The criminal underworld of medieval Damascus is certainly not my field of expertise. But as for the contemporary audience of Ibn Ṭūlūn’s chronicle Mufākahat al-Khillān, these stories also draw the attention of current readers. This short post relates one such instance from Damascus at the end of the Mamluk period.
The passage also gives clues as to the social status of the victims. The woman carried her money on her body. The bracelets and ear rings would have been made of silver if not gold. However, the couple did probably not belong to the highest echelons of Damascene society. Otherwise, they might have entertained guests themselves for the bayram.
Instead, they seem to have attended the festivities at the local mosque. Were it not for her frail state at the time, ʿUthmān’s wife would most probably have accompanied him there. That she was the intended victim of the attack further indicates that her murderer must have had some knowledge of their routines before he struck. He waited for ʿUthmān to leave the house and might have known beforehand that the woman was in a frail state, her resistance easy to overcome.
Finally, let us reconsider Ibn Ṭūlūn’s retelling of the reaction by the authorities. On the surface, it might appear as if his primary interest following the murder was in the negative consequences it had for the population of the quarter at large. They had to pay “many dirhams”. However, I would say there is a second layer of meaning here. This emerges both from the choice of words (“the oppressors”) and the positioning of this coda to the account. It follows immediately after ʿUthmān’s discovery of his wife’s corpse. He finds her dead, and then “the oppressors” arrive to demand a fine.
In my opinion, Ibn Ṭūlūn’s terse prose achieves two goals in one strike: on the one hand, he tells a sociological story about the injustice of the criminal justice system{2}. ʿUthmān’s residential quarter is fined even though the murder clearly was no resident there; he was “from the slopes [of the Qāsyūn mountain]”.
On the other hand, Ibn Ṭūlūn also tells a psychological story. ʿUthmān who only had left his house for the obligatory prayer returns to find his wife murdered. And, adding insult to injury, is now confronted with his own guilt in leaving her alone as well as with the question of how to come up with his allotted share of the fine, all the while the criminal had robbed his household of some of the most valuable items which would have helped to pay said share. The term “oppressor” would, in fact, apply to the moral conduct of the authorities both in a sociological and a psychological vein.
Those who are interested in diving deeper into this exciting facet of late Mamluk society, might want to to turn to, among others, Carl Petry’s numerous studies on the subject, some of which I have listed below:
- Carl Petry.The Criminal Underworld in a Medieval Islamic Society: Narratives from Cairo and Damascus under the Mamluks. Chicago, 2012.
- Carl Petry. “The Politics of Insult: The Mamluk Sultanate’s Response to Criminal Affronts.” Mamlūk Studies Review 15 (2011): 87-115.
- Jaques, R. Kevin. “Murder in Damascus: The Consequences of Competition Among Medieval Muslim Religious Elites.” Mamlūk Studies Review 18 (2015): 149-185.
- The entire episode is found here: Ibn Ṭūlūn, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad Ibn ʿAlī. Mufākahat al-khillān fī ḥawādith al-zamān: Tārīkh Miṣr wa-l-Shām. Edited by Muḥammad Muṣṭafā. 2 vols. Cairo: al-Muʾassassa al-Miṣrīya al-ʿĀmma, 1964, vol. 1: 363. [↩]
- Admittedly, this distinction is influenced by Zeynep Tufekci’s great article on the storytelling style of Game of Thrones: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/ [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Torsten Wollina (October 27, 2019). A horrific crime—at an ominous time. Damascus Anecdotes. Retrieved April 27, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/ur6s