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A petition to a woman at the Fatimid court (413–414 a.h./1022–23 c.e.)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 January 2010

Marina Rustow
Marina Rustow*
Affiliation:
Emory University
*
[email protected]*
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Abstract

The Genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue in Fustat preserved dozens of petitions addressed to the Fatimid and Ayyubid chanceries in Cairo and decrees that they issued in response. This article provides an edition, translation, and discussion of a petition housed among the Genizah documents of the Bodleian Library directed to Sitt al-Mulk, half-sister of the caliph al-Ḥākim (386–411/996–1021) and head of the Fatimid state between his death and her own in 414/1023. Geoffrey Khan had previously identified two petitions to a Fatimid princess housed in Cambridge and New York; it is likely that they, too, were addressed to Sitt al-Mulk. Such documents elucidate Sitt al-Mulk's role in government after her brother's death and provide evidence for the chronicler al-Musabbiḥī's claim that she received and responded to petitions from subjects. The article offers possible explanations as to why petitions such as this one, which concerns an Ismaili mosque, should have found their way to the Jewish community of Fustat whose members reused and preserved them. It also suggests some broader conclusions about the dispersal, survival, or disappearance of pre-Ottoman Middle Eastern archives and documents.

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Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , February 2010 , pp. 1 - 27
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Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 2010

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References

1 Stern, S.M., Fāṭimid Decrees: Original Documents from the Fāṭimid Chancery (London: Faber and Faber, 1964)Google Scholar, 14. The book contains ten documents, eight issued to the monastery of St Catherine in Sinai (six preserved in the monastery, one in Cairo, and another in Istanbul, previously published by B. Moritz); one preserved in the Coptic Museum in Cairo (previously published by Grohmann); and one from the Qaraite synagogue in Cairo re-edited on the basis of Gottheil's transcription; as well as an Arabic transcription of the Judaeo-Arabic copy of a decree originally published in Goitein, S. D., “A Caliph's decree in favour of the rabbinite [sic] Jews of Palestine”, Journal of Jewish Studies 5, 1954, 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See further Stern, , “An original document from the Fatimid chancery concerning Italian merchants”, in Studi Orientalistici in onore di Giorgio Levi della Vida (Rome, 1956), 529–38Google Scholar, an internal report (Stern thought it was a petition) addressed to al-ʿĀmir (now re-edited by Geoffrey Khan; see below, n. 7). Stern, , “Three petitions of the Fāṭimid period”, Oriens 15, 1962, 172–209Google Scholar, plus two fragments of endorsed petitions; idem, “A petition to the Fāṭimid caliph al-Mustanṣir concerning a conflict within the Jewish Community”, Revue des études juives 128, 1969, 203–22, a petition preserved in the Genizah in seven drafts in Judaeo-Arabic and an eighth in Arabic; idem, “Petitions from the Ayyubid period”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXVII, 1964, 1–32, one from the Archivio di Stato in Pisa and two from St Catherine; idem, “Two Ayyubid decrees from Sinai”, in Stern, S. M. (ed.), Documents from Islamic Chanceries (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1966), 9–38Google Scholar, both from St Catherine; idem, “Petitions from the Mamluk period (Notes on the Mamluk documents from Sinai)”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXIX, 1966, 233–76 (a review of Ernst, H., Die mamlukischen Sultansurkunden (Wiesbaden, 1960)Google Scholar), with three petitions and the decrees that resulted from them, all from St Catherine. For the administrative manuals, see, e.g., Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Kātib ibn Khalaf, Mawādd al-bayān, ed. Fuat Sezgin (Frankfurt: Institut für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften, 1986); Tāj al-Ri’āsa Amīn al-Dīn Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn Munjib ibn Sulaymān Ibn al-Ṣayrafī, al-Qānūn fī dīwān al-rasā’il wa-l-ishāra ilā man nāla al-wizāra, ed. Ayman Fu'ād Sayyid (Cairo: al-Miṣrīyya al-lubnāniyya, 1990); Abū l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā fī ṣināʿat al-inshā, 15 vols (Cairo: al-Mu'assasa al-miṣriyya al-ʿamma li-l-ta'līf wa-l-tarjama wa-l-ṭibāʿa wa-l-nashr, 1964).

2 Khan, Geoffrey, “A copy of a decree from the archives of the Fatimid chancery”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 49, 1986, 439–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Stern, Fāṭimid Decrees, 1, 4; see also Walker, Paul E., Exploring an Islamic Empire: Fatimid History and Its Sources (London: I. B. Tauris, 2002), 113Google Scholar; Brett, Michael, “Lingua Franca in the Mediterranean: John Wansbrough and the historiography of mediaeval Egypt”, in Kennedy, Hugh (ed.), The Historiography of Islamic Egypt (c. 950–1800) (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 5Google Scholar. Brett also offers a convincing suggestion as to when and why the Fatimid archives disappeared, 10–11.

