1
HISTORIA S A D HISTORICAL THOUGHT I A
OTTOMA WORLD
BIOGRAPHICAL WRITIG I 16TH AD 17TH CETURY SYRIA/
4
Özet
Çalısmamı iki bölüme ayırdım. Đlk bölümde Osmanlı Suriye’sinin biyografik
yazımı ve tarihsel düsüncesinin niteliğini arastırdım. Đkinci bölümde ise Suriyeli
entellektüel elitleri Osmanlı toplumuna yerlestirerek ve özel olarak buna odaklanarak,
16. ve 17. Yüzyılın Suriyesindeki kimlik sorunsalını ele aldım. Çalısmamda, Halep’in
yerel tarih yazım geleneği ve Sam’ın daha evrenselci olan yaklasımı olmak üzere tarih
yazımının iki modeli arasında bir ayrım yaptım. Ayrıca iki sehir arasındaki entellektüel
bağlantıların gelisimini tartıstım ve Osmanlı zamanında tüm Müslüman toprakları
arasında Sam’ın özgün bir tarih yazımı geleneğine sahip olduğu sonucuna vardım.
Çalısmamın ikinci kısmında Sultanlığın baslangıctaki mekansal ve dinsel olarak
sınırlandırılmıs varlığının temsilinden, evrensel Müslümanlığın çekim gücünü elinde
tutan bir temsile doğru hızlı bir sekilde değisiminin görüntüsünü tartısarak biyografik
literatürde Osmanlı Sultanının bakısını ele aldım. Ayrıca Sam’lı alimlerin kültürel ve
ülkesel anlamda Arapça konusan toplumun bir parçası olma bilinci olduğu sonucuna
vararak Osmanlı Sureyesindeki etnik farkındalık ve önyargı sorunsalını inceledim.
Etnik önyargının ifadesi var olmakla birlikte, az sayıda ve yalnızca Sam’a özgüdür. Bir
sonraki bölümde Osmanlı bölgesinde, Arapça konusan ve Türkçe konusan alimler
arasında önemli bir entellektüel iletisim olmasına rağmen, her iki grubun da her zaman
bilinçli olarak kendilerini aynı, biricik Osmanlı toplumunun parçaları olarak kabul
etmedikleri iddiasında bulundum. Son olarak ise Osmanlı yönetimi altında Arap tarihi
çalısmasına karsılastırmalı bir yaklasım öne sürdüm.
5
To My Father
6
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank Professor Metin Kunt, who helped shape this work with his
comments, ideas, suggestions, and attention to detail over long months of
correspondence. I am also grateful to Professors Hakan Erdem and Hülya Adak, who
read my thesis at short notice and provided helpful commentary. Many thanks are due to
everyone who has contributed to my education at Sabancı University. I owe a debt of
gratitude to Professors Samir Seikaly and John Meloy of the American University of
Beirut for their kind willingness to discuss my work and suggest as well as supply me
with important sources. Last but by no means least, I am thankful for the efforts of
Sumru Satır at the Dean’s office in the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences at Sabancı
University, for her patience and assistance in the final process of publication.
7
TABLE OF CO TE TS
Part I.
A. Introduction 1
The Islamic Biographical Dictionary in Modern Scholarship 2
B. The Contrasting atures of Biographical Writing in Bilad al-Sham 10
1. The Aleppine Localist School of Biographical Writing 11
2. Ibn Tulun and the Cultivation of Local and Restricted Historiography in
Damascus 22
3. A Cosmopolitan Conception of History in Damascene Biographical
Literature 30
a. Two Centennial Biographers of Ottoman Damascus 36
b. A Longer View of History: Ibn al-Imad’s Millennial Collection of
Muslim Notables 48
c. Understanding Damascene Uniqueness in the World of Islamic
Biographical Writing 51
Part II.
A. Ottoman Lives, Arabic Portraits: Situating Syrian Biographical Literature
in an Ottoman Context 63
1. From Rulers of Rum to Masters of Islam: Images of Sultan and State 65
2. Of Vice and Virtue 75
3. Ethnic Awareness and Prejudice in Syrian Biographical Writing 85
4. The Arab Discovery of Rum, and the Yearning for Home 99
B. Conclusion 111
Works Cited 116
8
Part I.
A.
Introduction
There are three general lines of inquiry that will be addressed in this examination
of the Syrian biographical literature of the 16th and 17th centuries. At the most basic
historiographical level, I will attempt to demonstrate the value of this extensive literary
corpus in the context of studying Ottoman history, as well as pointing to certain salient
elements in the distinction between two schools, or traditions, of biographical writing,
those of Aleppo and Damascus. The second aim of the study is to to reveal the extent of
social and intellectual contact between the Turkish-speaking Ottoman elite and the
Arabic-speaking elite of Syria by examining the biographers’ depictions of individual
Ottomans, with a specific emphasis, where possible, on portrayals of the imperial
center. I also seek to investigate the question of ethnic prejudice and the extent to which
it may be detected in biographies of non-Arab Ottomans. This may allow us to draw
general patterns of representation if those can indeed be established. The final purpose
of my study, based largely on data acquired while attempting to answer the previous
questions, will be investigating identity in Syria during the first two centuries of
Ottoman rule. Different levels of identification are bound to have existed at the time,
and it is an issue of great importance to determine which of these the intellectual elite of
Ottoman Syria chose for themselves. Addressing these issues will give some clues
concerning the mentality(s) of a group of Arab-Muslim historians who, by that time,
were part of a far-flung Ottoman world. In addition, it will shed some light on the
question of localism in Ottoman Syria from 1516-1700. But first, a brief introduction to
the historiographical genre itself is in order.
