No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Along with a number of commemorative inscriptions adorning various edifices in Maṣyāf, al-Qadmūs and al-Kahf, the principal literary source which records the building activities of the Syrian Ismā‘īlīs in the Jabel Anṣarīya during the 12th and 13th centuries is the anecdotal biography of Rāshid al-dīn Sinān, completed, as its author, Abū Firās b. Jawshan al-Mayniqī states, in Shawwāl 724/Sept.—Oct. 1324. In this work reference is made to the reinforcement, under the instructions of Sinān, of the fortresses of al-'Ullayqa, al-Ruṣāfa and al-Khawābī. Mosques founded at al-Mayniqa and al-Kahf apparently in the period following Sinān's death in 1193 are also mentioned. Finally, the story is told of the building after the Mongol withdrawal from Maṣyāf in late 1260 of a mashhad on a mountain top not far from the town. It was dedicated to the memory of Sinān and marked the spot from which this most famous of the Syrian Ismā‘īlī leaders had observed the siege of Qal‘at Maṣyāf by Saladin in 1176. By the second half of the 13th century the site of Sinān‘s encampment during the siege had become associated in the minds of the Ismā‘īlīs with certain miraculous occurrences brought about through the agency of Sinān and sufficient in their impact to persuade Saladin to desist from further hostility and sue for peace.
1 Most of these have been edited and discussed by van Berchem, Max, “Épigraphie des Assassins de Syrie”, Journal Asiatique, 9th ser., IX, 1897, 453–501Google Scholar; idem, “Arabische Inschriften”, Inschriften aus Syrien, Mesopotamien und Kleinasien, ed. von Oppenheim, M. F., Leipzig, VII, 1913, 17–20Google Scholar. See also Répertoire chronologique d'épigraphie arabe, ed. Combe, Ét., Sauvaget, J. and Wiet, G.Cairo, VIII, 1937Google Scholar, No. 3197: IX, 1937, No. 3264: X, 1939, No. 3890: XI (1941–2), Nos. 4143, 4284–5; and Mayer, L. A., Islamic architects and their works, Geneva, 1956, 70 and 116.Google Scholar
2 The text, together with a French translation and an historical introduction, has been published by Guyard, Stanislas, “Un grand maître des Assassins au temps de Saladin“, in Journal Asiatique, 7th ser., IX, 1877, 324–489Google Scholar. For comments on the value of this document as a historical source consult Lewis, Bernard, “The sources of the history of the Syrian Assassins”, Speculum, XXVII 1952, 480Google Scholar; idem, “Saladin and the Assassins”, BSOAS, XV, 1953, 243.Google Scholar
3 Firās, Abū, trans., 421, 432 and 433:Google Scholar text, 472,478 and 479.
4 Ibid., trans., 389 and 448: 453 and 488.
5 For a detailed discussion of this event see Lewis, Bernard, “Saladin and the Assassins”, 240–4Google Scholar; Mirza, N. A., The Syrian Ismā/īlīs at the time of the Crusades, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Durham 1963, 66–8Google Scholar; Phillips, J. G., Qal'at Maṣyāf: a study in Islamic military architecture, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, London, 1982, 17–19.Google Scholar
6 Firās, Abū, trans., 400–8: text, 458–63.Google Scholar
7 Ibid., trans., 412ff: text, 466ff.
8 Not mentioned by Abū Firās is the fact that the withdrawal was precipitated by the defeat of the Mongol army by the Mamlūks at the battle of ‘Ayn Jālūt on 3 September.
9 Firās, Abū, trans., 417: text, 469.Google Scholar
10 The mountain apparently takes its name from a mashhad of an as yet undetermined date occupying the summit several hundred metres to the south of the monument under study, and housing what is said to be the tomb of Rāshid al-dīn Sinān.
11 The same could be said of most other rooms in the building and also of the entrance porch. It remains a moot point whether the exterior of the building was also plaster rendered as was the case with a number of external wall surfaces in the fortresses of Maṣyāf and Abū Qubays.
12 The same has occurred at the small mosque at al-Qadmūs built in about 668/1269–70 by order of two of the last independent chiefs of the Syrian Ismā‘īlīs, Najm al-dīn and his son, Shams al-dīn (van Berchem, Max, “Épigraphie”, 494–8)Google Scholar. In this building the adjustment that has been made to the internal alignment is of smaller measure and limited to the part of the qibla wall framing the miḥrāb niche.
13 Why this feature was introduced in the first place can only be guessed at. Perhaps it was intended to receive the tailing of one of the walls of an additional two-storied structure envisaged but never completed; or perhaps it was merely the outcome of an idiosyncratic approach to building in which no special reason is required for the inclusion of a particular architectural element. One wonders also why the walling of the eastern façade was not made the same thickness throughout the whole of its length but one metre thicker in the southern half than in the northern (see Fig. 1).
14 Were it not for the engaged pier masking it in the same corner of room 9 above, it is likely that the straight joint would have been visible here also. There is a second straight joint [J2] to be observed marking the western wall of room 10 close-in near the north-west corner, but it seems to be related to the construction of room 10 alone and not to room 9.
15 Wilbur, D. N., The architecture of Islamic Iran: the Ilkhānid period, Princeton, 1955, 43.Google Scholar
16 The word kils might equally be translated “mortar”. In the present context, however, it is evident that it means “lime”: that is, the lime that was to be used as a principal ingredient in the manufacture of mortar.
17 For this word Guyard provides the literal translation “une voüte” (“Un grand maītre”, 418 with n.l). It makes better sense here, however, to adopt its extended meaning “a vaulted chamber”.
18 Firās, Abū, trans. 417–8: text 470.Google Scholar
19 Information kindly supplied to me by Dr Tāmir in a letter dated 9 December, 1977. Dr Tāmir has published a number of articles in Arab journals on the poetry of al-Ḥillī, Mazyad: “Al-Amīr Mazyad al-Ḥillī, Shā‘ir Sinān Shaykh al-Jabal”, in Al-Adib, August, 1953, 53–6Google Scholar; “Al-Sha‘ir al-Maghmūr: al-Amīr Mazyad al-Ḥillī al-Asadī”, in Al-Ḥikma, January, 1955, 49–55Google Scholar; “Al-ghazal fī shi'r Mazyad al-Ḥillī al-Asadī”, in Al-Mashriq, July–Oct. 1956, 499–65Google Scholar; “Ashar al-‘aqīda fī shi'r Mazyad al-Ḥillī al-Asadī”, in Al-Mashriq, July–Oct. 1956, 466–84.Google Scholar
20 Brünnow, R. E. and Von Domaszewski, A., Die Provincia Arabia, Strasbourg, 1909, 211Google Scholar and Fig. 1097; Sauvaget, J., Les monuments Ayyoubides de Damas, II, Paris, 1940, 51–6 and Fig. 30Google Scholar. Along with a description, the plan of the Madrasa of Kumushtikīn reappears in Creswell, K. A. C., The Muslim Architecture of Egypt, II, Oxford, 1959, 107–8 and Fig. 50.Google Scholar
21 Firās, Abū, trans., 415: text, 468.Google Scholar