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Caught between heredity and merit: the amir Qūṣūn and the legacy of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn (d. 1341)1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2015

Jo Van Steenbergen
Jo Van Steenbergen*
Affiliation:
Ghent University
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

From medieval times until today ideas of heredity through lineage and of merit through slave status have jostled for pre-eminence as explanations for transitions of Mamluk royal authority. This article contributes to this debate through an analysis of events in late 1341 marking the transition from the reign of one of the sultanate's most successful rulers, al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn, to that of his sons. This is achieved by focusing on the whereabouts of one of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad's most powerful agents, Qūṣūn al-Sāqī al-Nāṣirī, and on how this amir monopolized power in Egypt and Syria in such a way that his accession to the sultanate seemed inevitable. The article then demonstrates how things went wrong for Qūṣūn and how his failed attempt to obtain the sultanate triggered a Qalāwūnid dynastic succession practice that was to remain dominant for many decades.

Keywords

Mamluk sultanateQalāwūnids (1279–1382)Qūṣūn al-Sāqī al-Nāṣirī (c. 1300–42)Royal successionTanistry
Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 78 , Issue 3 , October 2015 , pp. 429 - 450
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS, University of London 2015 

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Footnotes

1

The author is extremely grateful to Amalia Levanoni, Reuven Amitai, Angus Stewart, Kristof D'hulster, Malika Dekkiche, Stijn Van Nieuwenhuyse, Yasser Daoudi and the two anonymous reviewers of BSOAS for their comments and suggestions. This article originated as a contribution to a 2006 conference at the University of Haifa and the Hebrew University Jerusalem (“The Mamluk sultanate: political, military, social and cultural aspects”); but unfortunately it was never published in that conference's proceedings. The current version has been substantially revised and updated, benefitting from discussions and new insights emerging within the context of the ERC-project “The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk sultanate. Political Traditions and State Formation in 15th-century Egypt and Syria” (Ghent University, 2009–14) (MMS; ERC StG 240865).

References

2 al-Shujāʿī, Shams al-Dīn, Taʾrīkh al-Malik al-Nāṣir Muḥammad b. Qalāwūn al-Ṣāliḥī wa Awlādihi, ed. Schäfer, B., Die Chronik aš-Šujāʿīs (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1977)Google Scholar, Erster Teil (Arabischer Text), 160.

3 On al-Shujāʿī, see Peter M. Holt, “Shams al-Shujāʿī: a chronicler identified?”, BSOAS 58/3, 1995, 532–4.

4 For details of this continuous struggle for power among Qalāwūnid elites, see Steenbergen, J. Van, Order Out of Chaos. Patronage, Conflict, and Mamluk Socio-Political Culture, 1341–1382 (The Medieval Mediterranean 65. Leiden: Brill, 2006)Google Scholar, esp. 123–68. For a discussion and illustration of the system of Qalāwūnid royalty, see Steenbergen, J. Van, “Qalāwūnid discourse, elite communication and the Mamluk cultural matrix: interpreting a 14th-century panegyric”, Journal of Arabic Literature 43, 2012, 1–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 6–13. For a long-term appreciation of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Mamluk socio-political practice within which these tensions as well as this emerging system of royalty need to be viewed, see Steenbergen, J. Van, “The Mamluk sultanate as a military patronage state: household politics and the case of the Qalāwūnid bayt (1279–1382)”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 56/2, 2013, 189–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar: for a related but more structuralist approach up to the third reign of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, see also Clifford, W.W. (Conermann, Stephan, ed.), State Formation and the Structure of Politics in Mamluk Syro-Egypt, 648–741 a.h./1250–1340 c.e. (Mamluk Studies 2. Bonn: Bonn University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For summary reconstructions of this debate, see Levanoni, A., “The Mamluk conception of the Sultanate”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 26, 1994, 373–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 373–4; Steenbergen, J. Van, “‘Is anyone my guardian …?’ Mamluk under-age rule and the later Qalāwūnids”, al-Masāq 19/1, 2007, 55–65CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. pp. 56–8 (referring to relevant publications by David Ayalon, Peter Holt, Robert Irwin, William Brinner, Linda Northrup, Ulrich Haarmann, and Angus Stewart). To this should now also be added more recent publications, representative of different voices in the debate that are (much) more critical of the traditional one-generation/usurpation viewpoint: Broadbridge, A.F., Kingship and Ideology in the Islamic and Mongol Worlds (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 145–8; Bauden, F., “The sons of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad and the politics of puppets: where did it all start?”, Mamlūk Studies Review 13/1, 2009, 53–81Google Scholar; Loiseau, J., Reconstruire la maison du sultan, 1350–1450. Ruine et recomposition de l'ordre urbain au Caire, 2 vols (Etudes Urbaines 8/1. Cairo: IFAO, 2010), 198–203Google Scholar; Broadbridge, A.F., “Sending home for mom and dad: the extended family impulse in Mamluk politics”, Mamlūk Studies Review 15, 2011, 1–18Google Scholar; Yosef, K., “Mamluks and their relatives in the period of the Mamluk sultanate (1250–1517)”, Mamlūk Studies Review 16, 2012, 55–69Google Scholar; D'hulster, K. and Van Steenbergen, J., “Family matters: the ‘family-in-law impulse’ in Mamluk marriage policy”, Annales Islamologiques 47 (J. Loiseau (ed.), Dossier Histoires de famille), 2013, 61–82Google Scholar; Steenbergen, J. Van, “Ritual, politics and the city in Mamluk Cairo: the Bayna l-Qasrayn as a dynamic ‘lieu de mémoire’ (1250–1382)”, in Beihammer, A., Contantinou, S. and Parani, M. (eds), Court Ceremonies and Rituals of Power in Byzantium and the Medieval Mediterranean. Comparative Perspectives (The Medieval Mediterranean 98. Leiden: Brill, 2013), 227–76Google Scholar; Van Steenbergen, “Military patronage state”; Loiseau, J., Les Mamelouks. XIIIe–XVIe siècle. Une expérience du pouvoir dans l'Islam médieval (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2014), esp. pp. 106–37Google Scholar; Flinterman, W. and Van Steenbergen, J., “Al-Nasir Muhammad and the formation of the Qalawunid state”, in Landau, A. (ed.), Pearls on a String: Art in the Age of Great Islamic Empires (Baltimore and Seattle: The Walters Art Museum and University of Washington Press, 2015), 86–113Google Scholar.