9
The Islamic Biographical Dictionary in Modern Scholarship
The biographical dictionary developed into one of the preeminent forms of
historiography in the Muslim realms during the classical period of Islam and continued
uninterrupted well into modern times. The genre has accordingly received a great deal
of attention in contemporary Western scholarship, which is only natural considering
that, in the words of Sir Hamilton Gibb: “without these works… no detailed study of
Islamic culture would be possible.”1 Several studies of varying interest have been
conducted in the past half-century or so, highlighting different elements in the
emergence and development of the biographical dictionary through successive epochs
of Islamic civilization. Precious few among them, however, deal with the biographical
literature of the Ottoman period; most concern themselves with classical and medieval
Islam.2 A notable exception is Tarif Khalidi’s fine survey entitled Islamic Biographical
Dictionaries: A Preliminary Assessment, which includes some remarks on the
Damascene biographers Burini (d. 1615), Ghazzi (d. 1651), Muhibbi (d. 1699), and
Muradi (d. 1791).3 But Khalidi effectively stops short of attempting to establish whether
certain peculiar developments within the genre took place during the Ottoman period.
This is not to suggest that biographical dictionaries have been neglected or under-used
as a source for writing Ottoman history; such an assertion would be erroneous to say the
least. One cannot do, for instance, without biographical dictionaries in studying the
elites of Muslim societies, particularly the learned elite, the ‘ulama’, themselves
1 Hamilton Gibb; “Islamic Biographical Literature” in Bernard Lewis & P.M Holt
(eds.); Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962), p. 58
2 Among other works, see: Hamilton Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature” in
Bernard Lewis & P.M Holt (eds.), Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962),
pp. 54-58; Wadad al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and
Cultural Significance” in George N. Atiyeh (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World:
The Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (New York, 1995), pp.
93-121; Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden 1968, 2nd
ed.), pp. 93-95 & 100-103; George Makdisi, “Tabaqat Biography: Law and
Orthodoxy in Classical Islam”, Islamic Studies 32, 1 (1993), pp. 371-392; Chase
Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 68-75; R. Stephen
Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry (Princeton, 1991), pp.
188-207
3 Tarif Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries: A Preliminary Assessment”,
Muslim World 63 (1973), pp. 53-65
10
invariably the composers of these volumes.4 As such, they have served as perhaps the
principal source for the construction of the history of early modern Ottoman Syria, at
least insofar as political developments and the affairs of the elite in Bilad al-Sham
during that period are concerned.5 The voluminous collection of Arabic biographical
works that is still extant has not, however, been treated as a body of literature in and of
itself by specialists in the field.
Nevertheless, the considerable amount of scholarly work that has been devoted
to the Islamic biographical dictionary is of both exceptional quality and great use to
students of Islamic history, whichever sub-field they choose to enter. The Ottoman
period, of course, is no exception, and much of the recent literature on the genre
remains valid for any discussion of Syrian and Arab historiography under Ottoman rule,
when the biographical dictionary had reached an advanced stage of its development. It
would appear that the origins of the genre lay, at least in part, in the attempt to establish
the authority of hadith (Prophetic Tradition) transmitters, and this is corroborated by the
fact that the earliest extant biographical dictionary, that of Ibn Sa‘d, is dedicated to that
particular discipline in the Islamic religious sciences. This view was first put forward by
Franz Rosenthal, in his seminal work A History of Muslim Historiography,6 and shortly
thereafter Hamilton Gibb, in a brief but influential study7 which seems to have set the
tone for further historiographical assessments of the biographical dictionary in the 20th
century. Rosenthal indicates that biography had become a “necessary subject for
theologians” in the attempt to establish the “individual merits or demerits” of
individuals who claimed to be authorities in the transmission of Prophetic Tradition.8
Gibb also links the conception of the biographical dictionary to hadith, as Tradition
4 R. Stephen Humphreys, Islamic History: A Framework for Inquiry (Princeton,
1991), p. 187; hereafter Humphreys, Islamic History
5 Among other works: Abdul-Karim Rafeq, The Province of Damascus, 1723-
1783 (Beirut, 1966); M.A Bakhit, The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the 16th
Century (Beirut, 1982); P.M Holt, Egypt & The Fertile Crescent, 1516-1922: A
Political History (Cornell, 1966)
6 Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography (Leiden 1968, 2nd ed.),
pp. 100-106; hereafter Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography
7 See Hamilton Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature” in Bernard Lewis & P.M
Holt (eds.); Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962), pp. 54-58, hereafter
Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”
8 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 101
11
constituted the “earliest organized disciplines in Islam” in the religious and legal
spheres.9 The biography-hadith link is, for the most part, also accepted by Tarif Khalidi
and Wadad al-Qadi, each of whom produced a highly original and informative study of
the genre.10
Chase Robinson has, however, recently challenged the view that the rise of the
biographical dictionary was principally based on hadith transmission. He cites a certain
Wasil Ibn ‘Ata’ who, roughly a century before Ibn Sa‘d composed his dictionary,
produced a work, now no longer extant, which does not seem to have been concerned
with hadith.11 Ibn ‘Ata’ was a rationalist, as distinct from a Traditionist, and so it is
assumed that his biographical collection was not devoted to Traditionists.12 This is
probably correct, since biographers of the early period of the genre’s development
generally dedicated their works to their own occupational groups.13 Further evidence, to
Robinson’s mind, is the fact that a biographical work on poets (also no longer extant)
was written before Ibn Sa‘d produced his volume on Traditionists.14
Wadad al-Qadi, in fact, sufficiently explains the emergence of biographical
collections dedicated to poets. She notes that there is a similarity between the authors of
these works and those of the dictionaries of hadith transmitters in that both groups
aimed to establish or, otherwise, discredit, the authority of the individuals in their
works. For poets, the issue under consideration was whether they had formidable
creative and linguistic abilities. Their linguistic abilities in particular were important as
far as religion was concerned, since the Arabic language, in which the Qur’an was
9 Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”, p. 55
10 See Wadad al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural
Significance” in George N. Atiyeh (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World: The
Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (New York, 1995), pp. 93-
121; Tarif Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries: A Preliminary
Assessment”, Muslim World 63 (1973), pp. 53-65
11 Chase Robinson, Islamic Historiography (Cambridge, 2003), p. 30, hereafter
Robinson, Islamic Historiography
12 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, p. 46
13 Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”, p. 55
14 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, p. 46
12
written, had a special position in the identity and culture of Islam.15 George Makdisi
also points out that poetry and philology helped maintain the “purity of the classical
Arabic language”, and thus writing dictionaries on poets and establishing which had the
most proficiency was a worthwhile endeavor.16 Indeed, the 13th century biographer of
litterateurs, Yaqut (d. 1299), stressed that a sound knowledge of Arabic grammar would
lead to a better understanding of the Qur’an.17 The linguistic side to Muslim identity
during that early phase must, therefore, not be underestimated, and it is in this sense that
volumes discussing poets may be connected to a religiously self-conscious culture. And
thus, it is not at all surprising that the biographical collections of poets emerged at about
the same time as those of Traditionists.