4 Chamberlain, Michael, Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus, 1190–1350 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)Google Scholar, esp. 11–18 (17); for critiques of the premise, see Bruna Soravia, “Les manuels à l'usage des fonctionnaires de l'administration (Adab al-Katib) dans l'Islam classique”, Arabica 52, 2005, 418–19, and Tamer el-Leithy, “Rethinking Middle Eastern archives” (unpublished paper; my thanks to el-Leithy for allowing me to read and cite it).

5 For an analysis of the failure to preserve originals in northern Europe, see J. Geary, Patrick, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996)Google Scholar, esp. ch. 3; on the “first big wave of cartulary composition” in France in the 1120s and its consequences, see Bouchard, Constance, “Monastic cartularies: organizing eternity”, in Kosto, Adam J. and Winroth, Anders (eds), Charters, Cartularies and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2002), 22–32Google Scholar; and for additional analysis of the function of written documents, Kosto, Adam J., “Laymen, clerics, and documentary practices in the early Middle Ages: the example of Catalonia”, Speculum 80, 2005, 44–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Bauden, Frédéric, “Mamluk era documentary studies: the state of the art”, Mamlūk Studies Review 9, 2005, 16Google Scholar.

7 Stern, Fāṭimid Decrees, 5.

8 In addition to the works cited in n. 1, see Goitein, , “Congregation versus community: an unknown chapter in the communal history of Jewish Palestine”, Jewish Quarterly Review 44, 1954, 291–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “New sources on the Palestinian Gaonate”, in Lieberman, Saul and Hyman, Arthur (eds), Salo Wittmayer Baron Jubilee Volume on the Occasion of his Eightieth Birthday (Jerusalem: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1974), 503–37Google Scholar (doc. 3); idem, “Petitions to the Fatimid Caliphs from the Cairo Geniza”, Jewish Quarterly Review 45, 1954, 30–38; Richards, D. S., “A petition for an iqṭāʿ addressed to Saladin or al-ʿĀdil”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 55, 1992, 100–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gil, Moshe, Palestine during the First Muslim Period (634–1099), Hebrew, 3 vols (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1983)Google Scholar, vol. 2, doc. 196, a petition written in the margins of a Judaeo-Arabic letter preserved in Cambridge, re-edited in Khan, , Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents in the Cambridge Genizah Collections (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993)Google Scholar, doc. 73; Khan, , “The historical development of the structure of medieval Arabic petitions”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 53, 1990, 8–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar, including citations of twenty-nine still unpublished petitions from the Genizah; and idem, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, including editions of thirty new petitions, eleven decrees, and fifty-four internal chancery documents, plus citations of ten chancery documents not mentioned in his “Historical development”.

9 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Heb b 18.23v (see the edition and translation at the end of this article). A handwritten register available from the librarians in the Special Collections Reading Room notes that the documents in this volume were acquired “by exchange” from the baptized Polish Jew, Christian missionary, and Hebrew Bible scholar C. D. Ginsburg (1821–1914), probably between 1906 and 1910, and that its ultimate provenance was the Cairo Genizah. As with all Genizah collections, there is a chance that some of this material came from genizot elsewhere in Cairo.

10 Oxford, Bodl. MS Heb b 18.21, recto and verso, published with Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter (henceforth T-S) 30.278, in Stern, “Petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir” (see below, n. 59). Stern published these texts just before his sudden and untimely death; he may have had plans to publish the petition below. See Walzer, Richard, “Samuel M. Stern: in memoriam”, Israel Oriental Studies 2, 1972, 1–14Google Scholar; Wansbrough, John, “Obituary: Samuel Miklos Stern”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies XXXIII, 1970, 599–602CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I have not yet checked Stern's scholarly archive for unpublished editions; it is housed at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem and together with Walzer's comprises about thirty unsorted boxes. Stern's published opus concentrated on quarry farther afield from Oxford (Cambridge, Pisa, Cairo, Istanbul, Sinai).

11 I list only the Oxford shelf marks here: Bodl. MSS Heb a 3.10v; b 3.30r; b 11.7v; b 18.21 (r and v); b 18.23v; c 28.10v; c 28.19v; c 50.4v; d 66.13v; d 66.16v; d 74.19v; d 74.20v; d 74.38v; d 77.14r; d 79.34v; d 81.19–22; e 98.69v; e 115.9v; f 18; f 56.4r–5v; f 56.13; f 57.1–7; f 99.5; f 103.43v; f 103.45v; f 106.64 verso; f 107.36 recto; g 2.60–67 (60v, 61v, 62v, 65r, 66r, 67r). All are fragments cut and reused for Hebrew texts, since in acquiring its Genizah manuscripts from collectors and dealers the Bodleian sought out Hebrew rather than Arabic script. While chancery texts represent 0.225 per cent of the total Oxford Genizah collection (twenty-eight of a total of 12,401 leaves), Cambridge, which acquired most of its Genizah leaves after collectors and other libraries had been through the material, houses at the very least more than twice that proportion (out of 192,843 leaves in total). The current estimate of total Genizah items runs to roughly 279,000 leaves, according to the Friedberg Genizah Project (www.genizah.org), which aims to reunite the Genizah virtually by offering on-line digital reproductions, descriptions, bibliographic references, and some transcriptions and translations.

