This second installment revisits a piece I originally wrote in 2015 about narrative construction in Arabic chronicles from 15th- to 17th-century Damascus. It takes a micro-perspective to explore the construction of narratives focused on one series of events or ‘story’. As in the first instance, the PDF is attached at the end.
Continue reading “Vanity Post 2: The Changing Legacy of a Sufi Shaykh”Sufis in war: an update
In my article “Between Beirut, Cairo, and Damascus: Al-amr bi-al-maʿrūf and the Sufi/Scholar Dichotomy in the Late Mamluk Period (1480s–1510s)” I proposed that several groups named in the sources as Sufis could have resembled paramilitary groups. They were viewed as cohesive bodies of men exactly because they would act as such in military conflicts, being called upon or pledging allegiance to one faction or other. Continue reading “Sufis in war: an update”
New Publication on Narratology in Arabic Historiography
Finally, Mamluk Studies 15: “Mamluk Historiography Revisited – Narratological Perspectives” is out. The edited volume brings together twelve articles on perspectives on specific works or larger clusters of works. My own contribution, “The Changing Legacy of a Sufi Shaykh: Narrative Constructions in Diaries, Chronicles, and Biographies (15th–17th Centuries)”, investigates the development of how knowledge on one specific person was shaped and adapted with growing temporal distance. Continue reading “New Publication on Narratology in Arabic Historiography”
Mubārak al-Qābūnī al-Ḥabashi: Concluding Remarks
The month of February 2018, all my blog posts were concerned with Mubārak whom we by now all know. If you are like huh, please refer to the posts one, two, and three. Continue reading “Mubārak al-Qābūnī al-Ḥabashi: Concluding Remarks”
Mubārak al-Qābūnī al-Ḥabashī: part 3
Black History Month continues with my third instalment on Mubārak al-Qābūnī al-Ḥabashī. This time, the biography following below comes from Ibn Ayyūb. Continue reading “Mubārak al-Qābūnī al-Ḥabashī: part 3”