Regardless of the biographical dictionary’s exact origins, it is agreed that hadith
scholarship received a sizeable chunk of this genre’s early attention, and indeed
achieved a dominating position in it, judging by the massive number of biographical
dictionaries dedicated to the discipline. Apart from hadith and the debate surrounding it,
however, other factors behind the emergence of the Islamic biographical dictionary
have also been noted. Rosenthal, for instance, notes that there existed the belief that
worldly developments were a direct result of human action, and accordingly that the
qualities of those men (and women) who were perceived as influential should be
measured, and their lives recorded.18 Gibb similarly indicates that biography was not
merely rooted in hadith, but owed its emergence in part to a specific understanding of
history by the Islamic community: the vision of history as the deeds of certain
individuals and their contribution to the development of the “specific culture” of
Islam.19 As such, according to Rosenthal, the writing of history in Islam “became
15 Wadad al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries: Inner Structure and Cultural
Significance” in George N. Atiyeh (ed.), The Book in the Islamic World: The
Written Word and Communication in the Middle East (New York, 1995), p. 101,
hereafter Al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries”
16 George Makdisi, “Tabaqat Biography: Law and Orthodoxy in Classical Islam”,
Islamic Studies 32, 1 (1993), pp. 375-76
17 Tarif Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries: A Preliminary Assessment”,
Muslim World 63 (1973), p. 55, hereafter Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical
Dictionaries”
18 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 100
19 Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”, p. 54
13
almost synonymous with biography.”20 Robinson attributes the rise of the biographical
dictionary partly to the emergence of “the individual”, as opposed to the attempt at
establishing the conditions of the life of a particular individual (the Prophet
Muhammad). He further explains that this was a result of “sedentarization, urbanization,
and assimilation more generally” in the wake of waning tribalism.21 Finally, Qadi
remarks that the biographical dictionary appeared once Islamic civilization had taken
the first steps towards developing a clear self-image and when it had just entered a stage
of relative maturity.22
It must be pointed out that, during its early stages of development and for some
time after, the biographical dictionary took on the tabaqat (literally layers/classes) form.
A tabaqa generally denoted a specific period of time selected by the author of a
biographical work, and seems to have been the “oldest chronological division which
presented itself to Muslim historical thinking.” Different biographers’ definitions of the
time-frame that a tabaqa constituted varied, but determining the length of a tabaqa was
invariably connected to the various Prophetic Traditions and Muhammad’s own alleged
uses of the term as derived from hadith sources.23 At times a tabaqa even represented
other types of divisions; one such classification was geographical.24 Tabaqat collections
were also produced for other classes within the Muslim realms. We have already
discussed the significance of the tabaqat of poets in the religious context, but there are
also forms of tabaqat which seem to have nothing at all to do with religion. A
particularly early example is a tabaqat of Physicians by Ibn Juljul in the 4th/10th century
CE.25 It is noteworthy that the Andalusian Ibn Juljul had studied hadith until the age of
15, when he decided to switch his energies to medicine.26 As such, it is not at all
unlikely that his early interest in hadith, in addition to a knowledge of how the authority
of individual transmitters was established (through some of the earliest tabaqat works),
had influenced his division of physicians into similar tabaqat as those utilized by hadith
scholars. As time went by, and the biographical dictionary developed and became
20 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 100
21 Robinson, Islamic Historiography, p. 46
22 Al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 97
23 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 100
24 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 95
25 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 94
26 A. Dietrich, “Ibn Djuldjul” in EI2 (Brill Online, 2010)
14
structurally more accessible to the reader, the tabaqat division was superseded in most
works by the less complex alphabetical division. The tabaqat survived, however,
alongside other time-frames adopted by biographers, and came to be utilized in
conjunction with alphabetical organization.27 This is still evident in the historiography
of Bilad al-Sham during the first two centuries of Ottoman rule, as we shall see.
