa’da 624 (Ocober-November 1227) stricken with dysentry and died the same month aged 47.

Sources

p.393 Full description of sources used by Humphreys can be found in

1. Cahen, Claude.  “Les chroniques arabes concernant la Syrie, l’Egypte, et la Mesopotamie de la conquete arabe a la conquete ottomane dans les bibliotheques d’Istanbul.” Revue des etudes islamiques, 10 (1936): 333-336
2. Elisseeff, Nikita. “A propos d’une inscription d’al-Malik al-Mu’azzam ‘Isa; contribution a l’etude de son regne.” Annales archaeologiques de Syrie S 4-5 (1954-55): 3-28

p.395 “…the great bulk of what we know about the period comes from two great works: the Mir’at al-zaman fi ta’rikh al-a’yan of the Damascene Sibt ibn al-Jauzi (d.654/1256), and the Mufarrij al-kurub fi akhbar bani ayyub of the Qadi Jamal al-Din ibn Wasil (604/1208-697/1298).”

Primary Source: Jauzi’s chronicle of the Ayyubids

Sibt ibn al-Jauzi. Mir’at al-zaman fi ta’rikh al-a’yan. Facs. ed. by J.R. Jewett. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907. (Printed edition, based solely on the Jewett MS., in 2 vols: Hyderabad: Dar al-Maaref Osmania, 1952.)

Source: Humphreys p.406

Description of source by Humphreys, p.395:

• For 13thC “…little more than a local chronicle of Damascus…”
• no sophisticated idea of history “…motley selection of events…”
• Not necessarily a bad thing – gives credence and a unique perspective of life, both high and low inthe period
• Settled in Damacus in 600/1204
• Closely associated with al-Mu’azzam ‘Isa, al-Nasir Da’ud, and al-Salih Ayyub “…and often cites them as authority for his statements.”

Primary source: Ibn Wasil’s Mufarrij

Jamal al-Din ibn Wasil. Mufarrij al-Kurub fi Akhbar Bani Ayyub. Ed. by G. Shayyal, S. ‘Ashur, and H. Rabi’. 4 Vols., in progress. Cairo: 1953-.

Also two manuscripts:

(MC 119) Idem. Istanbul, Sulemaniye Kutuphanesi, Molla Celebi 119

(BN 1702, 1703) Idem. Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, fonds arabe 1702, 1703.

Source: Humphreys pp. 406-7

Description of source by Humphreys pp. 395-396

• ‘better’ in terms of historical writing than Jauzi.
• it “…gives an outstandingly clear and coherent survey.”
• Only provides original information for the period followin al-’Adil’s death, and it is not until death of al-Kamil (635/1238) “…that the bulk of his work is drawn from eye-witnesses.”

Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur

Brockelmann, Carl. Geschichte der Arabischen Literatur. 2nd ed. 2 vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1943-49. Supplement. 3 Vols. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1937-42.

This is Humphreys’ source of the translation of the Shahnamah during the reign of al-Mu’azzam al’Isa (p.190 in From Saladin to the Mongols).

Reference in Humphreys: GAL, I, 391-392; Suppl., I, 554.

How ‘Sacred’ is the Text of an Arabic Medieval Manuscript?

al-Qadi, Wadad. “How ‘Sacred’ is the Text of an Arabic Medieval Manuscript?”. Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wurzberg, 2007. 13-53

Notes:

pp.13-14 Article looks at how much an editor should interfere with a text – methods used by editors of Oriental texts in the past, and his own proposal which “…is based on taking into consideration aspects of Islamic civilization.”

pp.15-16 Editor (in the Western tradition) faced with a choice of two goals

1. The intentions of the author are knowable from the final text and the goal is to “…establish the text as finally intended by its author.”
2. If the authors intention is “unknown or unknowable and unstable, and that works are collaborative, social products, then his goal would be to present the text in the most accurate, historically illuminating form.” (refers to Tanselle pp.25-27)

pp.17-22 Potted history of scholarly editing in the Arab world – argues that it is almost exclusively ‘pre-Gregian’ – i.e. concerned primarily with rendering the text as the author intended it.

