Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project

ISBN-13: 9781399502818 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 332 str.

Nasser Rabbat

Opis

Recounts the life of Egypt's greatest historian, analyses his work and assesses its impact then and now Offers the most complete, probing and layered biography of al-Maqrizi Interprets al-Maqrizi's historical output as a long-term scholarly project revolving around his famous Khitat to capture the entire history of Egypt Analyses al-Maqrizi's approach and methodologies in light of his beliefs, ethics, feelings, education, social standing, world views, politics and personal circumstances Distills from al-Maqrizi's massive textual output insights into his theorising, conception of history and the influence of his teacher Ibn Khaldun Restores him to the pinnacle of Mamluk historiographical tradition as an unusually outspoken critic who was animated by his moral rectitude Although al-Maqrizi is recognised as the most influential historian of pre-modern Egypt, he has never received the probing historical treatment warranted by his standing and scholarly output. This book fills that gap. Arranged in three sections, it tells al-Maqrizi's life story in the first, weaves it with historiographical, textual and methodological analysis of his oeuvre in the second, and reconstructs the afterlife of the author and his work down to the present in the third part. al-Maqrizi is presented both as a man of his age who forged a distinct and unique scholarly persona and a historian with a structured and principled project aiming to reconstruct the history of Islamic Egypt in all its facets. His, however, was a critical stance with moral overtones, conceived from within the epistemological framework of a medieval Muslim thinker, which ensured not only his reputation in his own historiographical tradition, but also his reclamation in the modern Egyptian consciousness as one of the most original voices of Egypt.

Spis treści

Foreword

Introduction

Part 1: The Life of al-Maqrizi

Chapter 1: The Formative Years

• The Sources on al-Maqrizi’s Life
• A Family of Scholars
• The Loving Presence of Women in al-Maqrizi's Life
• A Solid Scholarly Formation
• Ibn Khaldun: Teacher and Interlocutor
• A Glorious Lineage?
• Al-Maqrizi’s Representation of the Fatimids

Chapter 2: Career, Moral Crisis, and Withdrawal

• A Question of Madhhab?
• Building a Career
• Quest for Patrons
• The Hisba Saga
• Rivalry with Badr al-Din al-‘Ayni
• The Damascus Interlude
• The Beginning of Estrangement
• Last Attempts at Finding Patronage?
• Withdrawal
• Death

Part 2: The Writing of al-Maqrizi

Chapter 3: Harvest of a Lifetime

• A Tentative Inventory of al-Maqrizi’s Works
• Notebooks and Abridgments: A Window into al-Maqrizi’s Sourcing Method
• The Beginnings: From Abridger to Author
• The Concept of Kharab: Looking Back as Method
• The History of Egypt: An Integrated Project

Chapter 4: The Khitat: History and Belonging

• The Khitat: A Cumulative Book?
• Al-Mawa‘iz wa-l-I‘tibar: What’s in a Title
• Al-Maqrizi’s Notion of History
• Khitat and Athar: The Totality of the Urban Space
• The Patriotic Impulse
• Structuring the Khitat on the Tempo of Ruination
• Al-Maqrizi and the Khaldunian Cyclical History

Part 3: The Afterlife of al-Maqrizi’s Writing

Chapter 5: Al-Maqrizi and the Orientalists

• The Khitat as Urban History
• Al-Maqrizi and the Ottomans
• Al-Maqrizi, Napoléon, and the Early Orientalists
• Arabic Editions of al-Maqrizi’s Khitat
• Translating al-Maqrizi’s Khitat
• Re-Editing al-Maqrizi

Chapter 6: Reading al-Maqrizi in Modern Egypt

• Al-Maqrizi’s Readers on the Eve of the Nahda: al-Jabarti and Hasan al-‘Attar
• Publishing al-Maqrizi’s Khitat
• Reviving the Khitat Genre: ‘Ali Mubarak and Muhammad Kurd‘ali
• Architectural History Comes to Egypt: From Coste to Creswell
• Nationalist Egyptian Architectural History: ‘Abdel-Wahab, Fikri, and Shafe‘i
• Al-Maqrizi in the Modern Narratives of Cairo: Mahfouz and al-Ghitani
• Al-Maqrizi in the Egyptian Consciousness: Shalabi and Surur

In the Guise of a Conclusion

Bibliography

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