Published by De Gruyter

Volume 98 Issue 1

Issue of Der Islam

Contents
Journal Overview

Publicly Available March 30, 2021

Thematic Focus: Rasūlid Entanglement in the Medieval Islamic World and Beyond

March 30, 2021

Introduction: Rasūlid Entanglement in the Medieval Islamic World and Beyond

Daniel Mahoney, Daniel Varisco

Page range: 1-5

March 30, 2021

Eunuchs at the Service of Yemen’s Rasūlid Dynasty (626‒858/1229‒1454)

Magdalena Moorthy Kloss

Page range: 6-26

Abstract

The significant roles played by eunuchs (castrated slaves) in Rasūlid Yemen have thus far escaped scholarly scrutiny. A systematic study of the historiographic and biographical writings of ʿAlī b. al-Ḥasan al-Khazrajī, chronicler of the Rasūlid court at the turn of the 9th/15th century, reveals that eunuchs figured prominently both in the highest ranks of the dynasty’s political, administrative, and military hierarchy, as well as in the most intimate realms of royal households. The author, however, remains silent on the origins of these men and on the capture, castration, and deracination they suffered as young boys. In order to reconstruct the slave trading practices that supplied the Rasūlids with eunuchs, a late 7th/13th-century collection of administrative documents known as Nūr al-maʿārif shall be drawn upon. This source names an African export hub from which slaves were shipped across the Red Sea to Yemen, lists prices and taxes paid for eunuchs, and reveals that the Rasūlids actively interfered in the Yemeni slave trade in order to secure the most desirable eunuchs for themselves. Taken together, these narrative and administrative sources shed light on the eunuch institution in Rasūlid Yemen and on its role in sustaining the dynasty.

March 30, 2021

Treasuring Yemen: Notes on Exchange and Collection in Rasūlid Material Culture

Ellen Kenney

Page range: 27-68

Abstract

Often distinguished by their characteristic five-petalled rosette emblems, objects dedicated to the Rasūlid sultans of Yemen in Egypt or Syria have long been identified as a distinct corpus in histories of Islamic art. Whether treated singly or as a group, these objects have usually been positioned in the periphery of discussions about Mamlūk luxury arts or cited briefly as evidence of diplomatic relations between the Mamlūk and Rasūlid leadership. Perhaps reflecting a general marginalization of South Arabia in the historiographic traditions of Islamic art scholarship, narratives centered on the imperial Mamlūk enterprise tend to overshadow both the Rasūlid context for these objects and the complexities of their global material histories. This essay explores these two themes together, drawing broadly on visual culture connected with the Rasūlid court to analyze a selection of case studies. It reviews art historical literature on the Rasūlid-Mamlūk corpus as reflected in European and North American scholarship, outlines the various modalities by which this material exchange is understood to have taken place, explores the setting for Rasūlid patronage and collection of such objects, and examines their material afterlives.

March 30, 2021

The Rasūlids and the Bountiful Sea: Marine Resources, State Control, and Maritime Culture in the Southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (626/1229‒854/1454)

Roxani Eleni Margariti

Page range: 69-99

Abstract

Relying on textual, ethnographic, and environmental scholarship on Yemen and the comparative insights of research into fisheries in the premodern Mediterranean world, the present study surveys the types of marine resources that appear across a wide range of literary and documentary sources pertaining to Yemen during the reign of the Rasūlids from the early 7th/13th to the mid-9th/15th century. Although Rasūlid-generated texts pay relatively scant attention to fishing, they clearly demonstrate the interest of the Rasūlid state in both the subsistence and commercial economy that fishermen procured. Moreover, when combined with the testimony of travelers and chroniclers and of iconography on a series of Rasūlid coins from the port city of Aden, these sources shed light on the inclusion of fish in Yemeni non-elite and elite diets, the place and roles of fisherfolk in Yemeni society, the maritime symbolism current in Rasūlid times, and ultimately the relationship between shores and inland centers of Rasūlid power. In aggregate this material suggests that the Rasūlid state maintained a symbiotic political and cultural relationship with fishing communities, which had direct access to and the primary role in harvesting and processing the resources in question, yet remain in the shadows of recorded history.

