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Regional Sentiment in Medieval Islamic Egypt

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Ulrich Haarmann
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Patricia Crone and Michael Cook take an extreme stand in their study of early Islam when they dismiss Islamic Egypt as an utterly depersonalized and assimilated part of the orthodox Muslim polity. ‘Egypt in Islam was not so much a nation or even a country as simply a place.’ In their view the Copts with their indigenous traditions and civilization had become exiles in their own country. Rustic Coptic culture, if compared with the urban Christian intellectual heritage of Syria and Mesopotamia, lacked the stamina to assert itself in. the new religious setting, and receded to the countryside. In the opinion of the authors, Egypt surrendered with extreme readiness her distinctive provincial features to the new Islamic civilization and developed into the most loyal and most prolific, yet at the same time the most parochial and imitative stronghold of sunnī Islam. They flatly disclaim any specific Egyptian contribution to medieval Islam, even during the two centuries of schismatic Fatimid ascendancy when Cairo was the centre of an intrinsically Egyptian Empire with universal claims. So far the thesis of Hagarism.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , February 1980 , pp. 55 - 66
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1980

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References

1 Crone, P. and Cook, Michael. Hagarism: the making of the Islamic world, Cambridge, 1977, 114Google Scholar.

2 See esp. al-Khūlī, Amīn;, Manāhij tajdīd fī 'l-naḥw wa'l-balāgha wa'l-tafsīr wa'l-adab, Cairo, 1381/1961. 219 ffGoogle Scholar.

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5 Goldziher, I., ‘Die Śu'ûbijja unter den Muhammedanern in Spanien’, ZDMG, LIII, 1899, 605–17Google Scholar ( = Gesammelte Schriften, Hildesheim, 1970, IV, 208–20Google Scholar); De la Granja, F., ‘Ibn Garcia’, Al-Andalus, XXX, 1965, 63–78Google Scholar; Monroe, J., The Šu'ūbiyya in Al-Andalus, Berkeley, 1970Google Scholar; Sadan, J., ‘Vin—fait de civilisation’, Studies in memory of Gaston Wiet, Jerusalem, 1977, 136 f., 157, 160Google Scholar. In modern Arab nationalist terminology the term shu'ūbiyya (ḥadītha) is construed to cover all the political trends, past and present, that block Arab political unity and complete cultural Arabization. See Ende, Werner, Arabische Nation und Islamische Geschichte. Die Umayyaden im Urteil arabischer Autoren des 20. Jahrhunderts, Beirut, 1977, 234 f., 303Google Scholar.

6 al-Ṭahṭāwī, Rāfi' Rifā'a Beg, Anwār tawfīq al-jalīl fī akhbār Miṣr wa-tawthīq Banī lsmā'īl, I, Cairo, 1285/1868, 46–8Google Scholar. I owe this important reference to my wife Maria Haarmann who is preparing her dissertation on modern pharaonism.

7 The most authoritative source is the Kitāb akhbār al-zamān, attributed to al-Mas'ūdī in its first, and to Ibn Waṣīf Shāh in its second part. See the edition by 'Abdallāh al-Ṣāwī, Cairo, 1357/1938, and the French translation, L'abrégé des merveilles, by de Vaux, B. Carra, Paris, 1898Google Scholar.

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11 Ibn Ẓahīra, p. 83. al-Jawzī, Ps. Sibṭ b., Kanz al-mulūk fī kayfiyyat al-sulūk, ed. Vitestam, G., Lund, 1970, 3Google Scholar.

