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Shams al-Shujā'ī: a chronicler identified?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

P. M. Holt
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Extract

The eighth/fourteenth-century chronicle known as Ta'rīkh al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qal¯wūn wa-awlādihi was edited from the unique exemplar (Berlin, MS Ar. 9833 We. 7) and published with a German translation by Dr. Barbara Schäfer, who had already produced a full preliminary study of the work. The name of the chronicler appears in a single place in the manuscript (f. 116a) as Shams b. al-Shujā'ī. Schäfer regards the correct form of the name as being Shams al-Dīn al-Shujā'ī, as it is given in Ḥājjī Khalīfa's Kashf al-zunūn. The chronicler's only other personal reference (f. 21 Ob) is to his participation in the Pilgrimage of 745/1345, while a textual reference (f. 124b) indicates that he was alive in 756/1355–6. Schāfer found no references to al-Shujā'ī in contemporary sources, although he was mentioned by the later chronicler, Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (779–851/1377–1448), who actually possessed this manuscript.

Type
Notes and Communications
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 58 , Issue 3 , October 1995 , pp. 532 - 534
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1995

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References

1 Schāfer, Barbara, Die Chronik aš-Šuğā'īs. Erster Teil: Arabischer Text (Wiesbaden, 1977)Google Scholar; Zweiter Teil: Übersetzung (Wiesbaden, 1985)Google Scholar. [Hereafter Chronik.]

2 Schäfer, Barbara, Beiträge zur mamlukischen Historiographie nach dem Tode al-Malik an-Nāṣirs (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1971)Google Scholar. [Hereafter Beiträge.]

3 Chronik, II, 5Google Scholar; Beiträge, 19–21.Google Scholar

4 On the association of the laqab Shams al-Dīn with Sunqur, see Ayalon, D., ‘Names, titles and “nisbas” of the Mamlūks’, Israel Oriental Studies, v, 1975 at p. 212Google Scholar; repr. in idem, The Mamlūk military society (London, 1979)Google Scholar. In my personal index of Mamlūk amirs, chiefly based upon data from Taghrībirdī, Ibn, al-Nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk Miṣr wa'l-QāhiraGoogle Scholar [hereafter Nujūm], all six named Aqsunqur have the laqab Shams al-Dīn (one with the alternative Sayf al-Dīn).

5 Al-Ṣafadī, , al- Wāfī bi'l-wafayāt [hereafter Wāfī], ix (Wiesbaden, 1974), 294–6Google Scholar; no. 4225. The name is there given as Ughurlū. Taghrībirdī, Ibn, al-Manhal al-ṣāfī and Nujūm, x, 167Google Scholar, gives the form Aghizlū, meaning in Turkish (as he says), ‘he has a mouth’ (lahu fam), as well as Ughurl¯ and Ghurlū. It is the last form which he regularly uses in Nujūm, as does al-Maqrīzī in kitāb al-Sulūk li-ma'rifat duwal al-mulūk [hereafter Sulūk].

6 Ṣafadī, , Wāfī, ix, 315Google Scholar; no. 42448. There is also information about him in the biographical notice of al-Zarrāq, Aydamur: Wāfī, x, 18–22Google Scholar; no. 4463, where his laqab of Shams al-Dīn is given.

7 Maqrīzī, , Sulūk, II/3, 157Google Scholar. Taghrībird¯, Ibn, Nujūm, x, 186Google Scholar, says specifically that Ghurlū, ‘was a Circassian by nationality [Jarkasī al-jins], and therefore gathered the Circassians around al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Ḥājjī, for they were of his nationality.’Google Scholar He says further (p. 188) that ‘al-Malik al-Muẓaffar Ḥājjī had brought them [the Circassians] close to himself by means of Ghurlū, and brought them in from everywhere. He wanted to set them up above the Turks, and he brought them close to himself, so that they were known among the amirs by their big turbans.’

8 The account of Ghurlū's coup and ascendancy in Maqrīzī, , Sulūk, II/3, 730–7Google Scholar, is followed practically verbatim by Taghrībirdī, Ibn, Nujūm, x, 159–67.Google Scholar

9 Maqrīzī, , Sulūk, II/3, 746Google Scholar: ‘There was arrested the Amir Āqsunqur Amīr Jāndār, the husband of al-Muẓaffar's mother.’ Both al-Maqrīzī and Ibn Taghrībirdī style him ‘al-Muẓaffarī’.