6 Translation from Holt, P.M., “Some observations on the ʿAbbasid Caliphate of Cairo”, BSOAS 47/3, 1984, 501–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, pp. 505–6; quoting Birdī, Ibn Taghrī, Kitāb al-nujūm al-zāhira fī mulūk miṣr wa'l-qāhira (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub and Wizārat al-thaqāfa wa al-irshād al-qawmī, 1963–72), 8, 263Google Scholar. See the same text also in al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-sulūk li-maʿrifat duwal al-mulūk, ed. Ziadeh, M.M. (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub, 1934–73), 2, 65Google Scholar (quoted in Bauden, “The politics of puppets”, 55).

7 Haarmann, Ulrich, “The Mamluk system of rule in the eyes of Western travelers”, Mamluk Studies Review 5, 2001, 2–24Google Scholar, esp. p. 22.

8 Haarmann, “System of rule”, 4–6

9 Haarmann, “System of rule”, 5.

10 Haarmann, U., “Regicide and the ‘Law of the Turks'”, in Mazzaoui, M. and Moreen, Vera B. (eds), Intellectual Studies on Islam, Essays Written in Honor of Martin B. Dickson (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990, 128–30Google Scholar; Haarmann, “System of rule”, 22–4. See also Ayalon, D., “The Circassians in the Mamluk kingdom”, JAOS 69/3, 1949, 135–47Google Scholar, 139, 145–6, where Ayalon already noticed such a gradual shift from hereditary to strictly meritocratic succession practices (but with a much earlier turning point: at the end of the fourteenth century); this point was later repeated in Ayalon, D., “From Ayyūbids to Mamlūks”, Revue des Études Islamiques 49, 1981, 43–57Google Scholar, p. 56.

11 Machiavelli, Niccolò, The Prince. Translated and with an introduction by Mansfield, Harvey C.. Second edition (Chicago, 1998), 82CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Haarmann, “System of rule”, 19.

12 al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 68.

13 For Qūṣūn's career under al-Nāṣir Muḥammad, see Van Steenbergen, J., “The amir Qawṣūn: statesman or courtier? (720–741 ah/1320–1341 ad”, in Vermeulen, U. and Van Steenbergen, J. (eds), Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras – III (Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta, 102. Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 449–66Google Scholar, including further bibliographic references; for the settlement of Abū Bakr's succession in June 1341, see Van Steenbergen, J., “Mamluk elite on the eve of an-Nāṣir Muḥammad's death (1341): a look behind the scenes of Mamluk politics”, Mamluk Studies Review, 9/2, 2005, 173–99Google Scholar; Bauden, “The politics of puppets”, 76. The examples mentioned here may be found in al-Yūsufi, Nuzhat al-nāẓir fī sīrat al-malik al-nāṣir, ed. Hutayt, A. (Beirut: ʿĀlam al-Kutub, 1986)Google Scholar, 236, 290, 363–4; al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 42, 45, 68, 86–8; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:379, 392, 407, 417, 460; Zetterstéen, K.V., Beiträge zur Geschichte der Mamlükensultane in den Jahren 690–741 der Higra nach arabischen Handschriften (Leiden: Brill, 1919), 200–1Google Scholar; al-Faḍāʾil, Mufaḍḍal Ibn Abī, Kitāb an-nahj al-sadīd wa al-durr al-farīd fīmā baʿda Taʾrīkh Ibn al-ʿAmīd, Kortantamer, S. ed. (Islamkundliche Untersuchungen, 23. Freiburg im Breisgau: K. Schwarz Verlag, 1973)Google Scholar, 81, 87.

