“The Arabs who Witnessed the Conquest Were Lost in the Passage of Time”: Al‑Maqrīzī’s History of the Rural Tribesmen of Egypt

Abstract

In al‑Bayān wa‑l‑iʿrāb ʿan mā fī arḍ Miṣr min al‑aʿrāb, or “The Book of Clear Arabic Expression regarding the Arab Tribes of Egypt”, a work that currently enjoys wide circulation, al‑Maqrīzī (d. 1442) listed the Arab and Berber tribes found in the late medieval Egyptian countryside according to their geographic locations. This paper sets out to explain al‑Maqrīzī’s aims in compiling the Bayān, considering the social and political context of the Egyptian countryside during the Mamluk period. I argue that al‑Maqrīzī was probably writing with a royal patron in mind, and that he sought to downplay the prestige of the Arab and Berber tribes of his own time while highlighting the failure of their past rebellions against the authority of the Mamluk sultans.