12 Marina Rustow, “Fatimid decrees and Jewish communal politics”, in María Ángeles Gallego (ed.), Reason and Faith in Medieval Judaism and Islam (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming).

13 On the Abbasids, see van Berkel, Maaike, “Communication and contention: the role of literacy in conflicts with ʿAbbāsid officials”, History Compass 5, 2007, 1661–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Nielsen, Jørgen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State: Maẓālim under the Baḥrī Mamlūks, 662/1264–789/1387 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), 4–9Google Scholar.

14 Cohen, Mark R., “Administrative relations between Palestinian and Egyptian Jewry during the Fatimid period”, in Cohen, Amnon and Baer, Gabriel (eds), Egypt and Palestine: A Millennium of Association (868–1948), (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1984), 117Google Scholar; Rustow, , Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008), 89–91Google Scholar.

15 Nielsen, Secular Justice in an Islamic State, esp. 54–9; Rabbat, Nasser O., “The ideological significance of the Dār al-ʿAdl in the medieval Islamic Orient”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 27, 1995, 5Google Scholar, 11–3; and see Fuess, Albrecht, “Ẓulm by Maẓālim? The political implications of the use of Maẓālim jurisdiction by the Mamluk sultans”, Mamlūk Studies Review 13, 2009, 121–48Google Scholar.

16 al-Ṣayrafī, Ibn, al-Qānūn fī dīwān al-rasā'il wa-l-ishāra ilā man nāla al-wizāra, ed. Bahjat, ʿAlī (Cairo, 1905), 150–51Google Scholar.

17 On the comparison with fatāwā on the one hand and letters on the other, see Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 303–04; Diem, Werner, Arabische Briefe auf Papyrus und Papier aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung, 2 vols (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1991)Google Scholar, doc. 1 and the comments at 1:11 (my thanks to Andreas Kaplony for this reference); and Khan, “Historical development”, 8–9, 15, 16.

18 Rustow, “Fatimid decrees and Jewish communal politics”; for details and context, Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, chs 3–8, 11.

19 See de Sacy, A. Silvestre, Grammaire arabe, 3rd ed. (Tunis, 1904 [1831])Google Scholar, 91 (para. 177); Cahen, Claude and Serjeant, R. B., “A fiscal survey of the medieval Yemen: notes preparatory to a critical edition of the Mulaḫḫaṣ al-fitan of al-Ḥasan B. ʿAlī al-Šarīf al-Ḥusaynī”, Arabica 4 (1957), 31–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cahen, Claude, “Douanes et commerce dans les ports méditerranéens de l'Égypte médiévale d'après le Minhādj d'al-Makhzūmī”, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 7, 1964, 272–3Google Scholar; Abū l-Ḥasan ʿAlī b. ʿUthmān al-Makhzūmī, Kitāb al-minhāj fī ʿilm kharāj Miṣr, ed. Claude Cahen and Yūsuf Rāġib, partial ed. (Cairo, 1986), vii.

20 Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-mawāʿiẓ wa-l-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-al-āthār, ed. Ayman Fu'ād Sayyid, 5 vols (London: Mu'assāt al-furqān li-l-turāth al-islāmī, 2002), 2:334, 2:301 (in the edition published in Būlāq, 1853, 1:401, 1:389). Cf. EI 2 s.v. “Khaṭīb” (Johannes Pedersen).

21 Goitein, , A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 6 vols (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967–93)Google Scholar, 1:369–70, citing Cambridge University Library, Or. 1080 J 291 (item 3, dated 1024) and T-S 16.374 (item 3a, 1022).

22 It, too, is written in dīwānī ciphers (see above, n. 19).

23 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 4:92–93, 292–96; 3:144. Or there may have been some more complicated arrangement involving repairs in exchange for rent; see, e.g., ibid., 4:101.