12 Wiet, , L'Egypte, 64Google Scholar.

13 On Joseph's granary (ahrā') cf. Qur'ān, XII, 55. See al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Wiet, G., II, MIFAO, XXXIII, 1913, 119, n. 6Google Scholar; al-Harawī, , al-Ziyārāt, ed. Sourdel-Thomine, J., Damascus, 1373/1953, 41Google Scholar (transl. Guide des lieux de pèlerinage, Damascus, 1957, 97Google Scholar). More references in Wiet, , L'Egypte, 89, n. 1Google Scholar. Iyās, Ibn, Badā'i'; al-zuhūr fī uaqā'i' al-duhūr, ed. Mostafa, M., Ia, Wiesbaden, 1975, 36Google Scholar, places it in Madīnat al-Fayyūm. The sijn Yūsuf, cf. Qur'ān, XII, 35–42, is usually identified with monuments of Giza or of Abū Ṣīr; another name given to it is masjid Mūsā. See Khiḷaṭ, ed. Wiet, , IV, MIFAO, XLIX, 1924, 7–11Google Scholar; Harawī, p. 40, tr. p. 97 and n. 3 with additional references; Ibn Iyās, la, 35. At the beginning of this century the pyramid of Teti in Saqqara was called sijn Yūuf, see Quibell, J. E., Excavations at Saqqara, 1905–6, Cairo, 1907Google Scholar, Introduction i–ii; Lauer, J. Ph. and Leclant, J., Mission archéologique de Saqqara I: Le temple haut du complexe funéraire du roi Téti (IFAO, Bibliothèque d'étude V), Cairo, 1972, 2Google Scholar.

14 Ibn Iyās, Ia, 35 (in Madīnat al-Fayyūm).

15 Ibn Iy Ia, 36.

16 Ibn Ẓahīra, 83; al-Manūfī, al-Isḥāqī, Akhbār al-uwal fī man taarrafa fī Miṣr min arbāb al-duwal, Cairo, 1310/1892, 5Google Scholar (quoting al-Bayḍāwī's tafsīr).

17 Ibn Ẓahīra, 89.

18 Ibn Ẓahīra, 90; al-Isḥāqī, , Akhbār al-uwal, 8Google Scholar.

19 See the important, if somewhat biased study by Sivan, E., ‘The beginnings of the Faḍā'il al-Quds literature’, Israel Oriental Studies, I, 1971, 263–71Google Scholar.

20 Amal al-āmil, ed. al-Ḥusaynī, Sayyid Aḥmad, I, Baghdad, 1385/1965, 11–12Google Scholar.

21 Al-Risāla al-miṣriyya, ed. Hārūn, 'Abd al-Salām in: Nawādir al-makhṭūṭāt, I, Cairo, 1370/1951, 34Google Scholar.

22 By giving this name and date of death I tentatively identify the obscure author of al-Faḍā'il al-bāhira, who died in the eighties of the fifteenth century (Kāmil al-Muhandis, al-Faḍā'il al-bāhira, Muqaddima, dāl-hā'), with the author of Kitāb Duwal al-islām al-sharīfa al-bahiyya wa-dhikr mā ẓahara lī min ḥikam Allāh al-khafiyya fī jalb ṭā'ifat al-atrāk ilā 'l-diyār al-miṣriyya; cf. Labib, Subhi Y. in Der Islam, LVI, 1979, 117–21Google Scholar. The author of Kitāb Duwal al-islām is incidentally one of the few writers of the late Mamluk period (like Ibn Khaldūn and Ibn Iyās) who gave recognition to the contribution of the Mamluks to Egypt's political and economic prosperity.

23 Ẓahīra, Ibn, al-Faḍā'il al-bāhira, 2Google Scholar.

24 Ibn Ẓahīra, 111, 129, 185.

25 Ibn Ẓahīra, 136.

26 Ibn Ẓahīra, 135.

27 Ibn Ẓahīra, 128, sallat al-khubz.

28 Ibn Ẓahīra, 185, see also p. 134 on the fatness of her livestock.

29 Ibn Ẓahīra, 111.

30 Ibn Ẓahīra, 80.

31 Ibn Iyāas, Ia, 34.

32 On Egypt's prodigious future see Ibn Ẓahīra's unpublished treatise Kitāb Duwal al-islām (see n. 22) and Abū Zayd al-Hilālī's 360 verses with the title al-Majrawiyya, Brockelmann, , GAL, S. II, 905, no. 82Google Scholar.