March 30, 2021

Reading Rasūlid Maps: An Early 14th-Century Geographical Resource

Daniel Martin Varisco

Page range: 100-152

Abstract

While there is a tradition of Islamic world maps and geographic depictions of direction to the Kaʿba in Mecca, relatively few detailed maps of individual Islamic realms have been studied. In an early 14th-century tax ledger compiled for the Rasūlid sultan al-Malik al-Muʾayyad Dāwūd (d. 721/1321), there is a map of the fortresses ( ḥuṣūn ), major towns, and ports of the areas controlled and taxed, as well as individual maps of Aden, Taʿizz, al-Janad, Dhamār, al-Shiḥr, and several wadis. Given the context of the text, Irtifāʿ al-dawla al-Muʾayyadiyya , as a tax register, some of the maps probably serve a functional purpose. But how should such maps be read against the lists of important locations in other Rasūlid sources and earlier compilations, such as Yāqūt’s Muʿjam al-buldān compiled a century earlier or al-Hamdānī’s 10th-century Ṣifat jazīrat al-ʿArab ? In this article I analyze the range of locations, how they are iconically represented, the accuracy of their relative locations, and their links to other Rasūlid lists. In what ways do these maps better illustrate how the Rasūlids viewed their own realm, which in the early 14th century was a rival of the Egyptian Mamluks and a major player in the Red Sea/Indian Ocean trade network? Finally, how does this unique set of maps fit other Islamic maps in the tradition that stems back several centuries before?

March 30, 2021

Evolving Rasūlid Narratives of Opposition to Sultan al-Manṣūr Nūr al-Dīn ʿUmar (d. 647/1250) in Yemen

Daniel Mahoney

Page range: 153-174

Abstract

The Rasūlid chronicles of the reign of al-Manṣūr Nūr al-Dīn ʿUmar b. ʿAlī b. Rasūl depict its first ruler as steadily consolidating the political foundation of the sultanate. Most of these reports clearly portray the dominance of the sultan in Yemen during this period. But a few reveal the limitations of his power in a more complex political landscape, such as an aborted military campaign against a local tribe, an insurrection by a Zaydi sharīf , and the sultan’s assassination by his own military. These specific narratives of opposition to the sultan, however, progressively change over the course of their production from the late 13th century until the first half of the 15th century, as the strength of the sultanate initially peaks and then slowly declines. As a result, the ambiguity of al-Manṣūr ʿUmar’s authority in these narratives is largely reduced, and the historical memory of the sovereignty of the emergent Rasūlid sultanate solidifies in increasingly ideological ways.

Articles

March 30, 2021

Sachfahndung nach einem Raubmord in Saqāwa

Ein offizielles Dokument aus dem 3.–4./9.–10. Jahrhundert

Ayman Aly Shahin

Page range: 175-180

Abstract

This article presents the edition of a late 3rd/9th- or early 4th/10th-century search warrant for stolen goods (P.Cair.EgLib.inv. 536v). The scribe reports that two black men (aswadayn) were traveling on two donkeys, one of which was also loaded with a saddlebag of money, jewellery and clothes. Upon reaching the Upper Egyptian village of Saqāwa, the two black men were assaulted and murdered, and the goods and donkeys stolen. This document corroborates descriptions in historical works of frequent rebel attacks in various regions of Egypt in the 3rd/9th and 4rd/10th centuries.

March 30, 2021

Four Arabic Legal Documents Belonging to ʿAmmār b. Salama b. ʿAbd al-Wārith

Khaled Younes

Page range: 181-220

Abstract

This paper edits and studies four Arabic legal documents, written on two papyri, now housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. The documents belong to a certain ʿAmmār b. Salama b. ʿAbd al-Wārith, a merchant from al-Bahnasā. Document 1 (P.CTYBR inv. 1720 verso) records a contract of sale of two inherited portions belonging to a Copt with double names, a Christian and a Muslim one. The contract touches on two significant socio-religious subjects: 1. name change after religious conversion, and 2. the loss of paternal filiation ( nasab ) of children born outside wedlock or in wedlock but their paternity was disavowed via the Islamic procedure of liʿān “oath of condemnation” or upon evidence of certain circumstances that prove impossibility of paternity. Documents 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3 (P.CTYBR inv. 1715 recto and verso) contains three debt acknowledgements recording payments in coin and in kind. All documents date to the year 297/909–910.

March 30, 2021

Three Unpublished Scrolls Attesting to Pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina (16th century)

Sergio Carro Martín

Page range: 221-245

Abstract

This article presents the edition of three unpublished 16th-century scrolls preserved in the Palau Ribes Collection (Barcelona) that contain diagrammatic representations of the holy places of Mecca and Medina. One of them certifies the fulfillment of the major ( ḥajj ) and minor (ʿ umra ) pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca on behalf of a little girl, in what appears to be a certificate reused by removing the names of the original parties. The other two documents extoll the city of Medina and the Prophet Muḥammad, as part of the pious visit to his tomb ( ziyāra ) carried out by individuals who are not mentioned by name. In addition, the three documents share the same material characteristics, and present textual structures that suggest they were mass-produced models. They therefore constitute three case studies evidencing a significant shift in the production of Islamic certificates of pilgrimage, and can thus help expand our knowledge of the ritual itself.