p.22 al-Qadi aims to have his editorial approach informed by the “…aspects of Islamic history that have a bearing on editorial policy in general and how ’sacred’ the text of a medieval Arabic manuscript is in particular…”

Believes that the corpus of Arabic manuscripts should be broken up due to the specificities of Islamic history and civilization.  No one set of editorial rules can apply to all components.

p.27 Mentions two annotated bibliographies: Ibn al-Nadim’s Fihrist (written  377/987) and Hajji Khalifa’s Kashf al-zunun (died 1067/1656)

p.28 Process of manuscript composition by scholars teachers (refers to Berkey)

pp.30-31 Copyists and issues with them (useful references).

pp.32-33 Problems with the lack of standardization: different symbols would be use to represent beginnings of chapters or the ends of quotes, pagination developed late, mixing of folios, abbreviations not applied universally.  “Such matters created some chaos in the corpus of manuscripts we have received…” An understatement! Contains full references.

p.34 Proposes tripartite division of texts:

1. Those that the editor must preserve passively (e.g. very early papyri, manuscripts and poetry)
2. Those which the editor mus interfere with minimally in order to aid access (manuscripts which we have strong evidence for authorisation by the author; pp43-44 lists acceptable versions e.g. ones that have been read back to the author, and copies made by students from an approved copy)
3. The rest – possible 90% of the Arabic medieval corpus.

Doesn’t really discuss any solution to the problems of editors dealing with this third category – proposes that corrections should be made if a divergent reading found in another manuscript (51).  The article is not at all a manifesto for action – more a plea that editors leave category one alone, make category two accessible to students, and not feel bad about making substantial changes to category three.

The Varieties of Scholarly Editing

Tanselle, G. “The Varieties of Scholarly Editing.” Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. Ed. D.C. Greetham. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1995.

Notes

Referred to by al-Qadi when discussing text-based editing (p.16) – dealing with a text tradition in which the author’s intentions cannot be known.

Book: The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo

Berkey, J. The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1992.

Notes

Referred to by al-Qadi 28 as a general overview of scholasticism and book production

Arabic Literature

Carter, M.G. “Arabic Literature.” Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. Ed. D.C. Greetham. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1995.

Notes

Referred to by al-Qadi in his discussion on the links between author and text.

p.556 The Islamic scriptorium – Carter lists other works that can be consulted (from al-Qadi, 30)

p.557 Centrality of the author in Islamic literature – “…the number of truly anonymous works in Islamic culture is by far lower than that of the same works in medieval European literature.” (al-Qadi, 30)

Book: The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship

Rosenthal, Franz. The Technique and Approach of Muslim Scholarship. Rome: Pontificum Institute Biblicum (Analecta Orientalia), 24, 1947.

Referred to by al-Qadi

pp.24-26/66-71 How copyists would make mistakes – e.g. writing about subjects they had little knowledge of.

Writing and Illustrating History: Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-tavarikh

Blair, Sheila. “Writing and Illustrating History: Rashid al-Din’s Jami’ al-tavarikh.” Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Ed. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp. Beirut: Ergon Verlag Wurzberg, 2007. pp.57-65.

Blair argues that this early 14thC manuscript is an ideal choice for the study of manuscript tradition as we know so much about it.

p.57 Commissioned by Rashid al-Din, born in Hamada 1247, who entered the service of the Ilkhanid ruler Abaqa in perhaps 1277.  Rose to the rank of co-vizier before execution.

p.58 During his life, he instituted an endowment that would see the annual production of a number of important books – laid out the specificities of the layout and even the quality of the paper.

Blair traces the production of this book and how over time the quality of the works decreased, during his life and after it.  Does not look at the text at all – concerned primarily with layout and quality of the images.  Last manuscript mentioned from Mughal period in 1596.