33 Akhbār al-uwal, 6, 8–9.

34 Ibn Ẓahīra, 84.

35 Ibn Ẓahīra, 80.

36 Ibn Ẓahīra, 135: naḥnu akthar al-nās faqdan wa-shahīdan; the context—Egypt's food. stuffs—would give priority to the alternative reading: naḥnu akthar al-nās qandan wa-shahdan.

37 Ibn Ẓahīra, 81.

38 Steppat, Fritz, ‘Nationalismus und Islam bei Muṣṭafā Kāmil’, Welt des Islams, NS, IV, 1956, 265Google Scholar.

39 Ibn Ẓahīra, 185.

40 Ibn Ẓahīra, 82.

41 Ibn Ẓahīra, 185.

42 Loc. oit.

43 Ibn Ẓahīra, 101; al-Isḥāqi, 7.

44 Ibn Ẓahīra, 7. According to Jamāl al-dīn al-Idrīsī (see below and pp. 60–61), Anwār ';uluww al-ajrām fī 'l-kashf 'an asrār al-ahrām, MS Munich, 417, folios 8b–9a, Jāḥiẓ's work bore the title Kitāb al-buldān. Jāḥiẓ mentions the sphinx as one of the 'ajā'ib Miṣr.

45 Ibn Ẓahīra, 153.

46 Ibn Ẓahīra, 135.

47 Ibn Ẓahīra, 153.

48 Ibn Ẓahīra, 134, 157 ff.

49 It is only in the early modern period that one finds utterly secular but attractive places included such as Cairo's bustling Khān al-Khalīlī; see Murtaḍā Beg b. Muṣṭafā Beg b. Ḥasan Beg al-Kurdī (d. after 1133/1721), Tahdhīb al-aṭwār fī 'ajā'ib al-amṣār, MS Berlin, 6142, fol. 66a–b.

50 Idrīsī, Anwār, fol. 9b.

51 Ibn 'Abd al-Salām, Fayḍ, fol. 50a, dismisses even the jinn as boing incapable of such stupendous achievements. On giants as builders of huge monuments see Ján Pauliny, ‘'Ūğ ibn 'Anāq. Ein sagenhafter Riese. Untersuchungen zu den islamischen Riesengeschichten’, Graecolatina et Orientalia, v, Bratislava, 1973, 249 ff., esp. 254 fGoogle Scholar.

52 Idrīsī, fol. 55b.

53 Ibn Ẓahīra, 150.

54 Ibn Ẓahīra, 154 ff.

55 An article on al-Idrīsī's contributions and achievement has been submitted for the first supplement volume of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, second ed.

56 folios 6a–33b.

57 fol. lla: al-ta'ajjub min al-'ajīb yadullu 'alā ṣiḥḥat mizāj al-fiṭra al-zakiyya.

58 folios 6b–8a; see also 12b, 14b–15b, 99b.

59 Crone, P. and Cook, M., Hagarism, 114Google Scholar.

60 Nukhbat al-dahr fī ‘ajā’ib al-barr wal-baḥr, ed. Mehren, M. A. F., St Petersburg, 1866, 33 f.Google Scholar; tr. idem, Manuel de la cosmographie du bloyen Age, Copenhagen, 1874, 32. See also Chwolsohn, D., Die Ssabīer und der Ssabismus, II, St Petersburg, 1856, 684, n. 85Google Scholar.

61 Goldziher, I., Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie, II: Das Kit⋯b al-mu'ammar⋯n des Abû Ḥἆtim al-Siġistἆnî, Leiden, 1899, lxixGoogle Scholar (quoting Ibn Bābūya al-Qummī's Kitāb Ikmā al-dīn wa-itmām al-ni'ma). Surprisingly enough, the staunch Sunnite ruler Khumārawayh b. Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn (d. 896) is said to have arrived at this conclusion. See also Idrīsī, folios 88b ff.

