Abstract
AbstractThe scholarly discussion of archives in the premodern Islamicate world is beset by problematic generalisations. Such a view to some degree stems from a top-down view of archiving that focuses on state archives at the expense of practices of archiving occurring outside a chancery context. This article challenges the assumptions that support an enduring narrative of paucity, by examining non-chancery archival practices in Mamlūk Cairo on the eve of the Ottoman conquest in 922/1517. In doing this, it looks to some of the surviving original documentary material: legal property deeds with connections towaqfendowments whose potential to shed light on archival history has largely remained untapped. Surviving in large numbers in modern collections in Cairo, these documents contain abundant traces of their own archival histories. By presenting a micro-scale case study drawn from this material, this article shows the energetic and meticulous documentary and archival practices that surrounded property transactions in late-Mamlūk Cairo.
Highlights
The predominant scholarly narrative surrounding the archives of the premodern Islamicate world is one of paucity
Such a view to some degree stems from a top-down view of archiving that focuses on state archives at the expense of practices of archiving occurring outside a chancery context
The upheavals of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamlūk capital of Cairo in 922/1517 are, in part credited for this paucity of surviving original Mamlūk-era material, with chancery archives assumed to have been destroyed in the process of violent regime change
Summary
The predominant scholarly narrative surrounding the archives of the premodern Islamicate world is one of paucity. These connections often emerge towards the end of a much longer documentary life-span: for instance, a scroll whose initial documentary matrix is a sale deed eventually recording the later incorporation of the property into a large waqf endowment There are many such documents in the Wizārat al-Awqāf (49 percent of the collection), concerning discrete pockets of real estate in Cairo which, at the end of an extended transaction history, were immobilised (mawqūf) in waqf endowments. These deeds often follow the progression of the property in question through the hands of multiple owners before its final immobilisation in waqf, and each transaction is recorded in an addition to the original scroll.. This has profound archival implications for a corpus rooted in an historical period marked by an intense interest in property accumulation and endowment
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