Other developments within the genre are also significant in the context of the
Syrian historiography of the Ottoman period. Wadad al-Qadi gives attention to the rise
of a sub-genre of biographical writing with which we are particularly interested, the
local biographical dictionary. This variety first appears in the 10th century, and
originates in peripheral areas of the Muslim empire, rather than the traditional centers of
learning in Islam. According to Qadi, this indicates that the emergence of the sub-genre
is strongly related to the erosion of caliphal power and the semi-independence of certain
Muslim emirs, to whom some of these works were dedicated, at various peripheries.28
As she notes towards the end of her piece, local biographical dictionaries may also be
expressions of cultural pride and devotion to particular urban centers, not merely
manifestations of semi-autonomous political status or demonstrations of localism in
peripheral regions.29
In contrast to local and restricted examples of biographical writing, we find a
more universalist approach to their composition. The term universalist here denotes a
biographer’s inclusion of individuals from different geographical regions, as well as
different social and professional groups; the founder of this genre has been unanimously
recognized as Ibn Khallikan (d.1282).30 After Ibn Khallikan there was even a
“summoning of the commoners”, as Tarif Khalidi called it, into biographical collections
and this, of course, was quite apart from merely including kings, caliphs, or members of
the state bureaucracy alongside the ‘ulama’. To Khalidi’s mind, this was a testament to
the power of the Mamluk state and its institutions’ ability to “survey, record, and assess
27 Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 95
28 Al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 107
29 Al-Qadi, “Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 114
30 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 55; Humphreys, Islamic
History, p. 188, Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”, p. 55
15
the lives of its citizens.”31 Indeed, it is not surprising to find that the universal dictionary
was first conceived during the early Mamluk period. Here, finally, was a stable Muslim
political power and the first that boasted some sort of centrality for centuries, as well as
one which could without doubt consider itself a universal Muslim power owing to its
custodianship of the Two Holy Cities, its protection of the ‘Abbasid (shadow) caliph,
and its valiant contributions in eliminating the threat represented by Frankish and
Mongol “infidels”. It was, therefore, only natural that historiography would take the
next step in its evolution as relative stability in the Muslim realms was restored after
centuries of struggle with various foreign powers, as well as internal strife in the
Muslim-held lands of what later became the Mamluk Sultanate. And it was, predictably,
also in the Mamluk period that biography reached its apogee, to the extent that, in
Khalidi’s words, it “was history in the view of many of its practitioners.”32
Nevertheless, this newly emergent universalism, initially developed in the Mamluk
period, should give us no illusions as to the continuing predominance of the ‘ulama’
class in the biographical dictionaries. The biographers, as members of the ‘ulama’
themselves, were still mostly interested in writing about their own kind, despite the
more universal approach that some had now adopted.33
Khalidi is keen to stress another element behind the novelty of Ibn Khallikan’s
biographical dictionary. In Khalidi’s view, Ibn Khallikan’s significance lies not merely
in his being the first to conceive of a universalist approach to biographical writing, but
also in his direct connection of biography to history without recourse to religion. The
introduction to his work is thus entirely “secular”, in that he provides no religious
justification to the composition of his biographical dictionary, and Ibn Khallikan is the
first to refrain from doing so. Specifically, this pioneering Muslim historian defines his
biographical work as a venture in the “science of history” (‘ilm al-ta’rikh).34 This
“science of history” was, after Ibn Khallikan, firmly established as a legitimate
scholarly enterprise in the Islamic realms and was no longer in any need of religious
31 Tarif Khalidi; Arabic Historical Thought in the Classical Period (Cambridge,
1994), pp. 209-10, hereafter Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought
32 Khalidi, Arabic Historical Thought, p. 210
33 Gibb, “Islamic Biographical Literature”, p. 56
34 Khalidi’s translation in “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 56
16
justification.35 Khalidi is, however, careful to make the important point that the
distinction between secular and religious enterprises in Islamic civilization, including
the composition of historical works, is “often meaningless.”36
Khalidi also indicates a significant discrepancy that is very often found in the
biographical literature: the stated intention of a biographer, indicated in his introduction
to the work, and his actual practice when writing biographical entries. Two inconsistent
features are particularly noted: the first is the biographer’s professed purpose of
extolling only the virtues of those on whom he chooses to write, and in this respect there
exist several examples of inconsistency, to varying degrees, in most biographical
dictionaries.37 The second is the professed selectivity of certain biographers, when in
fact they included a sizeable number of commoners.38 As we shall see, on occasion, a
biographer would criticize a predecessor for the latter’s inclusivity, before repeating the
same error while initially claiming to adopt an exclusivist approach.
Despite criticisms by certain biographers of their predecessors, or even
contemporaries, there is little doubt that this group of historians often drew upon the
work of their peers; in biography, this was perhaps more evident than in any other
tradition of Muslim historiography.39 The influence of a biographer’s predecessor or
contemporary is at almost all times noticeable when both have written an entry on the
same individual, but even the critical method adopted by a biographer, when it comes to
selectivity and the judgment of character, is inspired by his peers. After all, the general
framework in which biographers operated was initially set by the Traditionists who, of
course, attempted to establish the reliability of their peers in the early biographical
dictionaries. Positive or negative attributes of the careers and characters of individuals
in biographical dictionaries of post-Classical Islam were also understood based on
certain pre-defined categories, with minor variations appearing in the works of
individual biographers. Judging character in biography, one of the foremost preoccupations
of Traditionists in their endeavor to praise, or alternatively, denigrate their
peers, remained a matter of interest to later biographers. In any case, Traditionists still
35 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, pp. 55-56
36 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 53
37 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, pp. 59-60
38 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, pp. 60-62
39 Humphreys, Islamic History, p. 189
17
seem to have constituted the majority of biographers long after biographical writing had
created a less restricted, more universalist alternative to its previous “specialization”,40
and thus it is no surprise that their methods and understanding continued to exert a
considerable influence within the genre.
40 Khalidi, “Islamic Biographical Dictionaries”, p. 58
18
B.
The Contrasting atures of Biographical Writing in Bilad al-Sham
No less than ten biographical or semi-biographical works, the collective efforts of
seven authors from the two leading intellectual centers of Bilad al-Sham, Damascus and
Aleppo, shall be treated in the historiographical assessment that follows.41 These
sources are varied in scope, emphasis, and the amount of relevant historical detail they
provide a student of Ottoman history with. Five of the biographical dictionaries under
study are of the local or restricted types (or both) described above, and these are mostly
concerned with giving accounts of the lives of certain notable individuals who resided
within the city in question for at least part of their lives. Among these, two were written
in Aleppo, each belonging to a different century during the period in question. The other
three were produced by a single Damascene historian, Ibn Tulun (d. 1546), who was
perhaps the most prolific of all Syrian historians of the Ottoman period. The local
variety of biographical writing, of course, mostly (or solely) provided entries on those
Ottoman officials who inhabited and served in the cities concerned.
The other half of the biographical literature of Bilad al-Sham during the two
centuries under discussion, however, is of the more general type. This type of
biographical writing is an exclusively Damascene phenomenon, and this itself is a point
of some significance which will be addressed at a later stage. At any rate, among these
Damascene works are two biographical dictionaries of the centennial variety, providing
the reader with a wide range of individuals (often even people who could not be
considered notable (a‘yan) by any stretch of the imagination) of various ethnic,
vocational, and spiritual backgrounds who lived in different periods of the 10th and 11th
centuries AH. There exists also a popular collection of biographies covering the first ten
Hijri centuries, entailing most of the first century of Ottoman rule in Syria (until the
year 1000/1592). The two remaining works deal with individuals who were
41 These include only the published biographical dictionaries of Bilad al-Sham.
We know of several other works, to be mentioned only in passing, which remain
either unpublished or are no longer extant.
