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Trajectories of State Formation Across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> Rulers & Elites Comparative Studies in Governance Series Editor Jeroen Duindam (Leiden University) Editorial Board Maaike van Berkel (Radboud University Nijmegen) Yingcong Dai (William Paterson University, NJ) Jean-Pascal Daloz (University of Strasbourg) Jos Gommans (Leiden University) Jérôme Kerlouégan (University of Oxford) Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Warsaw University) Metin Kunt (Sabancı University) volume 18 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rule Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> Trajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences Edited by Jo Van Steenbergen leiden | boston Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided no alterations are made and the original author(s) and source are credited. Further information and the complete license text can be found at https://creativecom- mons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ The terms of the CC license apply only to the original material. The use of material from other sources (indicated by a reference) such as diagrams, illustrations, photos and text samples may require further permission from the respective copyright holder. This volume is part of projects that have received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007–2013) and Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreements No. 240865, 681510). Cover illustration: Timur holds audience in Balkh on the occasion of his accession on April 9, 1370: surrounded by his people, servants, sons and royal attributes he receives congratulations and gifts from his kneeling amirs. Miniature painting from the illustrated Zafar-namah manuscript of the Timurid ruler Sultan-Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–1506) attributed to one of the most famous Persian miniature-painters, Kamal al-Din Bihzad (c.1450–1537). Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi (d. 1454), Zafar-namah [Book of Conquest] (Baltimore or Garrett Zafar-namah) (manuscript on paper, text finished in 1467, miniature-paintings probably dating from the 1480s or 1490s), Garrett Library Manuscripts, Non-Circ, Gar. 3 c. 1, folios 82v–83r. The John Work Garrett Library, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020012928 Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 2211-4610 ISBN 978-90-04-43130-0 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-43131-7 (e-book) Copyright 2020 by the Authors. Published by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Koninklijke Brill NV reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill NV. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Figures, Tables and Maps ix List of Contributors x Introduction: State Formation in the Fifteenth Century and the Western Eurasian Canvas: Problems and Opportunities 1 Jo Van Steenbergen Maps 21 Part 1 Whither the Fifteenth Century? 1 From Temür to Selim: Trajectories of Turko-Mongol State Formation in Islamic West-Asia’s Long Fifteenth Century 27 Jo Van Steenbergen 2 Studying Rulers and States across Fifteenth-Century Western Eurasia 88 Jan Dumolyn and Jo Van Steenbergen Part 2 From Cairo to Constantinople: The Construction of West-Asian Centers of Power 3 The Road to the Citadel as a Chain of Opportunity: Mamluks’ Careers between Contingency and Institutionalization 159 Kristof D’hulster 4 The Syro-Egyptian Sultanate in Transformation, 1496–1498: Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad b. Qaytbay and the Reformation of mamlūk Institutions and Symbols of State Power 201 Albrecht Fuess Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> vi Contents 5 Tales of Viziers and Wine: Interpreting Early Ottoman Narratives of State Centralization 224 Dimitri Kastritsis Part 3 From Khwaf to Alexandria: The Accommodation of West-Asian Peripheries of Power 6 Iranian Elites under the Timurids 257 Beatrice F. Manz 7 The Judges of Mecca and Mamluk Hegemony 283 John L. Meloy 8 The Syrian Commercial Elite and Mamluk State-Building in the Fifteenth Century 306 Patrick Wing 9 Settling Accounts with the Sultan: Cortesia, Zemechia and Venetian Fiscality in Fifteenth-Century Alexandria 319 Georg Christ Index 353 Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> Acknowledgements This volume on state formation in fifteenth-century West-Asian history was first conceptualized in 2014, and it has been in the making much longer than originally anticipated. Many people and institutions therefore deserve some words of gratitude, not just for their cooperation along this volume’s winding trajectory, but also for their patience in seeing it come to publication. These include first and foremost the eight contributors, whose work, endurance and tolerance of my multiple attempts to maximize the volume’s coherence de- serve not just to be mentioned, but also commended and repaid with deep gratitude. I am also grateful to various friends and colleagues who read and commented on one or more opening chapters and showed remarkably con- structive kindness for these chapters’ ambitious scopes in both substance and interpretation. Their names are mentioned in the individual chapters below wherever and whenever relevant. I also wish to express my appreciation for the constructive feedback we received from the two anonymous readers who re- viewed the volume’s manuscript for Brill. The responsibility for any remaining shortcomings is ours, of course. This volume and its contributions originate from a collaborative research project on fifteenth-century state formation in the so-called Mamluk Sultanate of Cairo. They have emerged in particular from this project’s concluding inter- national conference, which promoted a transcultural and comparative ap- proach to the question of fifteenth-century state formation (“Whither the Early Modern State? Fifteenth-Century State Formation across Eurasia. Con- nections, Divergences and Comparisons”, Ghent, 10–12 September 2014). I am grateful to my co-organizers, Malika Dekkiche and Kristof D’hulster, and to the conference’s many invited participants for laying the very fertile and inspiring groundwork for the current volume. This conference and the collaborative re- search project that it concluded had been made possible by a generous grant from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant project MMS: ‘The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate—Political Traditions and State For- mation in 15th century Egypt and Syria’, Ghent University, 2009–2014). This vol- ume has furthermore been finalized in the period 2017–19 within the context of another collaborative research project that was also generously funded by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant ‘The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate II: Historiography, Political Order and State Forma- tion in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria’, Ghent University, 2017–2021). I am extremely grateful to the ERC for making these projects and by consequence also this volume possible, and also for financially supporting its publication in Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> viii Acknowledgements Open Access. At my home institution Ghent University, I wish to thank my col- leagues, especially those in the history department and in the interdisciplinary Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies, for enabling an open collegial working environment that has stimulated my critical engagements with vari- ous historiographies of state formation that informed the making of this vol- ume. I also wish to thank this volume’s publishers, Brill, and to express my continuing appreciation for the professionalism and personal touch of its staff. I am furthermore very proud and grateful that the board of the series Rulers and Elites accepted to welcome this volume in its ranks. I thank the series’ edi- tor Jeroen Duindam in particular for offering this opportunity, so that this vol- ume on state formation in fifteenth-century West-Asian history may pursue its comparative purposes by reaching not just the audiences that are traditionally associated with Islamic history publications, but also many others. I hope they may all find here one possible trajectory to familiarize themselves more with a central Eurasian political landscape that is otherwise all too easily marginal- ized in standard narratives of Eurasia’s late medieval endings and early mod- ern beginnings. Jo Van Steenbergen Antwerp, 30 October 2019 Jo Van Steenbergen - 978-90-04-43131-7 Downloaded from Brill.com06/19/2020 10:35:29AM via free access <UN> Figures, Tables and Maps Figures 4.1 Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qāytbāy (1496–1498) (Von Harff, Die Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff, p.
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