24 See, e.g., the Judaeo-Arabic petition to the ra'īs al-yahūd Shemu'el b. Ḥananya (1140–59) written by a scribe on behalf of a pauper, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Advanced Judaic Studies Library, Halper 379, in Judaeo-Arabic (Goitein's unpublished edition available online through the Princeton Geniza Project, www.princeton.edu/~geniza); an undated (probably twelfth-century) petition written by a scribe on behalf of the Jewish pauper Ibrāhīm of Sunbāṭ to the head of the Jewish community in Fustat, Cambridge University Library, Or. 1081 J 10, in Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic, line 3 (Mark R. Cohen's edition online through the Princeton Geniza Project); and a letter in Hebrew rhymed prose (presumably to be translated into Arabic sajʿ) from the ga'on of the Jerusalem yeshivah Shelomoh ha-Kohen b. Yehosef to a group of Jewish notables in Cairo asking them to petition the chancery for a confirmation in office on his behalf, T–S 24:43, published in Goitein, “New sources on the Palestinian Gaonate”, 531–2 (doc. 2, with English translation and commentary, 517–23, and facsimile, 534–5; see his comments there, 523); republished in Goitein, , Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times in Light of Geniza Documents, Hebrew, ed. Hacker, Joseph (Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute, 1980), 73–5Google Scholar (facsimiles, 75–6); and in Gil, Palestine, vol. 2, doc. 51.

25 The use of this term seems to contradict Stern's understanding of Fatimid nomenclature (Fāṭimid Decrees, 86–8): he claimed that in Fatimid usage, sijill manshūr was a hendiadys and sijill merely the common shortened form, while other dynasties used the term manāshīr (this is the plural given by Ibn al-Ṣayrafī and al-Qalqashandī). Stern argues this against Grohmann, Labib, and Goitein, who assume that a sijill manshūr (literally, “open decree”) was called this because it was publicly announced. Stern's basic view that the Fatimids did not distinguish between sijill and sijill manshūr may well be correct, since a highly etiolated taxonomy was unlikely at this early stage in the evolution of chancery terminology; but this petition demonstrates clearly that the term manshūr was also used independently. As usual, the documents confound the neat distinctions presented in the administrative manuals.

26 See Lev, Yaacov, “The Fatimid princess Sitt al-Mulk”, Journal of Semitic Studies 32, 1987, 319CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cortese, Delia and Calderini, Simonetta, Women and the Fatimids in the World of Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 103, 116.

27 For details and sources, see most recently Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 177–8, 296–7.

28 A candidate I considered but rejected is ʿĀ’isha, the concubine of the Fatimid amīr ʿAbdallāh, son of the caliph al-Muʿizz (953–75). Though she died in 415/1024–25, after the date mentioned in our petition, and is also said to have left on her death a legacy of 400,000 dīnārs, a sum that might easily have endowed a public building, she was not a terribly prominent a person at court: al-Maqrīzī ranks her as “among the most important old women of the palace” (min wujūh ʿajā’iz al-qaṣr), almost by way of apology for not mentioning her elsewhere in his history. This implies there were others of her rank. Nor is there to my knowledge any record of ʿĀ’isha's possessing a dīwān, hearing petitions, or wielding the kind of power that might have merited her mulk or sulṭān. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ al-ḥunafā' bi-akhbār al-a'imma al-Fāṭimiyyīn al-khulafā', ed. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Shayyāl (vol. 1) and Muḥammad Ḥilmī Muḥammad Aḥmad (vols. 2 and 3) (Cairo: al-Majlis al-Aʿlā li-l-shu'ūn al-islāmiyya, 1967–73), 2:173; see also Cortese and Calderini, Women and the Fatimids, 180 n. 10; Bloom, J. M., “The Mosque of the Qarafa in Cairo”, Muqarnas 4, 1987, 16–18Google Scholar.

29 Halm, Heinz, “Le destin de la princesse Sitt al-Mulk”, in Barrucand, Marianne (ed.), L'Égypte fatimide: son art et son histoire (Paris: Presses de l'Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1999)Google Scholar, 69, 71; Cortese and Calderini, Women and the Fatimids, 124 at n. 78; see also Halm, , Die Kalifen von Kairo: Die Fatimiden in Ägypten, 973–1074 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2003), 305–11Google Scholar.

30 Wa-qāmat laha hayba fī qulūb al-nās. For the sources, see Lev, “Fatimid princess”, 326 nn. 33–4; see also Hebraeus, Bar, Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, ed. Ṣāliḥānī, Anṭūn (Beirut: al-Abā' al-Yasūʿiyyīn, 1958)Google Scholar, 313. To judge by al-Maqrīzī, she had wielded the debilitating sort of hayba a decade earlier: Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī b. Aḥmad al-Jarjarā’ī, who would become vizier under al-Mustanṣir, originally served as Sitt al-Mulk's kātib, but in 404/1013, refused to continue “out of fear for his life from serving her”. Sitt al-Mulk “was annoyed by this” and the episode resulted in al-Ḥākim's having al-Jarjarā'ī's hands cut off. After al-Ḥākim's death, he returned to her service. Al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:183 (Būlāq ed., 2:297–8).