19
contemporaries of the biographers, both of which were concerned with the early 17th
century. As such, the researcher notices from a mere cursory glance at this wide corpus
of biographical material that a multiplicity of different methods, approaches and,
presumably, also motivations, existed in the production of the dictionaries. These will
be further elaborated upon in the following discussion of the biographical source
material.
1. The Aleppine Localist School of Biographical Writing
The Syrian tradition of local historiography was an already long-established
tradition by the time the Ottoman Sultan Selim I triumphantly entered Bilad al-Sham in
1516. Indeed, it dates back at least to the 3rd/9th century CE, with the Damascene Abu
Zur‘a’s (d. 894) biographical dictionary.42 In Aleppo’s case, the pioneer among local
historians appears to have been Ibn al-‘Adim (d. 1262),43 whose biographical dictionary
inspired later Aleppines in their efforts to sustain their town’s historiographical
tradition, as we shall see. During the later Mamluk period, Aleppine local
historiography was carried on by the likes of the biographers Ibn Khatib (d. 1439) and
Ibn Shihna (d. 1485), among others. Significantly, we even find early 20th century
histories of Aleppo, particularly the comprehensive history of Kamel al-Ghazzi and the
biographical dictionary of Muhammad al-Tabbakh.44 These and several other examples
doubtless serve to demonstrate the longevity of a school of local historiography and the
pride of its practitioners in ensuring its continued existence. In addition, it is important
to mention that most of the Aleppine local historians chose the biographical dictionary
as the tool through which to articulate their sense of pride and feeling of belonging to
their town.
The only two remaining extant and published examples of biographical writing in
Aleppo during the 16th and 17th centuries are, as mentioned earlier, also of the local
variety. The first, entitled Durr al Habab fi Ta’rikh A'yan Halab (The Shining Pearls in
42 Sami Dahan, “The Origin and Development of the Local Histories of Syria” in
Bernard Lewis & P.M Holt (eds.), Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962),
p. 109, hereafter Dahan, “Local Histories...”
43 Dahan, “Local Histories...”, p. 112
44 Dahan, “Local Histories...”, p. 113
20
the History of the Notables of Aleppo), was written by Muhammad Ibn Ibrahim Radiyy
al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali (d. 1563), who shall henceforth be referred to simply as Ibn al-
Hanbali. In spite of his name, Ibn al-Hanbali was in fact a Hanafi religious scholar, as
well as a member of the Qadiri tariqa, who seems to have produced at least sixty works
in various fields of learning.45 It appears that Ibn al-Hanbali’s grandfather had served as
the head Hanbali judge in Aleppo during Mamluk times; hence the man’s surname.46
Several facets of Ibn al-Hanbali’s own career, however, remain obscure; we do not
know, for instance, whether he switched to the Hanafi rite after the Ottoman conquest,
as many Syrian ‘ulama’ did in the early period. It is also unclear where his expertise lay
within the Islamic religious sciences, and the nature of the institution(s) he may have
served during his lifetime. The Damascene biographer Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1651),
whose entry on Ibn al-Hanbali remains the only extant contemporary or nearcontemporary
account of the man’s life, does indicate that Ibn al-Hanbali was a
mudarris, but supplies no further information concerning the field of learning or income
the Aleppine ‘alim received.47 The Aleppine biographer Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi later
reveals in the introduction to his own work that Ibn al-Hanbali had taught his father
‘Umar (d. 1024/1615), the latter later on occupying the post of Shafi‘i mufti of
Aleppo.48 It may be that Ibn al-Hanbali’s major specialization was in hadith; he is
known to have written two works on the Traditions.49 This is quite conceivable since, as
has been earlier indicated, the majority of biographers were still Traditionists even at
this stage in Islamic history. Nevertheless, any conclusions concerning Ibn al-Hanbali’s
exact discipline within the religious sciences remain speculative due to the lack of
45 These are listed in the editors’ introduction to: Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali;
Mahmud Al-Fakhuri & Yahya Abbara (eds.); Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh A’yan
Halab (Damascus 1974), pp. 10-17
46 Editors’ Introduction to: Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali; Mahmud Al-Fakhuri &
Yahya Abbara (eds.); Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh A’yan Halab (Damascus 1974),
Vol. 1, p. 7
47 Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, Al-Kawakib al-Sa’ira bi A‘yan al-Mi’a al-‘Ashira
(Beirut, 1979, 2nd ed.), Jibrail Jabbour (ed.), , Vol. 3, p. 42, hereafter Ghazzi,
Kawakib
48 Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab fi al-A‘yan al-Musharrafa bihim
Halab (Aleppo, 1987), Muhammad Altunji (ed.), , p. 36, hereafter ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin
al-Dhahab
49 These are indicated in the editor’s introduction to: Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-
Hanbali, Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh A’yan Halab (Damascus 1974),Mahmud Al-
Fakhuri & Yahya Abbara (eds.), , Vol. 1, p. 7
21
adequate first-hand information about the man himself. What may be established
beyond a reasonable doubt about Ibn al-Hanbali’s life is that he was not as welltravelled
as other members of the religious establishment; only a single journey to
Damascus is noted by Ghazzi.50 Otherwise, he does not appear to have left Aleppo on a
single occasion for further education or training, or the establishment of professional
and intellectual contacts. The last is an important point which shall be addressed further
when discussing other biographers as well.