62 The short fifth chapter of the Anwār deals with the role of the pyramids at the end of time, folios 81a–89a.

63 fol. 89a. See also al-Salām, Ibn 'Abd, Fayḍ, fol. 52aGoogle Scholar.

64 Haarmann, U., ‘Evliyā Čelebīs Bericht über die Altertümer von Gize’, Turcica, VIII, 1976, 186Google Scholar. Aḥmad b. 'Imād al-Aqfahsī (d. 808/1405), one of Ibn ‘Abd al-Salām's sources, mentions in his tract on the Nile (MS Berlin, 6115, fol. 39b), that it will overflow its banks in the final cataclysm.

65 fol. 59a.

66 See the list in Idrīsī, fols. 14a ff. Cf. Harawī, , Ziyārāt, tr. 94Google Scholar; Murtadā Beg, Tahdhīb, fol. 66a (tombs of Ka'b al-Aḥbār and of the other al-ṣāliḥīn al-akhyār); al-Suyūṭī, Kawkab al-rawḍa, MS Berlin, 6111, fol. 7b. One, though not the famous, Ibn Hurayra is buried in Giza, cf. Chelebī, Evliyā, Seyāḥatnāme, X, Istanbul, 1938, 577Google Scholar, and Haarmann, , ‘Evliyā Čelebīs Bericht’, 222–3Google Scholar; Idrīsī, fol. 39a.

67 fol. 17b. This statement may refer to an illegible Kufic inscription on one of the Abū Ṣir pyramids which I was shown by Michael Meinecke.

68 fol. 19a–b.

69 fol. 32a; 17a.

70 See esp. fols. 29a–30a.

71 fol. 19b.

72 fol. 32a.

73 fols. 17a–b, taqdīs hādhihī l-arḍ.

74 fol. 32a. Al-Isḥāqī, 3–4, equates Miṣr and al-arḍ al-muqaddasa.

75 See the Risālat jam' al-turāb among the letters of King Marqūnus to Sanafjā, in: Ullmann, M., Katalog der arabischen alchemistischen Handschriften in der Chester Beatty Library, I. Beschreibung der Handschriften, Wiesbaden, 1974, 67Google Scholar.

76 fol. 18a.

77 fol. 18a, 11. 1 (from foot) ff. Cf. Wiet, , L'Egypte, 102–3Google Scholar; Maspéro, J. and Wiet, G., Matériaux pour servir à la géographic de l'Egypte, MIFAO, XXXVI, 1919, 25–7Google Scholar; Gayet, A., Antinoë et les sépultres de Thaïs et Sérapion, Paris, 1902Google Scholar. Among the Arabic sources see in particular also al-Nuwayrī, , Nihāyat al-arab, XV, Cairo, 1369/1949, 62Google Scholar (the haykal) and I, Cairo n.d., 393 (the circus built by queen Dalūka as a nilometer). On the epithet ‘city of the sorcerers’ see Wiet, , L'Egypte, 69, n. 8Google Scholar, quoting numerous geographers; add to Wiet's, list al-Waṭwāṭ, , Manāhij al-fikar wa-mabāhij al-'ibar, MS Berlin, 6045, fol. 541Google Scholar.

78 Idrīsī, fol. 18a: ‘we, the Arabs (ma'āshir al-'arab), call him Idrīs’. On the equation Hermes = Enoch = Idrīs in Islam see Ullmann, M., Natur- und Geheimwissenschaften im Islam, Leiden, 1972, 371 and n. 2Google Scholar; Wiet, , L'Egypte, 67, n. 1 with ample referencesGoogle Scholar. See further Fodor, A., Arab legendák a piramisokról (Kőrösi Csoma Kiskönyvtár 10), Budapest, 1971, 33–89Google Scholar; idem, ‘The Origins of the Arabic Legends of the Pyramids’, Acta Orientalia Hungarica, XXIII, 1970, 335–46; Fodor-Fóti, , ‘Haraman and Hermes: Origin of the Arabic word haram meaning pyramid’, Studia Aegyptiaca, II, 1976, 157 ffGoogle Scholar.

