Literary Spectacles of Sultanship: Historiography, the Chancery, and Social Practice in Late Medieval Egypt
Material type: TextSeries: Islam - Thought, Culture, and Society ; Volume 10Publication details: Berlin; Boston: De Gruyter, 2023Description: 231 p., ill. 23 cmISBN:- 9783110752243
Item type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Books | Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) Library Main Library - 0.01 | E 2370 (Browse shelf(Opens below)) | Available | E 2370 |
Browsing Netherlands-Flemish Institute in Cairo (NVIC) Library shelves, Shelving location: Main Library - 0.01 Close shelf browser (Hides shelf browser)
Chapter 1. The Sīra Corpus: Authors and Texts -- Chapter 2. The Discourse of Sīra: Historiography, Memory, and Performance -- Chapter 3. Sīra as an Act of Narrative Construction -- Chapter 4. Sīra as Chancery Practice: Composition and Compilation -- Chapter 5. Sīra as Literary Communication -- Chapter 6. Sīra as Courtly Phenomenon -- Chapter 7. Final Conclusions
"The so-called Mamluk sultans who ruled Egypt and Syria between the late thirteenth and early sixteenth centuries AD have often been portrayed as lacking in legitimacy due to their background as slave soldiers. Sultanic biographies written by chancery officials in the early period of the sultanate have been read as part of an effort of these sultans to legitimise their position on the throne. This book reconsiders the main corpus of six such biographies written by the historians Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir (d. 1293) and his nephew Shāfiʿ ibn ʿAlī (d. 1330) and argues that these were in fact far more complex texts. An understanding of their discourses of legitimisation needs to be embedded within a broader understanding of the multi-directional discourses operating across the texts. The study proposes to interpret these texts as "spectacles", in which authors emplotted the reign of a sultan in thoroughly literary and rhetorical fashion, making especially extensive use of textual forms prevalent in the chancery. In doing so the authors reimagined the format of the biography as a performative vehicle for displaying their literary credentials and helping them negotiate positions in the chancery and the wider courtly orbit." --Provided by publisher.
There are no comments on this title.