Focusing on Near Eastern history in Mamluk and Ottoman times, this book, dedicated to Michael Winter, stresses elements of variety and continuity in the history of the Near East, an area of study which has traditionally attracted little attention from Islamists. Ranging over the period from the thirteenth to the nineteenth century, the articles in this book look at the area from Istanbul down through Syria and Palestine to Arabia, the Yemen and the Sudan. The articles demonstrate the great wealth of the materials available, in a wide variety of languages, from archival documents to manuscripts and art works, as well as inscriptions and buildings, police records and divorce documentation. The topics covered are equally as varied and include Dufism, the festival of Nabi Musa, military organisations, doctors, and charity to name but a few.
1. Sufism and Sanctity: The Genesis of the Wali Allah in Mamluk Jerusalem and Hebron 2. The Prince who Favored the Desert: Fragmentary Biography of Al-Nasir Ahmad (d. 745/1344) 3. Al-Nabi Musa - An Ottoman Festival (Mawsim) Resurrected? 4. Some Remarks on the Inscription of Baybars at Maqam Nabi Musa 5. Sign of the Times: Reusing the Past in Baybarss Architecture in Palestine 6. A Fourteenth Century Jerusalem Court Record of a Divorce Hearing: A Case Study 7. The Hoax of the Miraculous Speaking Wall: Criminal Investigation in Mamluk Cairo 8. Awlad Al-Nas in the Mamluk Army During the Bahri Period 9. Popular Sufi Sermons in Late Mamluk Egypt 10. Physicians in Mamluk and Ottoman Courts 11. Evliya Celebi on Imarets 12. Great Fire in the Metropolis: The Case of the Istanbul Conflagration of 1569 and its Description by Marcantonio Barbaro 13. Sixteenth Century Illustrations of the Hajj Route 14. The Forgotten Province: A Prelude to the Ottoman Era in Yemen 15. Islam in the Sudan under the Funj and the Ottomans 16. Observations on some Religious Institutions in Damiette and Faraskur in the Eighteenth Century 17. The Expropriation of the Pashas Peasants