31 Mottahedeh, Roy, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 184Google Scholar. See also Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:35; and Cohen, Jewish Self-Government, 248–50, citing a letter to the ra'īs al-yahūd Mevorakh b. Seʿadyah in which Avraham ha-Kohen, head of a small Jewish community in lower Egypt, confesses having had to keep the peace by resorting to his own “tremendous awe” (al-hayba al-ʿaẓīma; Cambridge: Westminster College, Frag. Cairens. 51, lines 22–3; Goitein's unpublished edition available online through the Princeton Geniza Project); a correspondent of Mevorakh's nephew referring to the latter's hayba as “momentous” (jalīla, Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, David Kaufmann Collection 230.3v, line 28); and a petition to Mevorakh claiming that a certain case could be resolved only “by the hand and hayba of your excellency” (T-S 16.256, line 22; Goitein's unpublished edition available online through the Princeton Geniza Project).

32 al-Amīr al-Mukhtār ʿIzz al-Mulk Muḥammad b. ʿUbaydallāh b. Aḥmad al-Musabbiḥī, al-Juz’ al-arbaʿūn min Akhbār Miṣr, ed. Ayman Fu'ād Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis (Cairo: Institut français d'archéologie orientale, 1978).

33 Yaḥyā ibn Saʿīd ibn Yaḥyā al-Anṭakī, Kitāb al-tārīkh al-majmūʿ ʿalā al-taḥqīq wa-l-taṣdīq, ed. Louis Cheikho (Beirut: al-Abā’ al-Yasūʿiyyīn, 1905), 243–4.

34 Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad Ibn ʿIdhārī, Kitāb al-bayān al-mughrib fī akhbār al-Andalus wa-l-Maghrib, ed. Georges S. Colin and Évariste Lévi-Provençal, 3 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1930), 1:271.

35 Bar Hebraeus, Tārīkh mukhtaṣar al-duwal, 313; Aḥmad ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī, Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab, ed. Mufīd Qumayḥa, 33 vols in 15 (Beirut: Dār al-kutub al-ʿilmiyya, 2004), 28: 129 (cf. the reference given in EI 2, s.v. “Sitt al-Mulk” [Heinz Halm]); Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbdallāh ibn al-Dawādārī, Die Chronik des Ibn ad-Dawādārī. Teil 6, Der Bericht über die Fatimiden, ed. Salāḥ al-Dīn Munajjid (Cairo: Harrassowitz, 1961), 316; al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 2:174.

36 Halm, “Sitt al-Mulk”, in EI 2; idem “Le destin de la princesse Sitt al-Mulk”, 71–2. Lev places her death in 414, correctly in my view (and notes the problem with al-Maqrīzī's date; “Fatimid princess”, 327–8).

37 al-Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, 111; see Lev, , State and Society in Fatimid Egypt (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1991), 69Google Scholar; on the name, cf. Halm, “Le destin de la princesse Sitt al-Mulk”, 69.

38 Lev, “Fatimid princess”, 321; Sayyid, Fu'ād, La capitale d'Égypte jusqu'à l'époque fatimide (Beirut: Steiner, 1998), 324Google Scholar; Cortese and Calderini, Women and the Fatimids, 169. Sitt al-Mulk's direct administration of this ḥabs is curious given its relatively limited income. Under the Fatimids, most foundations fell under the direct administration of the dīwān al-aḥbās – but not all. Benefactors could appoint an administrator (nāẓir) to collect revenues against a fixed yearly amount, or they could administer the ḥabs themselves. In this case, Sitt al-Mulk was nominally the nāẓira, while the administration came under the jurisdiction of her dīwān. If the foundation had been created to support the daʿwa specifically, there was good reason to keep its administration within the royal family. On aḥbās and the dīwān al-ḥabs under the Fatimids, see Cahen, Claude, Ṭāhir, Muṣṭafā and Rāghib, Yūsuf, “L'achat et le waqf d'un grand domaine égyptien par le vizir fāṭimide Ṭalā'iʿ b. Ruzzīḳ”, Annales Islamologiques 14, 1978, 59–126Google Scholar.

39 For those titles, see Halm, “Sitt al-Mulk”, in EI 2; idem, “Le destin de la princesse Sitt al-Mulk”, 69; and cf. Lev, “Fatimid princess”, 328 n. 44.