At any rate, it is quite clear that Ibn al-Hanbali was at least quite a prolific writer,
having composed several works in various fields of learning, religious or otherwise (at
least insofar as such works are indirectly not religious). Apart from his biographical
dictionary of Aleppine notables, he was noted for his scholarship in the fields of Arabic
grammar and linguistics, having written several treatises on various grammatical and
philological subjects. Ibn al-Hanbali was also a noted poet, although his biographer
Ghazzi did not seem to be impressed with his Aleppine counterpart’s poetry. Ghazzi
criticizes Ibn al-Hanbali’s poetry, claiming that the “most tasteless individual” would
recognize its poor quality.51 Among Ibn al-Hanbali’s historical works is a mukhtasar
(abridgement) of a second, non-biographical work by the original master of Aleppine
history Ibn al-‘Adim, another (chronological) history of the town; Ibn al-Hanbali adds
events up to the year 951/1545 CE.52 It is also interesting that Ibn al-Hanbali has written
a second biographical dictionary, a historical account of the age-old Arab tribe of the
Banu Rabi‘a, from which he himself claims to have descended.53
His Durr al-Habab dictionary, however, is certainly his most significant as far as
acquiring knowledge of the history of early Ottoman Aleppo is concerned. It is the first
and only remaining testimony of an Aleppine ‘alim to a period of historical change in
Bilad al-Sham, with the onset of the centuries-long era of Ottoman rule. Ibn al-Hanbali
had doubtless been an eyewitness (albeit a young one, having been born in 908/1502-
50 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, p. 43
51 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, p. 43
52 Editors’ Introduction to: Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh
A’yan Halab (Damascus 1974), Mahmud Al-Fakhuri & Yahya Abbara (eds.), Vol.
1, p. 14
53 See Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali, Al-Athar al-Rafi’a fi Ma’athir Bani Rabi’a
(Kuwait 1985), Abdul-Aziz Al-Hallabi (ed.)
22
03) to the Ottoman conquest of Syria in 1516, and is therefore among the earliest
exponents of Syrian historical writing under Ottoman rule. Despite the fact that the
overwhelming majority of Ibn al-Hanbali’s work (including over 600 biographies)
consists of biographies of individuals who were either Aleppine by origin or had resided
in or at least passed through the city, he does on the rare occasion provide the reader
with entries on people who had little or nothing to do with the city’s history.54
Ibn al-Hanbali explicitly gives two purposes in his introduction to the
biographical dictionary for writing Durr al-Habab. Firstly, he expresses his belief that
Aleppo has “embraced individuals whose experiences, events, and impact are worth
recording.”55 More importantly, he noticed that the last man to compose such a history
as the one he endeavored to create was Abu Dharr (d. 884/1479-80) in the late Mamluk
period, and felt that he had to take it upon himself to create a “dhayl” (supplement or
continuation) for it.56 This point is crucial in understanding Ibn al-Hanbali’s, and more
generally, the Aleppine historian’s mentality and approach to writing the history of the
town. Aleppine historians, and more specifically the biographers among them, had since
the work of Ibn al-‘Adim always been conscious emulators of whichever predecessor(s)
wrote the town’s history before them. It would appear that two practices in particular,
(1) adding supplements (dhuyool; sing. dhayl) and (2) the abridgement (mukhtasar) of
previous local histories, were quite common among Aleppine historians in the centuries
after Ibn al-‘Adim composed his pioneering history of the city in the 7th/13th century.
Evidence for this is the fact that most biographers of Aleppo after Ibn al-‘Adim all
classified their works either as direct or extended dhuyool, or alternatively mukhtasarat,
of Ibn al-‘Adim’s biographical dictionary. Ibn Khatib, for instance, completed his
biographical dictionary in the 9th/15th century, and still regarded his work as a
supplement for Ibn al-‘Adim’s original.57 It has also already been indicated that Ibn al-
54 Most notable among such examples are the four Sultans, both Mamluk and
Ottoman, who ruled Aleppo during Ibn al-Hanbali’s lifetime.
55 Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab fi Tarikh A’yan Halab (Damascus
1974), Mahmud Al-Fakhuri & Yahya Abbara (eds.), p. 9, hereafter Ibn al-
Hanbali, Durr al-Habab
56 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 17
57 Editor’s introduction to: Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab fi al-A‘yan
al-Musharrafa bihim Halab (Aleppo, 1987), Muhammad Altunji (ed.), , p. 8
23
Hanbali himself made an abridgement of a briefer, less significant work by Ibn al-
‘Adim.
In his own biographical dictionary, Ibn al-Hanbali makes a deliberate point to
mention Ibn al-‘Adim as “one of those who were among the first to write (Aleppo’s)
history.”58 After that, he launches into a survey of biographical dictionaries that were
composed in Aleppo after Ibn al-‘Adim had laid the initial groundwork for the town’s
local historiography. By making a mention of earlier works on Aleppo (including all
those mentioned above) and stressing each as a supplement for its predecessor, while
referring to his own biographical dictionary in the same breath,59 Ibn al-Hanbali is
effectively confirming a belief that his work is an extension of a long-established
tradition of local historiography. And historiography is precisely the practice that Ibn al-
Hanbali consciously believes that he is engaged in; after all, he does affirm that there is
a “majesty and honor to writing history”. The Aleppine biographer asserts that he is
“honored by the mere virtue of possessing a knowledge of the events surrounding those
who are good (akhyar) and others who are evil (ashrar).”60 Ibn al-Hanbali’s selfpresentation
as a historian, or at least as an individual who was “honored” in composing
a historical work, is further testimony to the validity of Khalidi’s earlier-stated thesis
that, with Ibn Khallikan, showering praise on history for its own sake had become
legitimate.
Ibn al-Hanbali’s above statement contains another important implication: his
intention is not merely to discuss the virtuous notables, but also those whose actions and
general influence in Aleppo were not considered positive by the author. Thus, Ibn al-
Hanbali did not commit the same “error” as other biographers, whose stated intentions
were often at odds with their actual practice. Ibn al-Hanbali is also not rigorously
selective in his choice of individuals; nor does he claim to be. Rather, he clearly states
that among the individuals included in his work are writers and poets, among other
groups usually not regarded as notables.61 His definition of a‘yan (notables) is,
therefore, explicitly not as exclusive as other historians’ conception of notability. Ibn al-
58 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 9
59 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, pp. 9-16
60 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 7
61 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 9
24
Hanbali’s condition for inclusion in his biographical dictionary (apart from the obvious
geographical restriction that is naturally pre-defined in any local history) is that the
individual in question must be a contemporary of the author, or a contemporary of a
contemporary. As was the norm when a biographer chose to include women in his
biographical collection, Ibn al-Hanbali adds a brief section on the notable women of
Aleppo at the end of each letter of his alphabetically organized dictionary.