Reviews

March 30, 2021

Lamia Balafrej, The Making of the Artist in late Timurid Painting, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art, 2019, hardback, 260 pp., 1 index, ISBN 978-1-4744-3743-1.

Negar Habibi

Page range: 246-248

March 30, 2021

İlker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016 (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization), XXII+340 S. ISBN 978-1-107-68933-6.

Philip Bockholt

Page range: 248-252

March 30, 2021

Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Samuel Thrope, and Raquel Ukeles (eds.), Romance and Reason: Islamicate Transformations of the Classical Past, New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, 2018, hardback, 151 pp., ISBN 978-0-691-18184-4.

Negar Habibi

Page range: 252-255

March 30, 2021

Yehudit Dror, The Linguistic Features of the Qurʾānic Narratives (Wiener Offene Orientalistik, Band 12), Lit Verlag, Zürich 2016, vi + 91pp, ISBN 978-3-643-50779-2.

Tareq Moqbel

Page range: 255-258

March 30, 2021

Carter Vaughn Findley, Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans: Mouradgea d’Ohsson and his Masterpiece, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2019, xviii+398 pp., 134 ill., ISBN: 9789004363120.

Maren Fittschen

Page range: 259-261

March 30, 2021

Najam Haider, The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2019, XIII+304 S. ISBN 978-1-107-02605-6.

Philip Bockholt

Page range: 262-265

March 30, 2021

John D. Hosler, The Siege of Acre, 1189‒1191, Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Battle That Decided the Third Crusade, New Haven/London: Yale University Press 2018, 288 S., ISBN 978-0-300-21550-2.

Hans-Ulrich Kühn

Page range: 266-269

March 30, 2021

Robert G. Hoyland, The ‘History of the Kings of the Persians’ in Three Arabic Chronicles: The Transmission of the Iranian Past from Late Antiquity to Early Islam, Translated Texts for Historians 69, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, xii + 185 pp., ISBN 978 1 78694 146 6.

George Warner

Page range: 270-272

March 30, 2021

Onur İnal and Yavuz Köse (eds.), Seeds of Power: Explorations in Ottoman Environmental History, Winwick, Cambridgeshire: The White Horse Press, 2019, xvii + 292 pp., 7 maps, 11 figures, 7 tables, ISBN 9781874267997.

Stefan Peychev

Page range: 272-277

March 30, 2021

Youssef Mogtader und Gregor Schoeler, Turandot. Die persische Märchenerzählung. Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2017, 134 + 57 S., ISBN 978-3-95490-283-5.

Ludwig Paul

Page range: 277-281

March 30, 2021

Gülrü Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer (eds.), Treasures of Knowledge. An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3‒1503/4). 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2019, xii + 1080 + vii + 239 pp. + unnumbered plates, ISBN 978-90-04-40248-5.

Boris Liebrenz

Page range: 282-289

March 30, 2021

Yossef Rapoport, Islamic Maps, Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020, 192 pp., ISBN: 9781851244928 [Distribution in the US by University of Chicago Press].

Gottfried Hagen

Page range: 289-293

March 30, 2021

Peter G. Riddell, Malay Court Religion, Culture and Language: Interpreting the Qurʾān in 17th Century Aceh, Leiden: Brill, 2017, 269 pp., 15 tables, ISBN: 978-90-04-33949-1.

Majid Daneshgar

Page range: 293-296

March 30, 2021

Mustapha Sheikh, Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents. Aḥmad al-Rūmī al- Āqḥiṣārī and the Qāḍīzādelis, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016, 191 S., ISBN 978-0-19-879076-1.

Gülfem Alıcı

Page range: 296-300

March 30, 2021

Christian Windler, Missionare in Persien: Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.–18. Jahrhundert), Köln, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2018, 764 pp., bibliography, index, ISBN 978-3412-511227 (hb).

Rudi Matthee

Page range: 300-305

March 30, 2021

Hüseyin Yılmaz, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018, xiii + 370 pages, ISBN: 9780691174808

Carter Vaughn Findley

Page range: 306-312

About this journal

Founded by Carl Heinrich Becker in 1910, the Journal Der Islam provides a forum for the study of the history and culture of the Middle East before the age of modernisation in the 19th century, from the Iberian Peninsula to Central Asia. Articles present the latest research in the humanities and social sciences based on literary traditions, and archival, material, as well as archaeological evidence.

