Ibn Taghribirdi

Jamal ad-Din Yusuf ibn al-Amir Saif ad-Din Taghribirdi ( Arabic جمال الدين يوسف بن الأمير سيف الدين تغري بردي, DMG Ǧamāl ad-Dīn Yūsuf b. al-Amīr Saif ad-Dīn Taġrī Birdī ), Ibn Taghribirdi for short , (* approx. 1409/1410; † 1470 ) was an Egyptian historian who came from the Turkish Mamlukenelite of Cairo . He studied with al-Maqrīzī and al-Ayni, two of the leading historians of the time. He wrote a multi-volume chronicle of the then Mamluk Empire under the nameالنجوم الزاهرة في ملوك مصر والقاهرة / an-Nuǧūm az-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira .

Life and personality

Ibn Taġrībirdī was born around 1409/10 in Cairo as the son of a high-ranking Mamluk emir and a Turkish slave. His father was at that time commander in chief of the Egyptian army and was appointed nā'ib as-salṭana of Damascus , i.e. viceroy in this important city, in early 1411 , but died on April 28, 1412. Together with his siblings, the little one became Yoosuf returned now to Cairo, where he first from his sister that first the chief Qadi of the Hanafi , and later to the Shafi'i was educated married. At the age of five or six he was introduced to the Mamluken sultan al-Mu'aiyad Sheikh .

Ibn Taġrībirdī was as awlād al-nās - those were the sons of Mamluk emirs - a member of the Mamluk elite, but grew up in a learned environment and received extensive training as such. Most awlād al-nās were encouraged to pursue a career in administration or as religious scholars. After his Hajj at the age of 13 or 14, he continued his studies, in addition to ḥanafi law, Arabic grammar, rhetoric, fiction, poetry, astronomy, medicine, music, Turkish, Persian, and above all history, with his teachers al -Maqrīzī and Badr ad-Dīn al-ʻAynī. He himself writes in the an-Nuǧūm that his interest in historiography was aroused when he witnessed the encounters between al-ʻAynī and Sultan Barsbay , during which the Sultan expressed his appreciation for the historian by emphasizing that it al-'Ayni who would have taught him all about government and what it means to be a good Muslim.

Ultimately, Ibn Taġrībirdī was first raised to the lowest rank of "Emir of five (Mamluks)" including an income from a fief. By the age of about 20 he received extensive military training and became an excellent rider. He became a confidante of Sultan Barsbāy, whom he accompanied since October 1430, among other things, on his hunts and in the summer of 1432 even on a campaign in northern Syria. This close relationship with the court continued under Sultan Jaqmaq , and he was a close friend of his son Muḥammad. He even dedicated his main work an-Nuǧūm to him, and Muḥammad married his niece. Ibn Taġrībirdī was closely connected to the court and lived in extremely comfortable circumstances. His income enabled him to have a large tomb mosque built for himself not far from that of Sultan al-Ashraf Sayf ad-Din Inal . He died on June 5, 1470 at the age of about 60.

Ibn Taġrībirdī was valued as a sociable contemporary and a stimulating conversationalist. He was described as generous, generous, and endowed with a calm and pleasant temperament, and was known for his high morals and piety. Nevertheless, according to the judgment of his contemporaries, he was also capable of open criticism of people and conditions. So he wrote, even though he came from the Mamluk military aristocracy:

“Hail this time and its people! How great were their deeds; how great was the way they raised the young and honored the old. So they ruled the country and the people were [sic!] Satisfied. They won the hearts of their subjects and obtained high offices. In our time [that is, the middle of the 15th century, P.Th.], however, they are exactly the opposite of all of this. The commanders are ignorant and the young Mamluks are malicious. "

Both Ibn Taġrībirdī and his teacher al-Maqrīzī were strongly influenced by Ibn Chaldūn's image of a prosperous Egypt and therefore felt their own epoch as a period of decline. While al-Maqrīzī primarily blamed the bad economic policy of the Burjiyya dynasty for this, and the military aristocracy since the first of this v. a. Circassian sultans from the Caucasus , Barqūq , especially accused of “three shamefulnesses”, namely homosexuality , corruption and the economic downturn, Ibn Taġrībirdī, in an effort to refute these allegations, set out long and broad that each of these “three shamefulnesses” were widespread across the country even before Barqūq came to power. He himself sees the main causes for the decline of the empire and its institutions in the weakened authority of the rulers and increasing injustice.