79 fol. 18a–b. See also al-Nadīm, Ibn, al-Fihrist, ed. Flügel, G., Leipzig, 1871–1872, 352Google Scholar.

80 fols. 53a ff.: Shaykh Abū 'l-Futūḥ b. abī l-Ḥasan al-Maṭālībī. See also Idrīsī's remarks on lawful treasure-hunting in Saladin's days, fol. 27a.

81 Al-Kindī, , al-Wulāt wa'l-quḍāt, ed. Guest, R., Beirut, 1908, 71–2Google Scholar. Duqmāq, Ibn, Kitāb al-Intiṣār li-wāsiṭat 'iqd al-amṣār, IV, ed. Vollers, , Cairo, 1314/1893, 39, 105Google Scholar on the recovery of a small diorite statuette that was broken following Yazīd II's aniconic decree. Modern studies: Vasiliew, A. A., ‘The Iconoclastic Edict of the Caliph Yazīd II. A.D. 721’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 9/10, 1955–1956, 23–47Google Scholar; Paret, R., ‘Die Entstehungszeit des islamischen Bilderverbots’, Kunst des Orients, XI, 1977, 168Google Scholar.

82 al-Ṣafadī, Khalīl, al-Wāfī bi'l-wafayāt, II, ed. Dedering, S., Wiesbaden, second edition, 1974, 133Google Scholar; quoted and slightly changed in: al-Furāt, Ibn, Tārīkh Ibn al-Furāt, VIII, Beirut, 1358/1939, 60Google Scholar.

83 The use of incense is a sure sign of a fraudulent shaykh; the sincere dervish abstains from it; see Wild, S., ‘Jugglers and fraudulent sufis’, Proceedings of the Sixth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Stockholm and Leiden, 1975, 60Google Scholar. For shukā'ā see Maimonides, , Sharḥ asmā' al-'uqqār, ed. Meyerhof, M., Cairo, 1940, 39, n. 362Google Scholar.

84 Maimonides, 8, no. 44. The two plants were often confused. On the intricacies of botanical nomenclature in Arabic see Ullmann's, M. remarks in: ‘Zum Verständnis der “Dichterischen Vergleiche der Andalus Araber”’, Welt des Orients, IX, 1977, 106 ffGoogle Scholar.

85 Idrīsī, fol. 105a. Ibn 'Abd al-Salām, fol. 52b.

86 Ibn 'Abd al-Salām, fol. 52a, quotes—so we may definitely assume—his main authority 'Abd al-Raḥmān al-Rashīdī (741/1340–1–803/1400–1), a contemporary of this crucial period, when he says: ‘the people of Egypt had already begun to destroy the pyramids years ago’.

87 In 695/1295–6 a terrible famine paralysed the economic life of Egypt, see al-Dawādārī, Ibn, Kanz, VIII, ed. Haarmann, U., Cairo, 1971, 363–5Google Scholar. Chapoutot-Remadi, M. read a paper on this subject (‘Une crise économique à la fin du XIII e siécle en Egypte’) at the eighth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies, Aix-en-Provence, 09 1976Google Scholar.

88 Al-Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ al-a'shā, XIV, Cairo, 1338/1919, 267–8Google Scholar, makes—in the context of a description of the flood of the year 784/1382–3—a pun on Abū 'l-Hawl (‘sphinx’) al-ghaīlq.

89 Dols, M. W., The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton, 1977, esp. 121–235Google ScholarPubMed. On demographic changes as a result of the plague see also: Russell, J. C., ‘The population of Medieval Egypt’, JARCE, v, 1966, 69–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 On this subject see Udovitch's, A. masterly study: ‘England to Egypt’, section IV, in Cook, M., ed., Studies in the economic history of the Middle East, London, 1970, 115–28Google Scholar; Dols, , op. cit., 281 fGoogle Scholar.

