Between 1058 and 1072CE, the Fatimid state in Egypt and Syria experienced a combination of famine and civil war that devastated the Fatimid state as a whole and the city of Fustat/Cairo in particular. These events changed forever the political structure of the Fatimid state, led to the partial destruction of Fustat, and seem to have wrought profound demographic changes throughout the country. Despite the apparent importance of these events, little research has been done to analyze them. Some of this neglect has to do with the fact that many of the traditional sources for the Fatimid period are written later and are not forthcoming about the events of this crisis or the people involved. What I propose to do in this paper is to explore this crisis from a variety of perspectives using the available narrative and, to a lesser extent, documentary sources, as well as paleo-climatological studies. I hope to illustrate that while this crisis had climatological dimensions, it was fundamentally a political crisis that left scars on elites and non-elites alike. In examining the intellectual establishment of Fatimid Cairo through the lives and writings of intellectuals who lived through the 1060s this paper traces a variety of intellectual reactions that vary by community and by individual. In general there is a sense of a tightening of communal bonds and increased defensiveness in all communities, although there are differences in how this is expressed. Although the social aspects of this crisis are the hardest to trace, there is a sense ordinary life went on throughout the crisis despite the profound hardships visited on non-elites by the political and environmental troubles. This adds to the hypothesis that the crisis was a political crisis that was more difficult to manage for those most closely connected to the Fatimid government. Finally, this paper looks at the differences between the expressions of the crisis in various parts of the Fatimid state and finds that while the effects of the crisis on Cairo/Fustat are evident, areas outside of Cairo experienced the crisis in widely divergent ways.

In 1340, a large fire broke out in Damascus, causing real estate damage and some loss of life. Following a patterned anxiety about non-Muslim intransigence in Mamluk society (as occurred, for example, after the Cairo fire of 1321), political and religious authorities identified the act as arson and prosecuted several Christians for the crime. The rousing incident was narrated—fiercely albeit briefly—by notable contemporaneous Damascene chroniclers, including adh-Dhahab?, as-Safadi, and ibn Kath?r. Until now, scholars have relied on these various narratives to reconstruct the tumultuous crisis and its place in the history of religious difference in Mamluk society. This paper is based on a newly discovered (and, to my knowledge, hitherto unexamined) manuscript in Leiden (copied in the early 16th century), whose first part includes a remarkable ‘dossier’ of various documents related to the incident and its aftermath, featuring: (i) an anonymous popular poem lamenting the destruction; (ii) a transcript of the Pact of ?Umar promulgated in the wake of the fire; (ii) the sovereign edict (mars?m) issued by Mamluk political authorities, and (iii) perhaps most interestingly, a detailed legal account (mahdar) of the trial of the Christian offenders, including verbatim transcripts of the interrogation of six named Christian bureaucratic scribes (and two monks). The latter represents a unique This paper presents a detailed analysis of the unique manuscript and the various traces of the Damascus fire and its prosecution. It will place these alternate deposits—from popular poetic lament to sovereign edicts to Islamic legal proceedings—in the framework of Mamluk moral regulation. Moral regulation, which initially targeted non-Muslims, consisted of three distinct but interrelated vectors: political regulation (consisting of sovereign edicts that reissued the Pact of Umar, but also introduced various other restrictions on dhimmi privileges); scholarly regulation (which included a boom in various ulama treatises decrying the employment of non-Muslim scribes, but also various social polemics that sought to sharpen boundaries between religious communities by problematizing shared practices), and popular regulation (which took the form of unauthorized urban violence, often led by local, non-establishment scholars and Sufis, against non-Muslim property). The paper will also compare the representation and the different anxieties revealed in the urban fires of Cairo (1321) and Damascus (1340), both ascribed to local Christians in both cities.

This paper demonstrates the evolving conceptualizations of the medical discipline in the classical Islamic world. It in addition draws attention to the implications of these conceptualizations for medical knowledge production. By comparing Ibn Rushd’s view of medicine promulgated in his Principles of Medicine (Kulliyat fi l-Tibb) to that of Ibn Sina as proposed in his Canon, the paper shows the extent to which the disciplinary boundaries of the medical field were considered negotiable during the classical Islamic period. The paper demonstrates that Ibn Rushd (1126-1198 AD) rejected the widely accepted view of Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD) which held that medicine was an art with both a practical and theoretical division. Rather, in the Kulliyat, Ibn Rushd advocated for the medical art to be solely practical. To practice his art, Ibn Rushd argues that a physician (tabib) must draw from three ancillary arts; that of dissection (tashrih), experimental medicine (al-tibb al-tajribi), and natural science (ilm al-tabi’i). The physician must emphatically not take part in theorising himself but leave medical thinking to natural scientists. Ibn Rushd arguably arrived at this view a posteriori having compared Galen, the physician, to Aristotle, the natural scientist. As a staunch Aristotelian, Ibn Rushd despises the theoretical work of Galen and where evidence compels him to accept Galenic theory over Aristotle, he does so while refusing to reject the broader Aristotelian physiological framework. He claims that Galen, as a physician, should not have engaged in theory, but have focused on treating patients. In his refusal to accept the theoretical contributions of medical thinkers, Ibn Rushd is unwilling to see beyond the Aristotelian paradigm even when contradictory evidence requires him to do so. Moreover, his selective preference for natural scientists could have limited the participation in theoretical knowledge production by physicians. However, physicians continued to engage in theoretical medical thinking throughout the Islamic world clearly undisturbed by Ibn Rushd’s attempt to narrow the field. Nevertheless both his endeavour and the more successful approach of his predecessor Ibn Sina shed crucial light on the varied disciplinary reflections that circulated in the medieval Islamic world.