The final matter concerning Ibn al-Hanbali’s biographical dictionary is the
question of sources: specifically where he obtained information for writing on his select
group of notable men and women of Aleppo. Having written on his own contemporaries
and near-contemporaries within a limited geographical space, Ibn al-Hanbali nowhere
indicates that he had consulted other written sources (such as biographical dictionaries
of predecessors) to construct his portraits of the natives and residents of Aleppo. At any
rate, it would have been futile on Ibn al-Hanbali’s part to utilize any written sources for
the simple reason that he was, according to his own claims, the first to give the notables
(a‘yan) of Aleppo any attention since Abu Dharr in the previous century. The 16th
century Aleppine biographer does reveal his sources, however, as “the events and
conditions that I have seen, the sayings that I have heard, and what has been said to me
by some men whom I trust.”62
One last important point will be made with regard to Ibn al-Hanbali, in particular
relating to an aspect of his self-identification. We have already seen how strongly this
Aleppine historian identifies with his town’s centuries-old historiographical tradition
and its leading figures. In another biographical dictionary on the Banu Rabi‘a tribe, Ibn
al-Hanbali reveals another side of his self-perception, when declaring his pride at being
“purely Arab” (min samim al-‘Arab). Undoubtedly, the term “Arab (‘arab)” in this
context is synonymous with “Bedouin Arab”, and indeed Ibn al-Hanbali declares the
Prophet Muhammad to be the “master of the Bedouin people” (sayyid ahl al-Baduw) in
the same statement.63 It is perhaps unusual that Ibn al-Hanbali went to such lengths to
express his pride in belonging to a Bedouin tribe, even if that tribe was in fact the fabled
Banu Rabi‘a. Recent scholarship has made it clear that urban Arabic-speaking
62 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 19
63 See Radiyy al-Din Ibn al-Hanbali, Al-Athar al-Rafi’a fi Ma’athir Bani Rabi’a
(Kuwait, 1985), Abdul-Aziz Al-Hallabi (ed.), p. 1
25
populations did not identify with, but rather looked down upon, neighboring Bedouins;
for that reason, the term “Arab (‘arab)” denoted the latter group without usually
applying to the former.64 The fact that Ibn al-Hanbali associated himself passionately
with Bedouins Arabs, however striking, is unimportant here. The critical point is the
obvious difference in this author’s self-presentation in each of his two biographical
dictionaries. In Durr al-Habab, he is a staunch representative and successor to
distinguished members of Aleppo’s proud intellectual heritage, whereas in his book on
the Banu Rabi‘a he appears keen to demonstrate his devotion to a different but no less
essential element of his background. This demonstrates that dissimilar, and sometimes
even contradictory, levels of identification could be embraced by the same individual.
As such, it is essential to consider that such levels are not at all mutually exclusive, and
that an individual may have wished to identify himself with several such groups. It is,
however, important to indicate, where possible, whether one level of identification
predominates over others that an individual biographer may hold.
The second of the Aleppine biographers, Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi (d. 1660), was at
one point in his career the Shafi’i mufti of Aleppo in succession to his father ‘Umar al-
‘Urdi. The sole extant and contemporary biography of the man is that written by the
Damascene biographer Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi (d. 1699), who indicates that
‘Urdi was a Sufi, without specifying the tariqa to which he belonged. It is possible that
Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi had embraced the Qadiri tariqa, since ‘Umar al-‘Urdi, the father
and teacher of our biographer according to Muhibbi,65 belonged to that order and so too
did Ibn al-Hanbali, who in turn was ‘Umar’s teacher, and thus may have influenced the
latter’s decision to adopt Qadirism. Muhibbi also claims that Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi was
the author of several works in various fields of learning, and that the Aleppine was
skilled at both poetry and prose.66 ‘Urdi’s biographical dictionary, entitled Ma'adin aldhahab
fi al-A‘yan al-Musharaffa Bihim Halab (The Gold Mines with Regard to the
64 Abraham Marcus, The Middle East on the Eve of Modernity: Aleppo in the
Eighteenth Century (New York, 1989), p. 19. We shall see a couple of exceptions
to this “rule”, where Arabic-speaking townspeople are in fact referred to as ‘arab.
The term “Arab” thus did not apply exclusively to nomadic elements, but
sometimes included settled populations as well.
65 Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar fi A‘yan al-Qarn al-Hadi
‘Ashar (Beirut 197), Volume 3, p. 216, hereafter Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar
66 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 149
26
Honorable Notables of Aleppo), consists of a total of 76 biographical entries, entailing
only the first five letters of the Arabic alphabet. The work does not seem to have been
completed; Muhibbi reports that he had seen a section of ‘Urdi’s biographical dictionary
and used it for a few of his own biographies.67 As we now only have entries on the first
five letters of the alphabet, it is possible that this “section” that Muhibbi spoke of was in
fact ‘Urdi’s finished, though far from complete, product.
Nevertheless, as Aleppo’s highest-ranking religious official of the Shafi’i school,
‘Urdi must have enjoyed being acquainted with some of the most esteemed members,
both spiritual and temporal, of his society. It is somewhat surprising that he, as mufti,
also had close personal relations with a heterodox Muslim community in the city, the
Twelver Shi’ites.68 More significantly, ‘Urdi offers some valuable insight into the
complex political and military struggles that had been devastating his city at the time,
having been born at about the turn of the previous century (1585). These included a
protracted state of conflict between the Damascene janissaries attempting to seize
effective political control of Aleppo,69 as well as the more famous Canbulad takeover
and subsequent Ottoman punitive expedition only a few years later.70 Unsurprisingly,
‘Urdi offers the greater part of his attention to the religious classes of his town, and thus
his biographical collection is another useful, albeit limited (due to its size), specimen for
the study of the Muslim intellectual elite in a specific geography.