91 Ibn Ḥajar al-'Asqalānī, Badhl al-mā'ūn fī faḍl al-ṭā'ūn, discussed by Sublet, J., ‘La peste prise aux rêts de la jurisprudence: Le traité d'lbn Ḥağar al-'Asqalānī sur la peste’, Studia Islamica, XXXIII, 1971, 141–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dols, , op. cit., 110–21, 329 fGoogle Scholar. Al-Maqrīzī wrote his famous risāla on the famines, cf. Wiet, G. in JESHO, v, 1962, 1–90Google Scholar, see also Garcin, J. C., ‘La “Méditerranéisation” de l'empire mamelouk sous les Sultans Bahrides’, RSO, XLVIII, 1974, 115Google Scholar.

92 This is evidenced by the jafr and malāḥim treatises devoted to Sultan al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn who was visualized as the redeemer of Baghdad from the pagan Mongol yoke. See Ibn al-Dawādārī, VIII, 274, 1. 8f, 275, 1. 18, and the comments by Holt, P. M. in BSOAS, XXXVIII, 1975, 246Google Scholar. Two such tracts should be mentioned: (1) Ḥajala, Ibn Abī, al-Sukkardān, MS Munich, 407, chs. iiGoogle Scholar (on the connexion between the figure seven and the sultan), iv (why al-Nāṣir was the seventh of his brothers to ascend the throne) and vi (mysterious events in the life of the sultan); (2) Anonymous, Ithbāt al-dalālāt 'alā nuṣrat al-Malik al-Nāṣir ilā 'l-sa'ādāt, not recorded in GAL nor Ḥājjī Khalīfa, University of Utah Ar., microfilm no. 143.

93 On the typical contemporary anti-bida' treatises (one written by the ibn al-nās Idrīs b. Baydakīn al-Turkumānī) see Labib, S. Y., ‘The problem of the bid'a in the light of an Arabic manuscript of the 14th century’, JESHO, VII, 1964, 191–6Google Scholar; the false veneration of shrines was regarded as especially reprehensible.

94 Here I can only briefly mention the important study by Memon, Muhammad Umar, Ibn Taimīya's struggle against popular religion. With an annotated translation of his Kitāb Iqtiḍā' aṣ-ṣirāṭ al-mustaqīm mukhālafat aṣḥāb al-jaḥīm, The Hague, 1976Google Scholar, and Livingston, John W., ‘Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah: A fourteenth century defense against astrological divination and alchemical transmutation’, JAOS, XCI, 1971, 96–103Google Scholar. On saint-worship, as summarized and criticized by Ibn Taymiyya, see also Kabbani, Marwan, Die Heiligenverehrung im Urteil Ibn Taymīyas und seiner Zeitgenossen. Diss. phil., Bonn, 1979, 87–92 on Egyptian sanctuariesGoogle Scholar.

95 See al-Suyūṭī's remarks on Ibn Qayyim's Kitāb al-Rūḥ in: Gramlich, R., ‘Ein Schreiben Suyūṭīs über Verwandlungsprobleme’, Der Islam, LV, 1978, 14—15Google Scholar. This evidence must be held against Livingston's portrayal of Ibn Qayyim (and other representatives of ‘High Islam’) as a rocher de bronze in his fight against popular practices, see JAOS, XCI, 1971, 96–7Google Scholar.

96 Anonymous, MS Berlin, 6114, fol. 30a (with the correct name of the actor: Jānbulāṭ); Else Reitemeyer, , Beschreibung Ägyptens im Mittelalter aus den geographischen Werken der Araber, Leipzig, 1903, 101Google Scholar.

97 The best reference to this incident is still in Silvestre de Sacy, Relation de l'Egypte par Abd-allatiph, médicin arabe de Baghdad, Paris, 1810, 248, n. 65Google Scholar.

