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Al-jabaratĪ's Introduction to the History of Ottoman Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

P. M. Holt
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Extract

1. Analysis of al-Jabartț's account Al-Jabartī's chronicle, ‘Ajā’ib al-āthār fi'l-tarājim wa'l-akhbār formally begins with the year 1100/1688–9 (p. 24 of the first volume of the BŪlāq edition). He precedes his annals, however, with an introduction, of which the last part (p. 20, line 23–p. 24, line 4) is concerned with Ottoman Egypt from the time of the conquest by Sellm I to the beginning of the twelfth Hijrī century.

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Articles
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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , February 1962 , pp. 38 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1962

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References

page 39 note 1 I should like to express my gratitude to the authorities of the. Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, the Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, the Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, and the British Museum, for making available to me, bymicrofilms and otherwise, the material discussed in this article. I wish also to thank Professor Lewis for some helpful comments, and Dr. W. ‘Arafat for suggestions on points of translation.

page 40 note 1 See my article,‘The beylicate in Ottoman Egypt during the seventeenth century’, BS0AS, XXIV. 2, 1961, 215Google Scholar.

page 40 note 1 Several editions of al-Isḥāqī's chronicle have been published in Cairo. See Brockelmann, GAL, Suppl., II, 407 (the list is not complete).

page 40 note 2 Ayalon, David, ‘The historian al-Jabartī and his background’, BSOAS, XXIII, 2, 1960, p. 222Google Scholar, n. 3.

page 40 note 3 The chronicle is anonymous and lacks a title. That it is a recension of al-Isḥāqī's chronicle is evident from a comparison of its text with the printed versions. On f. 110b, the author speaks of himself as Muhammad b. al-Isḥāq.

page 40 note 4 Numbers prefixed to names of seventeenth-century beys refer to notices in my article ‘The beylicate in Ottoman Egypt during the seventeenth century’, BSOAS, XXIV, 2, 1961, 229–48Google Scholar.

page 40 note 5 The criteria are: (i) Al-Jabartī's use of the word (p. 21, line 15), which corresponds to the reading in the 1286 version, as against the 1296 version, which reads . (ii) Al-Jabartī's phrase (p. 21, line 21). Here the 1286 version reads and the 1296 version . It may further be noted that the turcicism is retained in a British Museum manuscript of al-Jabartī (MS Add. 26042, Vol. i, f. 21a), thus bringing al-Jabartīs text still closer to that of the 1286 version of al-Isḥāqī.

page 43 note 1 This list of factions and its counterparts in DO and DL are of considerable interest. The Whites and Reds were also factions in Syria, where they were equated respectively with Yamani and Qaysī. In the present passage, Tubba‘ī is equivalent to Yamāni (cf. DO), hence Kulaybī is Qaysī. DO states that Kulayb was the brother of ‘al-Zīr’, i.e. Yazīd, and DL gives the polarization White/Husaynī versus Red/Yazīdī. This is presumably a traditional memory of Umayyad- ‘Alid hostility. The Zughbiyya and Hilāliyya are tribes in the Romance of Abū Zayd; cf.Lane, Modern Egyptians (Everyman ed.), 400. Qala'unī and Baybarsī are presumably factions of the Mamluk sultanate. Hence we get the two factions in their successive embodiments as follows: White flag: Tubba‘ī/YamānI = Husaynī = Zughbī = Qala'unī = Sa‘d = Akrī(?) = Faqārī Red flag: Kulaybī = Yazldī = Hilāli = Baybarsī = Ḥarām = Qaysī = Qāsimī

page 43 note 2 The word translated ‘retainers’ isjirāqāt. Jirāq and its variant ishrāq represent the Turkish çirak/çira/j, which has the primary sense of ‘apprentice’, but formerly the further meaning of ‘a person brought up as a servant in a great house and subsequently set up in life, usually by being married off’ (Alderson, and ĪZ, Concise Oxford Turkish dictionary, Oxford, 1959Google Scholar, sub voce). See also Ayalon, D., ‘Studies in al-Jabartī’, JESHO III, 3, 1960, 321–2Google Scholar, where a distinction is made between mamlūks and ishrāqat.

page 43 note 3 The phrase (cf. DO/DC below, ) is not otherwise known to me. I have tentatively translated it as ‘the Pilgrimage procession’ since the annual departure of the Maḥmil to Mecca and the arrival of a new viceroy were the regular occasions for state processions. The epithet al-Shartīf also suggests a connexion with the Holy Cities (al-Ḥaramayn al-Sharīfayn).

page 43 note 4 The reading is corrupt in both DO and DC. Read (following DL) Yazid.

page 44 note 1 The provenance of this anecdote is obscure. It is recounted in Mascrier, Le, Description de l'Égypte, Paris, 1735, 176*–7*Google Scholar and so must have been in circulation by the end of the seventeenth century. Le Mascrier, however, does not give the names of the beys, which suggests that the story may have been a folk-tale, subsequently linked by the D Group chroniclers with the eponyms of the Faqāriyya and Qāsimiyya.

