Histories of the Middle East Islamic History and Civilization Studies and Texts Editorial Board Sebastian Günther Wadad Kadi VOLUME 79 Histories of the Middle East Studies in Middle Eastern Society, Economy and Law in Honor of A.L. Udovitch Edited by Roxani Eleni Margariti Adam Sabra Petra M. Sijpesteijn LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 Cover illustration: Arabic manuscript, Les Séances. Al-Maqamat, 5847 folio 119 verso, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Histories of the Middle East : studies in Middle Eastern society, economy and law in honor of A.L. Udovitch / edited by Roxani Eleni Margariti, Adam Sabra, Petra M. Sijpesteijn. p. cm. — (Islamic history and civilization ; v. 79) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18427-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Middle East—Civilization. 2. Civilization, Arab. 3. Islamic civilization. 4. Civilization, Medieval. I. Margariti, Roxani Eleni, 1969- II. Sabra, Adam Abdelhamid, 1968- III. Sijpesteijn, Petra. IV. Udovitch, Abraham L. V. Title. VI. Series. DS57.H57 2010 956’.01—dc22 2010037331 ISSN 0929-2403 ISBN 978 90 04 18427 5 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. contents v al-Tirmidhī, Sunan. Cairo 1964. 4: 154 (no. 2826) vi contents contents vii CONTENTS Notes on Contributors. ix Acknowledgments . xiii The Bibliography of Abraham L. Udovitch . xv Preface . xxi Roxani Eleni Margariti, Adam Sabra and Petra M. Sijpesteijn 1 Introduction Mark R. Cohen . 1 2 “There Are‘ulamā’ , and Then There Are‘ulamā’ ”: Minor Religious Institutions and Minor Religious Functionaries in Medieval Cairo . 9 Jonathan P. Berkey 3 The Arabian Silent Trade: Profit and Nobility in the “Markets of the Arabs” . 23 Michael Bonner 4 Ringing Bells in af id Tunis: Religious Concessions to Christian Fondacos in the Later Thirteenth Century . 53 Olivia Remie Constable 5 An Overview of the Slaves’ Juridical Status at Sea in Romano-Byzantine, and Islamic Laws . 73 Hassan S. Khalilieh 6 Maritime Cityscapes: Lessons from Real and Imagined Topo graphies of Western Indian Ocean Ports . 101 Roxani Eleni Margariti 7 Demonizing Zenobia: The Legend of al-Zabbā in Islamic Sources . 127 David S. Powers 8 The View from the South: The Maps of theBook of Curiosities and the Commercial Revolution of the Eleventh Century . 183 Yossef Rapoport viii contents 9 From Artisan to Courtier: Sufism and Social Mobility in Fifteenth-Century Egypt . 213 Adam Sabra 10 Mini-Dramas by the Water: On Irrigation Rights and Disputes in Fifteenth-Century Damascus . 233 Boaz Shoshan 11 Army Economics: An Early Papyrus Letter Related to Aā’ Payments . 245 Petra M. Sijpesteijn Index. 269 notes on contributors ix NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Jonathan P. Berkey is Professor of History at Davidson College. He studied at Williams College (B.A. 1981) and Princeton University (M.A. 1987, Ph.D. 1989), where Avrom Udovitch served as his dis- sertation adviser. He is the author of several books, including The Transmission of Knowledge in Medieval Cairo: A Social History of Islamic Education (Princeton University Press, 1992), Popular Preaching and Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East (University of Washington Press, 2001), and The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2003), which won the Albert Hourani Book Prize from the Middle East Studies Association. Michael Bonner is Professor of Medieval Islamic History in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, in 1987. His recent publications include Jihad in Islamic History: Doctrines and Practices (Princeton University Press, 2006, 2008), and Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts, co-edited with Amy Singer and Mine Ener (SUNY Press, 2003). He has been a Helmut S. Stern Fellow at the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities, and has held the position of Professeur Invité at the Institut d’Etudes de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and of Chaire de l’Institut du Monde Arabe, also in Paris. Mark R. Cohen is Professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University and the current incumbent of the Khedouri A. Zilkha Professorship of Jewish Civilization in the Near East. His publica- tions include Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt; Al-mujtama al-yahudi fi Misr al-islamiyya fi al-usur al-wusta (Jewish Life in Medieval Egypt 641-1382), translated from the English; The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s “Life of Judah”; Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages; Poverty