98 References on Shaykhū's khānqāh are compiled in Salīm, Maḥmūd Rizq, 'Aṣr al-salāṭīn al-mamālīk wa-nitājuhū al-'ilmī wa'l-adabī, III, Cairo, n.d., 62Google Scholar. See also Qalqashandī, , Ṣubḥ, III, 316 fGoogle Scholar.

99 Al-Maqrīzī, , Khiṭaṭ, ed. Wiet, , II, 157Google Scholar (quoting Ibn al-Mutawwaj). Duqmāq, Ibn, Intiṣār, IV, 22Google Scholar.

100 On Ikhmīm and its famous temple cf. the literature compiled in Wiet, , L'Egypte, 103–10Google Scholar, and Haarmann, , Tunica, VIII, 1976, 167, n. 33Google Scholar. See also al-Yūnīnī, , Dhayl mir'āt al-zamān, MS Topkapi Saray, 2904, III, fol. 223b–224aGoogle Scholar; al-Waṭwāṭ, , Manāhij, fol. 543–4Google Scholar; Anonymous, Berlin, 8469, fol. 71b (copying Waṭwāṭ); ps. al-Būnī, , Shams al-ma'ārif wa-laṭā'if al-'awārif, lith. Cairo, 1319/1901–1902, III, 86Google Scholar. Ibn Jubayr's description is particularly detailed, see Sauneron, Serge, ‘Le temple d'Akhmīm décrit par Ibn Jobeir’, BIFAO, LI, 1952, 123–35Google Scholar; Ferrand, G., ‘Les monuments de l'Egypte au Xlle siècle d'après Abū Ḥāmid al-Andalusī’, Mélanges Maspéro III (= MIFAO, LXVIII), Cairo, 1935–1940, 65 fGoogle Scholar.

101 Al-Maqrīzī, , Khiṭaṭ, ed. Būlāq, , I, 240Google Scholar; al-Qalqashandī, III, 328, 11. 3–5. De Sacy's comments have lost none of their value, see his ‘Observations sur l'origine du nom donné par les Grecs et les Arabes aux pyramides d'Egypte’, Magasin Encyclopédique, VI, 1801, 480Google Scholar.

102 Riḥla (= Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār fī gharā'ib al-amṣār), Beirut, 1379/1960, 51Google Scholar; Gibb, H. A. R. (tr.), The travels of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa, I, Cambridge, 1958, 65Google Scholar.

103 Al-Maqrīzī, , Khiṭaṭ, ed. Būlāq, , II, 415Google Scholar. Al-Yūnīnī, , Dhayl, MS Yale, 701, fol. 272bGoogle Scholar (on th e beginnings of this convent; its shaykh administers the obsequies for the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim). For its significance in the fifteenth century consult Schimmel, A., ‘Sufismus und Heiligenverehrung im spätmittelalterlichen Ägypten’, Festschrift Werner Caskel, Leiden, 1968, 283Google Scholar; Gramlich, R., Der Islam, LV, 1978, 4, n. 7Google Scholar.

104 Sawm al-dahr, ceaseless fasting, was disapproved of by Islamic orthodoxy as exaggerated zuhd. Ṗrofessor Fritz Steppat, Berlin, kindly directed my attention to th e following references: al-Bukhārī, , Kitāb al-ṣawm, bāb 56Google Scholar: the Prophet advises 'Abdallāh b. 'Umar, who wanted to fast incessantly, to fast three days of one month, ‘for a good deed will be counted te n times (amounting to a full month)’; bāb 55 and 59 with similar stories. Ḥanbal, Ibn, Musnad, IV, 25, 1.3 and 26, 1.5Google Scholar. Other passages in the Musnad define ṣawm al-dahr not as perpetual fasting, but rather as fasting in Ramaḍān plus six days in Shawwāl (v, 417, 1.4; 419, 1.6 f.; 419, 1.10 from foot), or as fasting in Ramaḍān plus three days in any other month (II, 263, 1.11 from foot; v, 34, 1. 1 from foot; 35, 1. 17; 154, 11. 9 f.). See also Goldziher, I., Vorlesungen über den Islam, Heidelberg, second ed., 1925, 150 and n. 73Google Scholar.