40 New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, Elkan Nathan Adler Collection (henceforth ENA) 3974.3 (cited in Khan, “Historical development”, 19, and idem, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 312, 316 n. 46), recto, lines 3 and 18. This petition was sent from the Fayyūm to a high-ranking Fatimid woman between 1021 and 1029 (it offers blessings on al-Ẓāhir that indicate that his son, the future al-Mustanṣir, had not yet been born); Sitt al-Mulk is the most likely candidate. It was glued to our petition by the person who wrote the verses from Zachariah on verso, and they later came apart (the top half is in New York and the bottom in Oxford); a small piece of the Oxford petition remained attached to the one in New York (see below, n. 85). There is a third petition to a Fatimid woman preserved in Cambridge, T-S Ar. 42.194 (cited in Khan, “Historical development”, 20, and idem, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 314 n. 39), which may contain a fragmentary draft cut and re-glued to the first draft; too little has been preserved to reconstruct its content. Its recipient is also called mawlātunā al-sayyida and al-ḥaḍra al-sharīfa. I hope to publish both in due course.

41 Al-Qalqashandī, Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā, 6:187; Stern, “Petitions from the Mamluk period”, 258 n. 100; Khan, “Copy of a decree”, 449.

42 Other surviving examples from the Fatimid period include fī hādhihi 'l-ayyām al-zāhira, “in these radiant days”, in petitions to al-Āmir (1101–30), his vizier Ibn Salār, and al-Ḥāfiẓ (1130–49) – the adjective refers to the caliph; and fī hādhihi l-ayyām al-juyūshiyya “in these days of (the commander of) the armies”, in a petition to a vizier of al-ʿĀḍid (1160–71), where the adjective refers to a vizier, either Ruzzīk or Ḍirghām, who effectively ruled the government. ENA 3974.4 (unpublished; cf. Khan, , “A petition to the Fāṭimid Caliph al-'Āmir”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1, 1990, 50Google Scholar), line 10; T-S 13 J 20.5r, line 18; T-S Ar. 51.107r, line 14; and T-S 13 J 8.27, line 3. The last three are published in Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, docs. 79, 85 and 113 (see there, note to line 3, 433–4). For which vizier is meant in the petition from the reign of al-ʿAḍid, see ibid., note to line 7, 357–8.

43 Li-man yakhtubu wa-yuqīmu al-daʿwa al-ʿāliya, line 6. The second verb is often used with the preposition bi- following, especially when it means to pay, but it can also be used without it, in the sense of “to uphold”: see, e.g., T-S 13 J 20.18, line 9, yuqīmu jāhahu fī l-balad; edited in Goitein, Palestinian Jewry, 153–4.

44 See Pedersen, “Khaṭīb”, in EI 2; cf. al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu’ād Sayyid, 2:424 (Būlāq ed., 1:433), quoting the lost chronicle of Ibn al-Ṭuwayr (525–617/1130–1220), who speaks of al-Anwar (completed 1013), al-Azhar, and al-Aqmar (not completed until 1125).

45 I am grateful to Yaacov Lev for helping me clarify this issue.

46 Two chroniclers made copies of the waqf deed: Ibn ʿAbd al-Ẓāhir, al-Rawḍ al-zāhir fī tārīkh al-malik al-Ẓāhir, ed. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Khuwayṭir (Riyadh: n.p., 1976), 278–9; al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:96 (Būlāq ed., 2:273–4). See Rabbat, Nasser, “Al-Azhar mosque: an architectural chronicle of Cairo's history”, Muqarnas 13, 1996Google Scholar, 66 n. 58; Lev, State and Society, 121.

47 Lev, “Fatimid princess”, 321.

48 al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:456–7 (Būlāq ed., 2:364–5).

49 Ibid., ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:288 (Būlāq ed., 2:318).

50 Ibid., ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:904 (Būlāq ed., 2:459–60).

51 Ibid., ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:905 (Būlāq ed., 2:460).

52 Bloom, “Mosque of the Qarafa” (for the name of al-Ḥākim's sister, read Sitt al-Mulk, not Sitt al-Malik).

53 See also Lev, “Fatimid princess”, 320 at n. 8.

54 See Taylor, Christopher S., “Reevaluating the Shiʿi role in the development of monumental Islamic funerary architecture: the case of Egypt”, Muqarnas 9, 1992, 1–10CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which explains the development of funerary and monumental commemorative architecture in fourth/tenth-century Egypt based on the cult of saints rather than Shiism. For criticism of Bloom's reading of the sources, see Rāghib, Yūsuf, “La mosquée d'al-Qarāfa et Jonathan M. Bloom”, Arabica 41, 1994, 420–21Google Scholar; for criticism of the statistical analysis on which Bloom bases his argument, see Tamer el-Leithy, “Coptic culture and conversion in medieval Cairo, 1293–1524 A.D.” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2005), 22–3.

55 Cortese and Calderini, Women and the Fatimids, 163–70.

56 Humphreys, R. Stephen, “Women as patrons of religious architecture in Ayyubid Damascus”, Muqarnas 11, 1994, 36Google Scholar, 48. For a fascinating comparative case that through the questions it raises could illuminate much about Fatimid women, see Petry, Carl F., “Class solidarity versus gender gain: women as custodians of property in later medieval Egypt”, in Keddie, Nikkie R. and Baron, Beth (eds), Women in Middle Eastern History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 122–42Google Scholar.