Corresponding book series "SME" (Studies in the History and Culture of the Middle East): http://www.degruyter.com/view/serial/278659

Volume 98 Issue 1

Issue of Der Islam

Titelseiten

Introduction: Rasūlid Entanglement in the Medieval Islamic World and Beyond

Eunuchs at the Service of Yemen’s Rasūlid Dynasty (626‒858/1229‒1454)

Abstract

Treasuring Yemen: Notes on Exchange and Collection in Rasūlid Material Culture

Abstract

The Rasūlids and the Bountiful Sea: Marine Resources, State Control, and Maritime Culture in the Southern Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (626/1229‒854/1454)

Abstract

Reading Rasūlid Maps: An Early 14th-Century Geographical Resource

Abstract

Evolving Rasūlid Narratives of Opposition to Sultan al-Manṣūr Nūr al-Dīn ʿUmar (d. 647/1250) in Yemen

Abstract

Sachfahndung nach einem Raubmord in Saqāwa

Ein offizielles Dokument aus dem 3.–4./9.–10. Jahrhundert

Abstract

Four Arabic Legal Documents Belonging to ʿAmmār b. Salama b. ʿAbd al-Wārith

Abstract

Three Unpublished Scrolls Attesting to Pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina (16th century)

Abstract

Lamia Balafrej, The Making of the Artist in late Timurid Painting, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art, 2019, hardback, 260 pp., 1 index, ISBN 978-1-4744-3743-1.

İlker Evrim Binbaş, Intellectual Networks in Timurid Iran: Sharaf al-Dīn ʿAlī Yazdī and the Islamicate Republic of Letters, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2016 (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization), XXII+340 S. ISBN 978-1-107-68933-6.

Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Samuel Thrope, and Raquel Ukeles (eds.), Romance and Reason: Islamicate Transformations of the Classical Past, New York: Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University, 2018, hardback, 151 pp., ISBN 978-0-691-18184-4.

Yehudit Dror, The Linguistic Features of the Qurʾānic Narratives (Wiener Offene Orientalistik, Band 12), Lit Verlag, Zürich 2016, vi + 91pp, ISBN 978-3-643-50779-2.

Carter Vaughn Findley, Enlightening Europe on Islam and the Ottomans: Mouradgea d’Ohsson and his Masterpiece, Brill, Leiden/Boston, 2019, xviii+398 pp., 134 ill., ISBN: 9789004363120.

Najam Haider, The Rebel and the Imām in Early Islam: Explorations in Muslim Historiography, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2019, XIII+304 S. ISBN 978-1-107-02605-6.

John D. Hosler, The Siege of Acre, 1189‒1191, Saladin, Richard the Lionheart, and the Battle That Decided the Third Crusade, New Haven/London: Yale University Press 2018, 288 S., ISBN 978-0-300-21550-2.

Robert G. Hoyland, The ‘History of the Kings of the Persians’ in Three Arabic Chronicles: The Transmission of the Iranian Past from Late Antiquity to Early Islam, Translated Texts for Historians 69, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018, xii + 185 pp., ISBN 978 1 78694 146 6.

Onur İnal and Yavuz Köse (eds.), Seeds of Power: Explorations in Ottoman Environmental History, Winwick, Cambridgeshire: The White Horse Press, 2019, xvii + 292 pp., 7 maps, 11 figures, 7 tables, ISBN 9781874267997.

Youssef Mogtader und Gregor Schoeler, Turandot. Die persische Märchenerzählung. Edition, Übersetzung, Kommentar, Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2017, 134 + 57 S., ISBN 978-3-95490-283-5.

Gülrü Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer (eds.), Treasures of Knowledge. An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3‒1503/4). 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2019, xii + 1080 + vii + 239 pp. + unnumbered plates, ISBN 978-90-04-40248-5.

Yossef Rapoport, Islamic Maps, Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2020, 192 pp., ISBN: 9781851244928 [Distribution in the US by University of Chicago Press].

Peter G. Riddell, Malay Court Religion, Culture and Language: Interpreting the Qurʾān in 17th Century Aceh, Leiden: Brill, 2017, 269 pp., 15 tables, ISBN: 978-90-04-33949-1.

Mustapha Sheikh, Ottoman Puritanism and its Discontents. Aḥmad al-Rūmī al- Āqḥiṣārī and the Qāḍīzādelis, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2016, 191 S., ISBN 978-0-19-879076-1.

Christian Windler, Missionare in Persien: Kulturelle Diversität und Normenkonkurrenz im globalen Katholizismus (17.–18. Jahrhundert), Köln, Weimar, Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2018, 764 pp., bibliography, index, ISBN 978-3412-511227 (hb).

Hüseyin Yılmaz, Caliphate Redefined: The Mystical Turn in Ottoman Political Thought, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018, xiii + 370 pages, ISBN: 9780691174808