14 Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:561–2; remarkably identical – with even more detail and accuracy – in Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Nujūm, 10:7–8. This close interdependence, which continued for the entire episode and beyond, seems to indicate the use of a common source for this period, probably al-Yūsufī's lost chronicle Nuzhat al-Nāẓir fī Sīrat al-Malik al-Nāṣir (see Van Steenbergen, Order Out of Chaos, 11–2)

15 Qūṣūn is additionally mentioned as the first and major recipient of the redistribution of Bashtak's impressive iqṭāʿ (al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:562), which at least suggests some involvement.

16 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 134.

17 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 135.

18 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 137, 134–40 (for his full account of this conflict), 160 (for his assessment of Qūṣūn's motives and scheming). For other versions, all agreeing on the leading role of Qūṣūn, see al-Wardī, Ibn, Tatimmat al-mukhtaṣar fī akhbār al-bashar, in al-Malik al-Mu'ayyad ʿImād al-Dīn Abū al-Fidā’, Taʾrīkh Abī al-Fidā’ al-musammā al-Mukhtaṣar fī Akhbār al-Bashar, ed. Dayyub, M. (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-ʿIlmiyya, 1997), 2:496Google Scholar; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:566–70; al-ʿAyni, ʿIqd al-jumān fī Taʾrīkh ahl al-zamān, Ms. Cairo Dār al-Kutub 1584 Taʾrīkh, 49–51.

19 See Van Steenbergen, Order Out of Chaos, 43, 116, 184.

20 Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:571; again almost identical in Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Nujūm, 10:21–2 (adding that “the sultan was an instrument in the sultanate”).

21 On this palace, see Warner, N., The Monuments of Historic Cairo. A Map and Descriptive Catalogue (ARCE Conservation Series, 1. Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2005), 185Google Scholar, with further bibliographic references.

22 Al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:580.

23 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 150.

24 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 152.

25 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 159, 183–4, 188; al-Maqrīzī also mentions the number of 700 mamluks (al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:588). On the dimensions of his household, see Van Steenbergen, Order Out of Chaos, 116.

26 Chester Beatty, MS 4179, fol. 1r; see also Arberry, A.J., The Chester Beatty Library. A Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts, volume V (Dublin, 1962Google Scholar), p. 58, no. 4179, which identifies the manuscript as an autograph in a “fine scholar's naskh” and describes its contents as “a panegyrical account of Qūṣūn and his family”.

27 Chester Beatty MS 4179, fol. 3v.

28 Chester Beatty MS 4179, fol. 20r–21v.

29 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 189–90.

30 Ibn al-Wardī, Tatimmat, 496; al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 139–40, 160; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:566.

31 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 169–71.

32 All other sources concur that public opinion at the time implicated Qūṣūn; see Ibn al-Wardī, Tatimmat, 496; Kathīr, Ibn, al-Bidāya waʾl-nihāya fī al-Taʾrīkh (Beirut: Maktabat al-Maʿārif, 1990), 14:194Google Scholar; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:579–80; Ibn Taghī Birdī, Nujūm, 10:17.

33 For details on Aḥmad and Qūṣūn's diplomatic offensive, see Drory, J., “The prince who favored the desert: a fragmentary biography of al-Nāṣir Aḥmad (d. 745/1344)”, in Wasserstein, D.J. and Ayalon, A. (eds), Mamluk and Ottoman Societies: Studies in Honour of Michael Winter (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), 19–33Google Scholar; for the major source references, see al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 141, 143, 145–7, 161; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:573, 574.

34 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 148, 155–6, 161; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:574, 577, 578; al-ʿAynī, ʿIqd al-jumān, 53.

35 Ibn Kathir, al-Bidāya, 14:194; similar wording in al-Kutubī, ʿUyūn al-tawārīkh, Cambridge UL Ms. Add. 2923(9), fol. 54–54v.

36 See Van Steenbergen, “Mamluk elite”, 185.

37 See especially al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 161–5, 172–4; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:579, 580–3.

38 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 165. The addition of “weaklings” to the translation is of course conjectural.

39 See especially al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 165–8, 170–2, 176–9, 180–1; Ibn Kathīr, al-Bidāya, 14:194–7; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:580, 581, 583–5, 586.

40 Illustrated by the fact that in August 1341 Aydughmish had been offered the office of nāʾib al-salṭana before Qūṣūn. Aydughmish's long-standing and stable career at the court of al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (he had been in charge of the sultan's stables as the amīr ākhūr for thirty years, i.e. during al-Nāṣir Muḥammad's entire third reign) made him the doyen of this period's court politics; as was to be expected, by mid-November 1341 accounts emerged mentioning how Aydughmish felt increasingly uneasy about Qūṣūn's rising star and the increasing challenges he perceived from Qūṣūn's side to his own high status and natural seniority at court. It seems, however, that Aydughmish never shared the high political ambitions on which others such as Qūṣūn thrived; at least, this is suggested by his unusual success in remaining in favour at al-Nāṣir Muḥammad's court for three decades, by his renouncing the office of nāʾib in August 1341, and eventually also by his voluntary retreat to a governorship in Syria in the spring of 1342, resigning from a promising position at the centre of Mamluk political power when he and his colleagues had arrested Qūṣūn in January 1341 (on the November 1341 tension that threatened to develop into a military confrontation, see al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 157–9; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:579; on Aydughmish's career, see e.g. al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 251; Khalīl ibn Aybak al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyān al-ʿaṣr wa-ʿawān al-naṣr, ed. Zayd, A. Abu, ‘Umsha, N. Abu, Muwʿad, M. and Muhammad, M.S. (Beirut and Damascus: Dār al-Fikr, 1998), 1:652–4)Google Scholar.

41 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 186.

42 Al-Shujāʿī, Taʾrīkh, 181, 182–7, 189; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:586–590; al-ʿAynī, ʿIqd al-jumān, 57–9.

43 Al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyan al-ʿaṣr, 4:141 (where al-Ṣafadī claims to be the author of this poem); a copy in al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:593 (with variant reading of line 5: “In his debasement, he no longer found a companion”).

44 Al-Ṣafadī, Aʿyan al-ʿaṣr, 4:140; al-Maqrīzī, Sulūk, 2:605, 615; Ibn Taghrī Birdī, Nujūm, 10:75; al-ʿAynī, ʿIqd al-jumān, 65.

45 See Northrup, L.S., From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Manṣūr Qalāwūn and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678–689 ah/1279–1290 ad), (Freiburger Islamstudien, 18. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998), 72–83Google Scholar; on the transition from Baybars to Qalāwūn, see also Stewart, A., “Between Baybars and Qalāwūn: under-age rulers and succession in the early Mamlūk Sultanate”, al-Masāq, 19/1, 2007, 47–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

46 See Northrup, From Slave to Sultan, 88–90, 134–6.

47 See e.g. Irwin, R., The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate 1250–1382 (London: Croom Helm, 1986), 85–6Google Scholar, 105–6.

48 For more details, see Van Steenbergen, Order Out of Chaos, 148–9.

49 Hirschler, K., “‘He is a child and this land is a borderland of Islam’: Under-age rule and the quest for political stability in the Ayyūbid period”, Al-Masāq,19/1, 2007, 37–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

50 Hirschler, “Under-age rule”, 39, referring to Wāṣil, Ibn, Mufarrij al-Kurūb fī akhbār banī ayyūb, ed. al-Shayyal, J., al-Rabiʿ, H. and ʿAshur, S. (Cairo: Wizārat al-thaqāfa wa al-irshād al-qawmī, 1953–1977)Google Scholar, 4:89.

51 Al-Ḥusaynī, Akhbār al-dawla al-saljūqīya, ed. Iqbal, M. (Lahore, 1933), 2Google Scholar; translation from Lewis, B. (ed. and tr.), Islam from the Prophet Muhammad to the Capture of Constantinople. Volume I: Politics and War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 69Google Scholar. The phrase is also encountered in other pre-1000 source-references to succession practices in Umayyad and ʿAbbāsid contexts, always again linking this to tribal customs of leadership won by the sword rather than by mere kin ties (see El-Hibri, T., Reinterpreting Islamic Historiography. Hārūn al-Rashīd and the Narrative of the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate (Cambridge Studies in Islamic Civilization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I am grateful to Kristof D'hulster for bringing this reference to my attention.

52 Fletcher, Joseph, “Turco-Mongolian monarchic tradition in the Ottoman empire”, Harvard Ukrainian Studies, 3–4/1, 1979–80, 236–51Google Scholar, esp. 236–42.

53 Bauden, “The politics of puppets”, 55.