Ibn Taġrībirdī was also referred to as the "official historian of the Circassian sultans" by a modern historian. As the son of a high-ranking Mamluk, he had connections to the Sultan's court, which enabled him to succeed his teacher al-'Ayni as "court historian" and as such he glorified the rule of Sultan Jaqmaq, with whom he was close friends. Ibn Taġrībirdī was also - probably because of his cockiness and his tendency to correct the translations of Turkish words by his colleagues - not only labeled 'āmmī (commoner) and ignoramus by many chroniclers, but also as self-conscious about the Turks and whatever was an even more serious charge against the Copts . In addition, Little criticizes his often imprecise and indiscriminate use of sources and his tendency to ignore or rework material he found in contemporary literature.

But it is the quality of his work, which is recognized not only by his contemporary colleagues, including al-ʻAynī, but to this day, and which identifies him as the second most important historian of medieval Egypt after al-Maqrīzī. Apart from that, even learned awlād al-nās do not usually grant exclusive insight into the mentality of the Mamluks - apart from a few scholarly comments on the Arabic meaning of Turkish terms used by the Mamluks and a conspicuous pride in their role in the defense of an endangered Islam in the 13th and early 14th centuries. Ibn Taġrībirdī in the 15th and Ibn al-Dawādārī in the 14th century are the exceptions here, which occasionally provide an indication of the meaning of some Mamluk habits or actions.

Works

Ibn Taġrībirdīs first important work was a biographical lexicon with the title al-Manḥal aṣ-ṣāfī wa-l-mustawfī baʻd al-wāfī in 6 volumes, which is mainly dedicated to the life of the sultans and important emirs of Egypt from 1248 to 1451. A few years before the completion of the Manhal, he had already begun work on his famous history of Egypt under the title an-Nuǧūm az-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira (German for "The shining stars: About the kings of Egypt and Cairo ”).

After the deaths of the two most important historians at the time, al-Maqrīzī (1442) and al-ʻAynī (1451), he felt called to continue their work. Since he was of the opinion that al-ʻAynī had become unreliable in his texts in his last years because of his old age, he decided to publish al-Maqrīzī's large-scale Chronicle as-Sulūk li-maʻrifat duwal al-mulūk under the title Ḥawādiṯ ad-duhūr fī madā al-ayyām wa-š-šuhūr (Eng. about "The events during the scope of the days and months") to continue, which consequently begins in April 1441. This chronicle is more detailed than an-Nuǧūm and deals with political as well as economic aspects.

Finally, Ibn Taġrībirdī turned back to-Nuǧūm and subsequently wrote this work and the Ḥawādiṯ at the same time. From 1451 an-Nu anūm is in fact a kind of summary of the Ḥawādiṯ. Ibn Taġrībirdī has written several other historical works - mainly summaries of an-Nuǧūm.

literature

• Broadbridge, Anne F. 2003. "Royal authority, justice, and order in society: the influence of Ibn Khaldūn on the writings of al-Maqrīzī and Ibn Taghrībirdī." Mamlūk Studies Review 7, no. Ii: 231–245.
• Levanoni, Amalia. 2001. “Al-Maqrīzī's account of the Transition from Turkish to Circassian Mamluk Sultanate: History in the Service of Faith.” The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950–1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, 93-105.
• Little, Donald P. 1970. An Introduction to Mamlūk Historiography. An Analysis of Arabic Annalistic and Biographical Sources for the Reign of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH.
• Perho, Irmeli. 2001. “Al-Maqrīzī and Ibn Taghrī Birdī as Historians of Contemporary Events.” The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950–1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, 107-120.
• History of Egypt 1382-1469 ; transl. from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥāsin Ibn Taghrī Birdī by William Popper, Berkeley 1954–63.
• Discount, Nasser. 2001. "Representing the Mamluks in Mamluk Historical Writing." The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950-1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, 59-75.
• Thorau, Peter. 2003. “Some critical remarks on the so-called 'mamlūk phenomenon'.” The Mamlūken: Studies of their history and culture. Stefan Conermann and Anja Pistor-Hatmann (eds.). Schenefeld: EB-Verlag, 367–378.

