Project MMS-II: The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate II: historiography, political order and state formation in fifteenth-century Egypt and Syria.
2016-12-30 – 2021-12-31
- Abstract
MMS-II pursues the hypothesis that de Mamluk sultanate was a cultural product constructed in the interaction between state formation and historiography. MMS-II follows up from the ERC-project MMS' focus on the social production of power networks in the Syro-Egyptian sultanate between the 1410s and 1460s, but it does so by directing the themes of political history and Arabic historiography towards entirely new, unexplored horizons. Current understanding of the late medieval Middle East continues to rely heavily on the rich Arabic historiographical production of the period. However, the particular nature, impact and value of this highly politicized historiography remains hugely underexplored and underestimated. MMS-II aims to remedy this, by arguing with and beyond instead of against or outside of this historiography's subjectivities. It wants to understand its texts as products of particular socio-cultural practices and, at the same time, as a particular type of actors in such practices.
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- Journal Article
- A2
- open access
Introduction : history writing, Mamlukisation and social memory in late medieval Egypt
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Arabic historiography in late medieval Egypt : constructing contexts, texts and meanings
Jo Van Steenbergen (UGent) and Maya Termonia (UGent) -
From the 'sultan of Islam' to the 'realms of the world' : lists of rulers, politics of scale, and claims to sovereignty in ninth-/fifteenth-century Egyptian chronicles
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- Journal Article
- A2
- open access
Historiography and the making of the sultan’s court in 15th century Cairo : the case of the court office of ‘the Chief Head of the Guards’ (raʾs nawbat al‑nuwab)
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Rethinking 'the Mamlūk State' with Ibn Khaldūn : 'Mamlukization,' ʿaṣabiyya, and historiographical imaginations of the Sultanate of Cairo (1200s-1500s)
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- Journal Article
- A1
- open access
Social infrastructures, military entrepreneurship, and the making of the Sultan’s court in fifteenth-century Cairo : the case of the Court Office of ‘the Chief Head of the Guards’ (raʾs nawbat al-nuwab)
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'Sulṭān awlād al-nās' or 'Amīr ibn Mamlūk'? Re-framing Khalīl ibn Shāhīn’s Zubdat Kashf al-Mamālik wa-Bayān al-Ṭuruq wa-l-Masālik
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Where are the awlād al-nās? Arabic historiography, mamlūkization, and the semantics and discursive politics of a polysemous concept
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- Book Chapter
- open access
Al-ʿAynī and his fellow historians : questioning the discursive position of a historian in the academic field in the Cairo Sultanate
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- Book Chapter
- open access
History writing, adab, and intertextuality in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria : old and new readings