Towards a Cultural History of the Mamluk Era.

Varisco, Daniel Martin

Towards a Cultural History of the Mamluk Era. Edited by MAHMOUD HADDAD, ARNIM HEINEMANN. JOHN L. MELOY. and SOUAD SLIM. Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 118. Beirut: ORIENT-INSTITUT, 2010. [Distributed by Ergon Verlag Wurzburg.] Pp. xii + 164 + 152 (Arabic), illus. [euro]68.

Conference publications are notoriously difficult to review. It is rare that such volumes are of uniform quality, especially on a broad topic. In the present volume some papers are as short as five pages and others as long as thirty-six. The eighteen articles in this volume were originally presented at a conference held at the University of Balamand, cosponsored by the Orient-Institute in Beirut, on the theme "Towards a Cultural History of Bilad al-Sham during the Mamluk Era: Prosperity or Decline, Tolerance or Preservation.- Ten of the articles are in English, one in French, and seven in Arabic. The articles are arranged in five parts: (1) Religious Communities and Their Interaction; (2) Fields of Cultural Production: Arts; (3) Fields of Cultural Production: Literature; (4) Fields of Cultural Production: Science; and (5) Cultural Contexts of Political Practice and Social Relations. The English and the Arabic sections both contain a complete list of the contents, and topical indices are included for both sections.

True to its stated aim, this volume does provide a set of papers about the Mamluk period in Bilad al-Sham, an area that is not nearly as well studied, at least in English, as the Mamluk era in Egypt. Half of the articles deal with either Christian communities or relations between Christians and Muslims. Among the topics addressed are the responses to the early fourteenth-century Christian apologetic Letter from Cyprus by Ibn Taymiyya and Muhammad ibn Abi Talib al-Dimashqi; Maronites and Druze in Mount Lebanon (in Arabic); Christians as a minority in Damascus and Aleppo (in Arabic); Christian martyrs in Tripoli; Christian art (two articles, one in Arabic); and crusader fortifications along the Lebanese coast. Other articles cover inscriptions and calligraphy in Mamluk Tripoli; Mamluk astronomy; the genre of al-tibb al-nabawi (in French); mental illness; the Manila military elite; and the role of the muhtasib (in Arabic). Four of the articles are about Mamluk Egypt--on the role of Copts (in Arabic); a brief survey of the historiography of al-Maqrizi (in Arabic); and of the chronicle of Ibn Iyas; and on craftsmen, most of whom were non-Mamluks.

The strength of the volume is the scope of the material covered, offering a wide variety of information about community relations in Mamluk culture, especially with the Christians under their control. The quality of the thirty-two pages of photographs, most of which are architectural or Christian icons, is excellent.

The weakness of the volume is that most of the articles sum up existing information available in far more detail elsewhere. An exception is Albrecht Fuess's (pp. 141-51) interesting article on perceptions of Mamluk amirs. This includes an excerpt (p. 149) from a love poem by the Syrian SalaIt al-Din al-Safadi (d. 1363). who satirizes the Mamluk mispronunciation of Arabic: I love his Turkish look which raises my excitement, he is to be blamed if he separates from me too long, but how could he ever be capable of true love [wafa], if his tongue can't even pronounce the Fri)." Axel Havemann's (pp. 87-98) "cultural history from below" approach to the chronicle of Ibn Iyas (d. ca. 1524) is especially instructive on the potential of his source for going beyond narrative historical reconstruction.

Particularly noteworthy is the quality of several of the Arabic contributions, which present information not readily available in Western languages. Elias al-Qatar (pp. 3-27) provides a descriptive account of the various Muslim and non-Muslim communities in Lebanon. Andre Nassar (pp. 41-75) writes a valuable summary of the role that Christian communities played in Damascus and Syria, with an extensive bibliography. Also notable is Ahmad Abd al-Salam's (pp. 127-43) article on hisba, which includes a list of muhtasib appointees in Egypt.

The English introduction is bare bones: it does not provide a general overview of the Mamluk presence in Syria but serves mainly as an expanded abstract of the volume contents. The Arabic introduction is not a translation of the English but also is no more than a brief discussion of the contents. Although I did not notice major printing errors, the editing is minimalist in intent. The one map provided of Lebanon is insufficient: a broader map of the Mamluk sites discussed in the text should have been provided. Although the editors note that the transliteration is not systematized, this does not represent a problem for anyone familiar with the Arabic. The volume I received printed the article by Saliba twice. Finally, a list of contributors with details on their affiliation would have been helpful.

DANIEL MARTIN VARISCO HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY