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The Exalted Lineage of Ridwān Bey: Some Observations on a Seventeenth-Century Mamluk Genealogy1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

P. M. Holt
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Extract

The subject of this paper is a small work entitled Qahr al-wujūh al-‘ābisa bi-dhikr nasab umarā’ al-Jarākisa wa-ttisālihi bi-Quraysh,2 which might be rendered, ‘A cogent demonstration of the lineage of the amīrs of the Circassians and its connexion with Quraysh’. Manuscripts exist in the John Rylands Library in Manchester and in the British Museum. The Rylands copy, com-pleted on 21 Rajab 1092/6 August 1681, states that the original work was finished on 1 Rajab 1041/23 January 1632. The British Museum copy is dated in the colophon 21 Hijja 1258/23 January 1843.3 The work is anonymous but the style and language suggest that its author was an 'ālim who enjoyed the patronage of a Mamluk amīr, Ridwān Bey.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , June 1959 , pp. 221 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1959

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References

2 Thus in the Rylands MS. The British Museum MS gives the title as Qahr al-wujūh al-'ābisa bi-dhikr nasab al-Jarākisa min Quraysh.

3 Rylands MS Arabie 791 (711), ff. 236–66. BM MS Or. 3030. I have not had access to the printed version of this work (Būlāq, 1287/1870–1), for which see the Catalogue of Dār al-Kutub al-Misrīya, V, 1298; cf. Brockelmann, , GAL, Suppl. II, 406.Google Scholar

4 Khādim al-Mahmil al-Muhammadīal-munīf; Rylands 237a. BM3b leads Hāmil al-Mahmil. The older (Rylands) reading may be a deliberate echo of the Ottoman sultanal title, Khādirm al-Haramayn al-Sharīfayn. See below, p. 228, II. 1, and pp. 229–30.

5 This writer is not mentioned by Brockelmann, GAL, nor by Babinger, Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen.

1 The Arabie phrase, ard al-Rūm, may signify Erzerum.

2 For Bulghār, see below, p. 223, n. 1. I have not succeeded in identifying the other place-names, which in this context are perhaps mythical. Alf Rāyiq and in a later passage al-Fiyāriqa, are, in Arabic script, anagrams of al-Faqārī, al-Faqārīya, the name of the Mamluk household of which Ridwān was the head. Qustantīn may be Constans II, the son of Heraclius, but is more probably a generic name for any Byzantine emperor.

3 Rylands 249b–250b; BM 16b–17b. The passage in square brackets is omitted by BM.

4 The flight of the Ghassānī ruler, Jabala b. al-Ayham, is historical. For the legend that the Circassians themselves were of Ghassānī origin, see pp. 228–9, and p. 229, n. 1.

1 He is further styled al-Jahrkasī al-Bulghārī al-'Uthmānī. Cf. his correct style as given by Ibn Taghrī Birdī (Nujūm, ed. Popper, V, 362; tr. Popper, History of Egypt 1382–1469 A.D., I, 1): al-'Uthmānī al-Yalbugbāwī al-Jārkasī. The genealogist's al-Bulghārī would seem to be an ignorant emendation of al-Yalbughāwī (i.e. the mamlūk of Yalbughā) and, in its turn, would account for the curious situation of ‘the land of the Bulghār‘ in Circassia (see above, p. 222). Al-'Uthmānī derives from the name of the slave-merchant ('Uthmān b. Musāfir) who imported Barqūq into Egypt. The genealogis's account of Barqūq's early career is muddled. He was never a mamlūk of Tashtamur, against whom he conspired, nor of Sultān al-Ashraf Sha'bān, but was in the service of the sultan's sons (Nujūm, V, 364; tr., i, 2–3). His father's narae, given as Anas by Ibn Taghrī Birdī, is arabicized to Anas in his funerary inseription (Van Berchem, Max, Corpus inscriptionum arabicarum, Paris, 1903, I, no. 189). No genealogy is provided for Anas by either Ibn Taghrī Birdī or the funerary inseription.Google Scholar

2 Reigned 778–83/1376–81, the penultimate Turkish Mamluk sultan. He is, however, deseribed in the genealogy as the twenty-third ruler of the Kurdish Ayyubids in Egypt.

3 cf. the expression used by Muhibī of Ridwān Bey, in'aqada 'alayhi riyāsat Misr. It is interesting to note that Ibn Abī al-Surūr says of Ridwān, ‘He came to be called invariably in Cairo, “the Shaykh Ridwān”‘: Al-Kawākib al-sā'ira, BM Add. 9973, f. 67a.

4 Rylands 255b–256a; BM 21b.

5 His genealogy is given for six generations back to Sultan al-Ashraf Barsbāy.

1 Khawājakī is au alternative form to khawāja, The plural, khawājakīya, appears in texts of the Mamluk sultanate with the significanoe of ‘slave-merchants’. See Ayalon, D., L'esclavage du mamelouk, Jerusalem, 1951, p. 37, n. 2. Ibn al-Sabbāgh was therefore presumably a sixteenth-century slave-merchant.Google Scholar

2 Koja Sinān Pasha, governor of Egypt in 1568, whence he conquered the Yemen, and 1574. He campaigned in Georgia (1580) and was appointed grand vezīr, an office which he held five times in all. He planned to connect the Blaek Sea with the gulf of Nicomedia by a canal. D. 4 Sha'bān 1004/3 April 1596. The reference to him in the text as ‘grand vezīr’ (al-sadr al-a'ẓam) cannot be derived from Safadī, whose death-date is given as 980/1572–3.

3 Thus if exactly transliterated, but the name should perhaps be read Bars Bey.

4 The name should perhaps be read Jān Bey. Rylands (f. 262a) gives the variant Khānbayk (Khān Bey).

5 Rylands 261a–262b; BM 26a–27a.

6 The fictitious nature of this section of the genealogy, which lists nine generations between Barsbāy and Timurbughā, is clear from the following considerations: (i) Neither Barsbāy's own inscriptions nor the Manhal ṣāfī (Wiet, Cairo, 1932, p. 93, no. 644)give any indication of his parentage.Google Scholar

(ii) The reputed grandfather of Barqūq, Timurbughā, is not mentioned either by the Manhal ṣāfī (pp. 94–5, no. 650) or in the funerary inscription of Anas, his alleged son.

1 Muhammad al-Muhibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar fī a'yān al-qan al-hādī 'ashar, Būlāq, 1290, II, 164–6.Google Scholar

2 See above, p. 223, n. 3.

3 This formula is also used for the Mamluk ṣūfī, Shāhīn b. 'Abdallāh al-Jarkasī (d. A.H. 945). See Abū al-Fath 'Abd al-Hayy b. al-'Imād al-Ḥanbalī, Shadharat al-dhahab fī akhbār man dhahab, Cairo, 1351, VIII, 302.Google Scholar

4 Bodleian MS Pocock 80. A second Bodleian copy, MS Bruce 35, continues the list of governors to 1061/1651, but without further details of events.

1 His appointment was recent, since in Jumādā I 1038/Jan.-Feb. 1629 the Commander of the Pilgrimage had been a certain Qānṣūh, who was then appointed governor of the Yemen and Abyssinia.

2 BM MS Add. 9973. Another copy (Al-Kawākib al-siyāra) in the Rylands Library, Arabie MS 693.

3 BM MS Add. 9972.

4 Hence presumably his cognomen, ṣāḤib al-'Imāra ‘The Master of the Building’.

5 This information is given in the obituary of Ḥasan Agha Balfīya; Jabartī, ,

1 The Mamluk revival in Egypt may plausibly be connected with the increasing role of the Caucasian element in the Ottoman state, which becomes noticeable during the seventeenth century. One aspect of this development was the polarization of authority in the central government between the Imperial Household (Enderūn), in which Caucasian personnel predominated, and the Grand Vizierate (Bāb-i 'Ālī), which was staffed by free-born Turkish-speaking Muslims, mostlv of Rumelian descent.

2 Jānbardī al-Ghazālī, a former Mamluk amīr appointed governor of Damascus by Selim, revolted against SÜleymān and assumed in 1521 the title of Sultān al-Haramayn ‘the Sultan of the Two Sanotuaries’. The significance of this title should be considered in the light of my remarks below (pp. 229–30). See Muhammad b. Tūlūm in Laoust, H., Les gouverneurs de Damas, Damascus, 1952, 158.Google Scholar

3 Khā'in AḤmad Pasha, who claimed the sultanate of Egypt in 1523, was himself of Caucasian origin; Halil Inalcik, ‘Ahmad Pasha Kha'in ’, El, 2nd. ed., 293, states that he was a Georgian.

4 cf. Wittek, P., The rise of the Ottoman Empire, London, 1938, 7–13.Google Scholar

5 For one version of this pedigree, see MacMichael, A. H., A history of the Arabs in the Sudan, Cambridge, 1922, II, 132; MS A. 11, LIII.Google Scholar

1 cf. Ayalon, D., ‘The Circassians in the Mamluk kingdom’, JAOS, LXIX, 3, 1949, 137.Google ScholarAyalon gives the following references: Ibn Khaldūn,Kitāb al-'ibar,Cairo, 1284, V, 472;Google Scholarljās, Ibn, Badā‘i’ al-zuhūr, Constantinople, 1932, V, 193.Google Scholar

2 Iyās, Ibn, Bada‘i’ al-zuhūr, Istanbul, 1932, 241, 284, 285, 290, 312, 325, 439.Google Scholar

3 Arnold, T. W., The Caliphate, Oxford, 1924, 144–5.Google Scholar

1 See Morgenstierne, G., Report on a linguistic mission to Afghanistan, Oslo, 1926, 10;Google ScholarLentz, W., ‘Die Paschto-Bewegung‘, ZDMG, XCV, 1, 1941, 118;Google Scholarjamāl, Begam, ‘Yaw xat’, Abaseen (Karaehi), 06 1957.Google Scholar

2 See Lentz, W., Lateinalphabet fiir das Paschto, Berlin, 1937.Google Scholar

3 See Penzi, H., A grammar of Pashto: a descriptive study of the dialect of Kandahar[GPK], Washington, D.C., 1955, 1955 §37.Google Scholar

1 SeeMorgenstierne, , Etymological vocabulary of Pashto [EVP], Oslo, 1927, 105; Report … Afghanistan, 11.Google Scholar

2 See GPK, § 34.3; EVP, 106, s.v.

3 See GPK, § 35.2; EVP, 49, s.v. maẓ.

4 See GPK, § 34.3; EVP, 77, s.v.

5 GPK, ch. i, § 4.4.

1 Report on a linguistic mission to north-western India, Oslo, 1932, 17.Google Scholar

2 See Morgenstierne, , ‘Notes on an old Pashto manuscript, containing the Khair-ul-Bayān of Bāyazīd Ansārī’, New Indiān Antiquary, II, 1939–1940, 567. ‘DORN'S mscr. of Ākhūnd Darwēza’, there conceded to be older, is now B.M. Add. 27312 and is in fact an indifferent mid-eighteenth century MS.Google Scholar

3 B.M. Or. 4228.

4 B.M. Or. 4498.

5 See Morgenstierne, ,‘Archaisms and innovations in Pashto morphology’, NTS, XII, 1942, 91.Google Scholar

1 Prxto Qāmūs, ed. ṣadīqullāh Rixtīn et al., Kabul, 1330–3/1951–4.

2 Šafeev, D. A., ‘Kratkij grammatiěeskij očerk Afganskogo jazyka’, supplement to P. B. Zudin, Russko-Afganskij slovar',Moscow, 1955.Google Scholar