105 Khiṭaṭ, ed. Wiet, , II, 157Google Scholar.

106 Evliyā Chelebī in Haarmann, , Turcica, VIII, 1976, 205–6Google Scholar (Ottoman text), 218–19 (German translation). Evliyā's source is Jelālzāde Ṣāliḥ Chelebī (d. 973/1565), Haarmann, 188–91.

107 See now his Sharḥ abyāt Sībawayhi, ed. Zāhid, Zuhayr Ghāzī, Najaf, 1394/1974Google Scholar.

108 Khallikān, Ibn, Wafayāt al-a'yān, tr. de Slane, M. G., London, 1842, I, 82Google Scholar.

109 In Ibn 'Abd al-Salām, Fayḍ, fol. 52a–b.

110 The basic Arabic source on this event is al-Nuwayrī's, Muḥammad b. QāsimKitāb al-Ilmām, 4 vols., Hyderabad, 1388–1390/1968–1970Google Scholar. Yet see also the poems by the above-mentioned cabbalistic writer, Ibn Abī Ḥajala, on the fall of Alexandria, GAL, n, 14 (13).

111 On the excellence of the Companions in matters of morale and legal knowledge (faḍā'il al-ṣaḥāba) see Muranyi, M., Die Prophetcngenossen in der frühislamischen Geschichte (Bonner Orientalistische Studien NS 28), Bonn, 1973, 21–2Google Scholar, and Noth, A. in Der Islam, XLVII, 1971, 177–9Google Scholar.

112 Cf. Rice, D. T., ‘Medieval Harran. Studies in its topography and monuments’, Anatolian Studies, II, 1952, 40Google Scholar. Ibrāhīm, Lailā 'Alī, ‘Dragons on a Cairene Mosque’, Art and Archeology. Research Papers, 12 1976, 11–19, esp. 12–13Google Scholar. Wilhelm Eilers deals with the phenomenon of the return of pristine functions to shrines in an Islamic environment in his recent article ‘Schiitische Wasserheilige’, in Die islamische Welt zwischen Mittelatter und Neuzeit, Beirut, 1979, 109, n. 56Google Scholar.

113 The last incident of this kind seems to have been the destruction of the temple of Armant in Upper Egypt, which had allegedly been built by king Shaddāt b. 'Adīm (Nuwayrī, , Nihāya, XV, 61Google Scholar), in the fifteenth century, Qalqashandi, III, 328. See also Wiet, , L'Egypte, 113, ns. 2, 4Google Scholar.

114 Ibn Ẓahīra, 175.

115 Ibn al-Dawādārī, VI, 353, 1. 2.

116 Ibn Ẓahīra, 176.

117 al-Ḥakam, Ibn 'Abd, Futūḥ Miṣr wa-akhbāruhā, ed. Torrey, Charles C., New Haven, 1922, 150–1, here 150, 1.14Google Scholar. Louca, A. made this passage in Ibn 'Abd al-Ḥakam's report the subject of a literary analysis: ‘Le moment inaugurateur en histoire. Analyse d'un texte d'lbn 'Abd al-Ḥakam (803–71) sur la conquête musulmane de l'Egyyte’, paper read at the ninth Congress of Arabic and Islamic Studies in Amsterdam, 09, 1978Google Scholar.

118 Al-Tha'ālibī, , The book of curious and entertaining information: The Laṭā'if al-ma'ārif of Tha'ālibī, tr. Bosworth, C. B., Edinburgh, 1968, 122Google Scholar.

119 This is the interesting result of a study by Cohen, Hayyim J., ‘The economic background and the secular occupations of Muslim jurisprudents and traditionists in the classical period of Islam’, JESHO, XIII, 1970, 45Google Scholar.