This paper examines the construction of the concept of su'dud, the quality which makes one a sayyid, in texts of the ninth century. By examining this heretofore neglected virtue it contributes to the understanding of elite culture during that period. Furthermore, because the virtues of the sayyid were largely tied to Bedouin exemplars of the sixth and seventh centuries, it contributes to discussions of the role of memories of Arabian Bedouin in the formation of Arabo-Islamic culture. It concludes that while some texts show a pattern of defining su'dud based on sources close to Bedouin culture and in ways which harmonize with ethnographic studies of modern Bedouin, others show similar accounts in which the virtues of Bedouin leadership are shifted into urban gentlemanliness. The most important figure through whom the sayyid ideal was constructed was al-Ahnaf b. Qays al-Tamimi, who flourished in Basra during the late seventh century. The two key texts for this study are the “Kitab al-Su'dud” in Ibn Qutayba's Kit?b 'Uyun al-Akhbar and the biography of al-Ahnaf b. Qays in al-Baladhuri's Ansab al-Ashraf. The two texts have some values in common, such as an emphasis on forbearance and humility. However, the two texts also have differences, with Ibn Qutayba promoting fine dress and al-Baladhuri displaying much more ambivalence towards it. Another example is that a reference to honor ('ird) in al-Baladhuri equates to spirit (nafs) in Ibn Qutayba. The bulk of al-Baladhuri's accounts go back to obscure figures from the Tamim who appear to be primarily from eighth-century Basra, and can be placed in a context of newly settled Bedouin or their immediate descendants. Ibn Qutayba's sources, however, frequently claim to go back to Bedouin in a general sense, but even in the eighth century were connected to the Umayyad and early Abbasid courts. In al-Baladhuri's transmission we must reach al-Mada'ini, usually his immediate source, before there are clear connections to court life. In addition, whereas Ibn Qutayba is producing a manual for considering proper conduct in his present, al-Baladhuri more direct purpose is to lament a past age of heroic ancestors. The differences in the handling of al-Ahnaf b. Qays and su'dud fit the contexts of both the transmission of information and purpose of the extant texts.

Dating from 1234 CE, the astronomical treatise Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya is among the earliest works composed by its illustrious author Khwaja Na??r al-D?n T?u?s? (d. 1274 CE). T?u?s? appears to have completed this work shortly after gaining the patronage of the mu?tasham N??ir al-D?n, the Ism???l? governor of Quhistan, and he dedicates this work to the governor’s son. Subsequently, T?u?s? composed many of his most well-known works while enjoying Ism???l? patronage in Quhistan as well was in Daylaman, the seat of Ism???l? power. The seismic events surrounding the defeat of the Ism???l?s in 1256 CE and the extirpation of the storied Abbasid empire at the hand of Hülegü Khan in 1258 CE were to force T?u?s? to switch political and personal allegiances, however, and have left indelible traces in his scholarly output, as well. The most well-known of these traces are T?u?s?’s revisions to the foreword and epilogue of his celebrated work on ethics, Akhl?q-i N??ir? (which was also composed early in T?u?s?’s career, postdating Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya by a year). The foreword in Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya show great affinity to that of Akhlaq-i N??ir? in its rhetorical devices and in the distinctly florid Persian in which T?u?s? praises his Ism???l? patrons. Like that of Akhl?q -i N??ir? the revised foreword to Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya consists of a more sober text, penned with a view to T?u?s?’s role as Ilkhanid courtier and adviser to Hülegü. However, the revised foreword in Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya diverges from that of its more well-known successor, Akhl?q-i N??ir?, in that T?u?s? does not include an explicit renunciation of the Ism???l?s and of his long-term affiliation with the Ism???l? court. Also notable is the fact that the original epilogue for Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya appears as virtually intact in many of the surviving manuscript copies, raising questions regarding the history of Ris?la-yi Mu??n?ya and the importance afforded to it by the author. This paper contrasts the fate of T?u?s?’s early work on astronomy with that of Akhl?q-i N??ir?, with regard to the evolving ideological outlook of T?u?s? and the political realities of his career.