57 Bloom, “Mosque of the Qarāfa”, 17.

58 On the question of line-spacing, cf. Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 306.

59 T-S Ar. 30.278 and Bodl. MS Heb. b 18.21, in Stern, “Petition to the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustanṣir”. For notes on Stern's edition, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 316 n. 53; for a reproduction of both documents, see ibid., 317.

60 See Stern, “Three petitions”, and Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 305, who cites Ibn al-Ṣāyrafī's report of bureaucratic negligence to explain why some petitions have no endorsements; but it could equally be that (as he explains, ibid., 304) separate decrees were sometimes drawn up.

61 Some of these eighteen petitions were cut before being reused; still others were cut in half and re-glued as a long rectangular strip. Both treatments suggest that the Arabic text had in some way outlived its usefulness. In our case, neither the fledgling scribe nor his teacher altered the paper except to glue it to ENA 3974.3 and to write on it. The paper is trimmed on the left side, where the text abuts the edge of the paper, but that is also true on the Hebrew side, suggesting that yet a third and even later set of hands cut it. Trimming the wide blank margin characteristic of chancery documents would have yielded a rectangle large enough for a small letter or accounting slip – genres found abundantly in the Genizah.

62 Bauden, , “Maqriziana I: discovery of an autograph manuscript of al-Maqrīzī: towards a better understanding of his working method. Description: Section 1”, Mamlūk Studies Review 7, 2003, 21–68Google Scholar; idem, “The recovery of Mamluk chancery documents in an unsuspected place”, in Winter, Michael and Levanoni, Amalia (eds), The Mamluks in Egyptian and Syrian Politics and Society (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 59–78Google Scholar.

63 Bauden, “Recovery of Mamluk chancery documents”, 274. Calamities frequently help the historian: see the description of Catastrophe as a deity who favours the scholar in Bloch, Marc, The Historian's Craft: Reflections on the Nature and Uses of History and the Techniques and Methods of Those Who Write It, trans. Putnam, Peter (New York: Knopf, 1953 [1949]), 61Google Scholar.

64 Bauden, “Recovery of Mamluk chancery documents”, 74; al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 3:730 (Būlāq ed., 2:225–26). See also Fu'ād Sayyid's n. 3 (3:731–2), and his introduction, 1:109–11, which notes the significance of this episode for the problem of the disappearance of Middle Eastern archives.

65 al-Musabbiḥi, Akhbār Miṣr, 43, 74. See the further references in Lev, , “Army, regime, and society in Fatimid Egypt, 358–487/968–1094”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 19, 1987, 344Google Scholar. Al-Maqrīzī notes that Sitt al-Mulk's father al-ʿAzīz had established the Qayṣariyya when he built her palace; see al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, 2:332; Lev, “Army, regime, and society”, 361 nn. 80–81; and Fu'ād Sayyid, Capitale de l'Égypte, 300–23.

66 al-Musabbiḥī, Akhbār Miṣr, 81–2, 87–8.

67 al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāz, 2:275–6; idem, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 2:353 (Būlāq ed., 1:408); see the parallels cited in Lev, “Army, regime, and society”, 363 n. 131; and on the crisis in general, idem, State and Society, 44–6.

68 al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 2:294–5; idem, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 2:356 (Būlāq ed., 1:409); see Walker, Paul E., “Fatimid institutions of learning”, in idem, Fatimid History and Ismaili Doctrine (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 32Google Scholar.

69 al-Qāḍi al-Rashīd ibn al-Zubayr, al-Dhakhā'ir wa-l-tuḥaf, ed. M. Ḥamīdullāh (Kuwait: Da'irat al-maṭbuʿāt wa-l-nashr, 1959), paragraphs 372–414; trans. Ghāda Ḥijjāwī al-Qaddūmī, Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitāb al-Hadāyā wa al-Tuḥaf): Selections Compiled in the Fifteenth Century from an Eleventh Century Manuscript on Gifts and Treasures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 229–41.

70 Ibn Abī Ṭayyi' (575–c. 625–30/1180–c. 1228–33), quoted in al-Maqrīzī, Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 2:358 (Būlāq ed., 1:409); see the parallel in al-Maqrīzī, Ittiʿāẓ, 3:331; on the expression khaṭṭ mansūb, see the editor's note in Ittiʿāẓ, 3:331 n. 2, and al-Maqrīzī's own explanation in Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 4:232 (Būlāq ed., 2:401). See also Walker, “Fatimid institutions of learning”, 33–4; idem, Exploring an Islamic Empire, 113. The passage is also quoted in Shihāb al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ismāʿīl al-Maqdisī al-Dimashqī Abū Shāma (599–665/1203–68), Kitāb al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn, ed. Ibrāhīm al-Zaybaq (Beirut: al-Risāla, 1997), 2:209–10 (thanks to Nathan Hofer for this reference; see also Fu'ād Sayyid, Khiṭaṭ, 2:358 n. 2). Cf. also al-Maqrīzī's description of a fire that took place in the palace library (khizānat al-kutub) on 4 Ṣafar 691 (26 January 1292), Khiṭaṭ, ed. Fu'ād Sayyid, 3:683 (Būlāq ed., 2:212): the ghilmān seized the charred books and sold their pages off cheaply.

