15 - Ayyubid Realpolitik and Political–Military Vicissitudes versus Counter-crusading Ideology in the Memoirist–Chronicler al-Katib al-Isfahani

Summary

Practically from the moment ‘Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani ( 519–7/ 1125–1201) put his chronicles into circulation – even though at first only among his intended audience, the cognoscenti – he did not quite meet with the hoped-for reception. While his command of Arabic, emulating and striving to out-Hariri al-Hariri, elicited a certain admiration, it caused his readers embarrassment at the same time, an embarrassment apparently not felt vis-à-vis the not precisely plain prose of the Katib's superior al-Qadi al-Fadil. A scant generation after his death, his fellow townsman al-Fath b. ‘Ali al-Bundari undertook, by cutting back the Katib's effusive rhetoric, to make his work palatable to an educated but not equally obsessive readership. He achieved a modicum of success, but it was primarily through Abu Shama's compilation Kitab al-rawdatayn (‘Book of the Two Meadows’) that the Katib's historiographic afterlife was ensured. The notable attrition of transmission, although by no means unique but shared by other unusually voluminous works, is still to be regretted. Al-Bundari generally succeeded in preserving the factual core, but inevitably slipped here and there, and in any case, modern readers would like to decide for themselves what to focus on and what not. As it is, of the seven-part memoir–chronicle al-Barq al-shami (‘The Syrian Lightning’) only two sections are extant in a unique manuscript each. Even of al-Bundari's epitome, Sana l-barq al-shami (‘The shine of the Syrian Lightning’), only the first part has survived in a single copy. The Katib's Seljuq history, which does not concern us here, has fared better; al- Bundari's abridged version, Zubdat al-nusra (‘The choicest part of Succour’) is fortunately supplemented by a manuscript of the original, Nusrat al-fatra (‘Succour against the interval of lassitude’).

The Katib's works in political history mirror his and his forebears’ involvement with the powers that were; his Seljuq history was originally designed as a memorial to his uncle ‘Aziz al-Din, whom he idolised as a martyr. After the Katib went in 562/1167 to Syria into exile, he recorded the deeds of his two masters, Nur al-Din Mahmud b. Zengi and Salah al-Din b. Ayyub, as well as his own literary activity, in ‘Lightning’, which title incidentally does not refer to military exploits or other swift actions, but appropriates from Abu Tammam a metaphor of short-lived brilliance.