and Charity in the Jewish Community of Medieval Egypt; and The Voice of the Poor in the Middle Ages: An Anthology of Documents from the Cairo Geniza. He is a member of the American Academy for Jewish Research. x notes on contributors Olivia Remie Constable is Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. She received her B.A. in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from Yale University in 1983 and her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1989, where she worked under the guidance of Avram Udovitch. She has published Trade and Traders in Muslim Spain: The Commercial Realignment of the Iberian Peninsula 900-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 1994), Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), and Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press, 2003). She is currently working on a new book project which looks at Muslim communities living under Christian rule in Spain and the western Mediterranean, 1050-1300. Hassan S. Khalilieh is a Senior Lecturer in the Departments of Maritime Civilizations and Multidisciplinary Studies and the School of History at the University of Haifa. He received his Ph.D. from the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, in 1995, and his LL.M. in Admiralty and Maritime Law, from the School of Law, Tulane University, in 2006. He is the author of Islamic Maritime Law: An Introduction (E. J. Brill, 1998) and Admiralty and Maritime Laws in the Mediterranean Sea (ca. 800-1050): the Kitab Akriyat al-Sufun vis-a-vis the Nomos Rhodion Nautikos (E. J. Brill, 2006). Roxani Eleni Margariti is Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies at Emory University. Born and raised in Athens, Greece, she received her B.A. in Western Asiatic Archaeology from University College London, her M.A. in Nautical Archaeology from Texas A&M University, and her Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2002. She is the author of Aden and the Indian Ocean Trade: 150 Years in the Life of a Medieval Arabian Port (University of North Carolina Press, 2007). Her current research focuses on political, social, and cultural aspects of Indian Ocean mer- chants’ networks before 1500 C.E., and on the cultural legacy and current status of Islamic monuments in Greece. David S. Powers is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and History at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1979. notes on contributors xi His courses deal with Islamic civilization, Islamic history and law, and classical Arabic texts, and his research focuses on the history of Islamic law and its application in Muslim societies. He is the author of Studies in Quran and Hadith: The Formation of the Islamic Law of Inheritance (University of California Press, 1986), Law, Society, and Culture in the Maghrib, 1300-1500 (Cambridge University Press, 2002), and Muhammad is Not the Father of Any of Your Men: The Making of the Last Prophet (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). He is founding editor of the journal Islamic Law and Society and sectional editor (Law) of the third edition of The Encyclopaedia of Islam. Yossef Rapoport is a Lecturer in the Department of History, Queen Mary, University of London. He received his B.A. from Tel Aviv University and his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 2002. He has published Marriage, Money, and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge University Press, 2005). He has worked and published on the social history of the Islamic world in the medieval period, gender, and Islamic law, and participated in the study of the Book of Curiosities, a Fatimid cosmological treatise, at the Bodleian Library. Adam Sabra is Associate Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He received his Ph.D. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University in 1998. He is the author of Poverty and Charity in Medieval Islam: Mamluk Egypt, 1250-1517 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and co-editor with Richard McGregor of The Devel- opment of Sufism in Mamluk Egypt (IFAO, 2006). His research cur- rently focuses on the social history of Sufism in Mamluk and Ottoman Egypt. Boaz Shoshan received his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1978. He is Professor in the Departments of General History and Middle East Studies at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Israel. He is the author of Popular Culture in Medieval Cairo (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Poetics of Islamic Historiography (E.