page 44 note 2 The form Zayn al-Faqār for Dhu'l-Faqār is found throughout these passages in the D Group chronicles. I am very doubtful whether the eponym Zayn/Dhū al-Faqār ever existed. The first bey of this name mentioned in the seventeenth century chronicles is (22) Dhu'l-Faqār Bey, who flourished in 1071/1660, after the epithet al-ZuUiqārl/Faqārī had already been applied to (89) Riḍwān Bey (d. 1066/1656), who seems to have been the real founder of the Faqāriyya. Admittedly Muḥibbī (Khulāsat al-āthār) says that Riḍwān was a Mamluk of Dhu'l-Faqār, but Muḥibbī is an alien writer, whose statement is unsupported. I suspect that Riḍwān may himself have borne the name Dhu'l-Faqār as an epithet of honour, indicating his link with the White flag—Sa‘d faction, which, as we have seen (p. 43, n. 1) had Ḥusayni and hence ‘Alid traditions.

page 45 note 1 Ḥasan Pasha III was the immediate predecessor of Ḥasan Pasha IV, whom DO mentions in the corresponding context. As one succeeded the other in 1099/1688, the divergence of the two chronicles here is unimportant. It will be noted that al-Jabartī seems to have been aware of a discrepancy, since he cautiously dates his list of the beys to the beginning of the twelfth. Hijrī century without naming a viceroy.

page 46 note 1 BM MS Add. 26042. Vol. i, f. 24a. In the printed text, two names have been dropped (Sulaymān Bey Dughrī Jān and Ḥusayn Bey Abū Yadak). Both DO and the MS of al-Jabartī state, erroneously, that there were nine Faqārī beys.

page 46 note 2 Neither of these statements is of much value historically. It is, however, possible that the eponym Qāsim may be identified with (84) Qāsim Bey, and his patron with (72) Koja MuṢtafā Bey. The precise dating of 1050 for the emergence of the two factions is misleading, but the usage Faqāriyya-Qāsimiyya, superseding Sa‘d-ḥarām, seems to have crystallized about the middle decades of the eleventh Hijrī century.

page 47 note 1 I hope to examine later the relationship, if any, between the D Group and the chronicle of Aḥmad Chelebi b. ‘Abd al-Ghanī. A manuscript of this chronicle is extant in the Yale University Library. I have received a microfilm of this since this article went to press.

page 47 note 2 For the link between al-Jabartī and al-Murādī, see Ayalon, , ‘The historian al-Jabartī and his background’, BSOAS, XXIII, 2, 1960, 224–7Google Scholar.

page 47 note 3 ‘Innovation’ (bid'a), not in the sense of a new development in Egyptian history (the game passage alludes to the older factions of Sa‘d and Ḥarām), but a departure from the religiously approved norm of Muslim behaviour. The soldiery of Egypt were part of the Ottoman forces, the ghāzās and soldiers of Islam par excellence, for whom civil war was a species of schism.

page 47 note 4 Nifāq is usually translated ‘hypocrisy’ but its primary sense is the subordination of religion to political and worldly ends—the characteristic of the Munāfiqūn of Medina, who accepted the Prophet's call only with inner reservations.

page 49 note 1 It is possible that this person may be identical with another pseudo-historian of the neo-Mamluks, Shihāb al-Dīn Ahmad al-Ṣafadī, who is cited as his chief source by the anonymous author of Qahr al-wujāh, a spurious genealogy of (89) Ridwan Bey. The genealogist states that al-Ṣafadī was the imām of a mosque in Ak Shehir, and died in 980/1572–3. Al-Ṣafadī could have been the teacher of a man who was muftÏ in 1031/1621–2. See further my article, ‘The exalted lineage of Riḍwān Bey’. BSOAS, XXII, 2, 1959, 221–30Google Scholar.

page 49 note 2 In the printed edition of A.H. 1286, it appears on pp. 301–2; in that of 1296, on pp. 215–16.

page 49 note 3 Ahmad b. Sa‘d al-Dīn al-Ghamrī al-‘Uthmānī, Dhakhīral al-i‘lām (BM Or. 6377), ff. 123 a–b.

page 49 note 4 Selīm (Salīm) = safe. Al-Ghamrī says: ‘Before him, not one of them [i.e. the Ottoman sultans] was called Selīm before he was so called. I have found an anecdote in writing, and the reason why he was called by this name’.

page 49 note 5 Burckhardt, J. L., Travels in Nubia, London, 1819, 133–4, 433Google Scholar.

page 50 note 1 For the best-known variant, see Shuqayr, Na‘ūm, Ta'rlhh al-Sūdān, Cairo, [1903], II, 73–4Google Scholar. The ‘Abdallābī variant is given in Penn, A. E. D., ‘Traditional stories of the ‘Abdullab tribe’, Sudan Notes and Records, XVII, 1, 1934, 66–7Google Scholar. These anecdotes have been uncritically accepted by twentieth-century writers, who have thus unconsciously perpetuated the Selim legend! See my article ‘The beylicate in Ottoman Egypt during the seventeenth century’, BSOAS, XXIV, 2, 1961, p. 217Google Scholar, n. 2.