Web links

• The full text of Nujum al-zahira fi muluk Misr wa'l-Qahira

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Perho, Irmeli. 2001. “Al-Maqrīzī and Ibn Taghrī Birdī as Historians of Contemporary Events.” The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950-1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, p. 108.
2. ↑ Popper, William. 1954. History of Egypt 1382-1469 AD Part I, 1382-1399 AD Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥasin Ibn Taghrī Birdī. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. S. XV-XVI
3. ↑ Rabbat, Nasser. 2001. "Representing the Mamluks in Mamluk Historical Writing." The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c.950-1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, p. 60.
4. ↑ Popper, William. 1954. History of Egypt 1382-1469 AD Part I, 1382-1399 AD Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥasin Ibn Taghrī Birdī. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. S. XVI
5. ↑ Perho, Irmeli. 2013. Ibn Taghribīrdī's portrayal of the first Mamluk rulers. Ulrich Haarmann Memorial Lecture, Volume 6. Berlin: EB-Verlag Dr. Brandt. P. 5
6. ↑ Popper, William. 1954. History of Egypt 1382-1469 AD Part I, 1382-1399 AD Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥasin Ibn Taghrī Birdī. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. S. XVI-XVII
7. ↑ Muḥammad Ḥusayn Šams ad-Dīn. 1992. Ibn Taġrībirdī: Muʻarriḫ Miṣr fī-l-ʻaṣr al-mamlūki. Beirut, p. 34. Quoted from Broadbridge 2003: 241
8. ↑ Popper, William. 1954. History of Egypt 1382-1469 AD Part I, 1382-1399 AD Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥasin Ibn Taghrī Birdī. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. S. XVIII
9. ↑ Ibn Taġrībirdī. 1929-1972. an-Nuǧūm az-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa-l-Qāhira. 16 vol. Cairo, here: vol. 8, p. 228. Quoted from Thorau 2003: 368
10. ↑ Levanoni, Amalia. 2001. "Al-Maqrīzī's account of the Transition from Turkish to Circassian Mamluk Sultanate: History in the Service of Faith." The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c.950-1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, p. 101
11. ↑ Broadbridge, Anne F. 2003. "Royal authority, justice, and order in society: the influence of Ibn Khaldūn on the writings of al-Maqrīzī and Ibn Taghrībirdī." Mamlūk Studies Review 7, no. Ii, pp. 241–242
12. ↑ M. Ismāʻīl. 1974. Qadāyā fīʻl-taʻrīkh al-islāmī, manhaj wa taṭbīq. Beirut, 156. Quoted from Perho 2001, p. 109
13. ↑ al-Khatīb al-Ǧawharī al-Ṣayrafī, Inbā 'al-Ḥasr bi-Abnā' al-'Aṣr, Hasan Habashi (ed.). Cairo, 1970, pp. 175-182. Quoted from Rabbat (2001), p. 63.
14. ↑ Little, Donald P. 1970. An Introduction to Mamlūk Historiography. An Analysis of Arabic Annalistic and Biographical Sources for the Reign of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, p. 91
15. ↑ Little, Donald P. 1970. An Introduction to Mamlūk Historiography. An Analysis of Arabic Annalistic and Biographical Sources for the Reign of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, p. 109
16. ↑ Little, Donald P. 1970. An Introduction to Mamlūk Historiography. An Analysis of Arabic Annalistic and Biographical Sources for the Reign of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalāwūn. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag GmbH, p. 87
17. ↑ Rabbat, Nasser. 2001. "Representing the Mamluks in Mamluk Historical Writing." The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c.950-1800). Hugh Kennedy (Ed.). Leiden: Brill, pp. 62-63
18. ↑ Popper, William. 1954. History of Egypt 1382-1469 AD Part I, 1382-1399 AD Translated from the Arabic Annals of Abu l-Maḥasin Ibn Taghrī Birdī. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. S. XIX-XXII