71 Aḥmad ibn ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī, Musawwadat kitāb al-mawā’iẓ wa-l-iʿtibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l-āthār, ed. Ayman Fu'ād Sayyid (London: Mu'assasat al-Furqān li-l-Turāth al-Islāmī, 1995), 140; and see the parallel to Ibn Muyassar cited in Walker, “Fatimid institutions of learning”, 33 n. 92.

72 Stern, “Original document”, 530–32.

73 Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, 120–21.

74 Khan, , “The Arabic fragments in the Cambridge Genizah collections”, Manuscripts of the Middle East 1, 1986, 54Google Scholar; idem, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 2. Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:345–6, notes that the Genizah preserved very few papers of Jewish government officials, explaining that even if they maintained ties with the members of the Palestinian Rabbanite synagogue, they most probably kept their primary residence in Cairo rather than Fustat and did not deposit their papers there. In fact, many papers emanating from Jewish courtiers were deposited in the Genizah, even if not by the courtiers themselves.

75 On formulary's tendency to change over time, see Khan, “Historical development”.

76 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn, al-Muqaddima, ed. (Cairo, 1327 (1909)), 274–5; ed. ʿAlī ʿAbd al-Wāḥid Wāfī (Cairo, 1957–62), 619; in Kitāb al-ʿibar, ed. Yūsuf Asʿad Dāghir (Beirut, 1957–61, 7 vols in 2), 1:437; trans. Franz Rosenthal (New York, 1958), 2:27 [2:23].

77 T-S 24.43, lines 38–47 (see above, n. 24). Jewish leaders also knew what the Fatimid archives contained and drew on this knowledge when needed: when the ga'on Shelomo b. Yehuda al-Fāsī (1025) petitioned al-Ẓāhir for reinvestiture in the face of a rival, he reminded him that “The pure presence has made grants in numerous sijillāt to many leaders over time, a fact of which the archives al-dawāwīn offer proof”. ENA 4020.65 (see below, n. 79).

78 For details and references to previous scholarship, see Rustow, Heresy and the Politics of Community, esp. ch. 7.

79 E.g., ENA 4020.65, published in Goitein, “Congregation versus community”, in the same hand as Bodl. MS Heb B 3.21 and T-S 30.278 (above, n. 10). For an attempt at identifying the copyist, which I regard as conjectural, see Gil, Palestine, sec. 771.

80 For examples, see Rustow, Marina, “Formal and informal patronage in the Islamic east: Geniza evidence”, al-Qanṭara: Revista de Estudios Árabes 29, 2008, 341–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice, 14.

82 I am indebted on this point to Tamer el-Leithy's compelling argument in “Rethinking Middle Eastern archives”.

83 Stern, Fāṭimid Decrees, 4.

84 But see next note.

85 The missing letters from this line can be found on a triangle of paper still attached to ENA 3974.3 (see above, n. 40).

86 The reading of this word is uncertain. Chancery scribes avoided splitting single phrases across two lines and instead stacked words at the end of the line (Khan, Arabic Legal and Administrative Documents, 429), as is the case in line 1. Conversely, here the scribe extends the last word to the line's end to avoid breaking the next phrase.

87 Or possibly: , thwarting his efforts and making it impossible for him to collect payment.

88 For the reading of this line, cf. the analogous phrasing in Grohmann, “Fāṭimidenerlass”, 8, line 37 and Stern, “A Fāṭimid decree of the year 524/1130”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Africian Studies XXIII, 1960, 453, line 32.

89 Al-jāriya serves here as a technical term meaning “that which is administered”. It may also imply al-ṣadaqa al-jāriya, as pious foundations are called. See Lane, s.v.; Khoury, Chrestomathie de papyrologie arabe, 132–3; T-S 12.254, recto, margin, line 19; ENA NS 48.6 (formerly Misc Genizah 6), verso, line 9; T-S 13 J 5.3, part b, line 5.

90 Cf. T-S 12.129, recto line 8; Bodl. MS Heb a 3.5, line 26; Bodl. MS Heb d 66.8, line 15; ENA 4007.5, lines 3 and 8; and numerous other legal contexts.

91 See n. 25.

92 Hādhihi l-ayyām al-sharīfa; the reference is to Sitt al-Mulk herself. See above, n. 42.