Like his predecessor Ibn al-Hanbali, ‘Urdi stresses the importance of writing
history for its own sake, declaring that it is an “undeniably honorable” practice, before
condemning those who do not acknowledge the value of history.71 ‘Urdi also claims to
have had an old desire to compose such a historical work, since no other scholar of his
generation had produced a history of the town during the period in which he lived. This
67 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 149
68 A.R Abu Husayn, “The Shi‘ites in Lebanon and the Ottomans in the 16th and
17th Centuries”, Convegno Sul Tema La Shi‘a ell’Impero Ottomano (Rome
1993), p. 119
69 For an account of these events, see M.A Bakhit, “Aleppo and the Ottoman
Military in the 16th Century”, Al-Abhath 27 (Beirut 1978-9), pp. 27-34, hereafter
Bakhit, “Aleppo and the Ottoman Military”
70 For an account of Canbulad Pasha’s political career, see William Griswold, The
Great Anatolian Rebellion (Berlin 1983), pp. 113-132
71 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 34
27
assertion is of particular importance, as it reveals that, like Ibn al-Hanbali before him,
‘Urdi was also anxious to sustain Aleppo’s local tradition of historiography by offering
portraits of its notable individuals. ‘Urdi points out that he had refrained from writing
the history of his town at an earlier stage since he did not have sufficient or suitable
time to do so.72 Presumably, his position as Shafi’i mufti of Aleppo, among other things,
may not have given him the capacity or occasion to fulfill this old desire of his, until he
eventually undertook the writing of Ma‘adin al-Dhahab.
Echoing Ibn al-Hanbali, ‘Urdi states that his purpose is to write of his
contemporaries in Aleppo, and his contemporaries’ contemporaries as well. He
indicates that a minor purpose of his work is to correct certain mistakes and
inaccuracies in Ibn al-Hanbali’s history; these errors apparently include omissions of
certain individuals and errors of fact concerning others whom Ibn al-Hanbali did
include.73 It is rather unusual that, in his introduction, ‘Urdi makes no mention of the
biographical dictionary written by his father ‘Umar, whose work was certainly more
recent than that of Ibn al-Hanbali, the former having passed away more than fifty years
after his teacher’s death. It is therefore also strange that Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi’s express
purpose is to make corrections to the much older biographical dictionary of Ibn al-
Hanbali, rather than his father’s later work. It is from the Damascenes Ghazzi and
Muhibbi, not ‘Urdi, that we learn about ‘Umar al-‘Urdi’s historical work,74 now sadly
no longer extant.75 Ghazzi, in fact, suggests that in his biographical dictionary, ‘Umar
al-‘Urdi “essentially supplemented” (dhayyala) Ibn al-Hanbali’s work, indicating that it
72 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 36
73 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, pp. 38-39
74 Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar wa Qatf al-Thamar min Tarajim A‘yan
al-Tabaqa al-Ula min al-Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashar (Damascus 1981), Mahmoud al-
Shaykh (ed.), Vol. 2, p. 589 & Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 217
75 Another lost work from the same period is the biographical dictionary of
Muhammad Ibn al-Mulla (d.1010/1601-2), which is significant in that it records
the history of the town’s governors from the Muslim conquest to the author’s
own day (when Ibrahim Pasha was governor). It is among the few examples of
Aleppine historiography during the Ottoman period which takes up a long view of
history, where the historian is not merely concerned with recording events or
biographies relevant to his own lifetime.
28
is another Aleppine local history.76 It is safe to assume, in light of the available
evidence, that as ‘Umar al-‘Urdi’s biographical dictionary was a supplement for that of
Ibn al-Hanbali, Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi’s collection was equally a continuation of both
works, since the younger ‘Urdi also expressed the necessity of perpetuating the
Aleppine local tradition of biographical writing.
There is another parallel that the reader can establish between the approach of
Abu al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi and Ibn al-Hanbali, based on each author’s stated intention in
their introductory remarks. Similar to Ibn al-Hanbali, ‘Urdi reveals in his introduction
that he will not shy away from revealing negative characteristics and deeds, if these
apply to certain individuals.77 In ‘Urdi’s case, this last statement is rather curious since
it appears to openly contradict the title of his biographical dictionary, which suggests
that the entries in the work are devoted exclusively to “honorable” men. ‘Urdi is equally
anxious to stress the fairness and accuracy of his treatment of individuals, without citing
any particular sources (whether oral, written, or products of first-hand experience) that
he had used in his biographical collection.78 A final similarity that may be drawn
between the two Aleppine biographers is the fact that there is no indication that they
were well-travelled individuals, unlike many scholars of Bilad al-Sham. Ibn al-Hanbali,
as earlier indicated, had at least visited Damascus once in his lifetime; ‘Urdi, on the
other hand, does not seem to have ever left his hometown of Aleppo, or at least Muhibbi
does not indicate that he did. Both Ghazzi and Muhibbi wrote entries on ‘Urdi’s father
‘Umar, who likewise appears not to have left Aleppo on a single occasion.
As such, it becomes clear that many of the essential elements of ‘Urdi’s life and
work are similar to those of Ibn al-Hanbali. Although it is still unclear how high Ibn al-
Hanbali rose in the religious hierarchy, he was a member of a notable family of Aleppo,
as evidenced by his grandfather’s previous status as Hanbali judge of the town. His
prestige as a mudarris is confirmed by virtue of his instruction of some important
figures: his pupil ‘Umar al-‘Urdi went on to serve as a mufti in Aleppo, and Ibn al-
Hanbali’s influence on ‘Umar al-‘Urdi is noted by the latter’s son Abu al-Wafa’. Abu
76 Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar wa Qatf al-Thamar min Tarajim A‘yan
al-Tabaqa al-Ula min al-Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashar (Damascus 1981), Mahmoud al-
Shaykh (ed.), Vol. 2, p. 589, hereafter Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar
77 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 38
78 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 38
29
al-Wafa’ al-‘Urdi’s status as a member of a notable family is even more obvious: he
was the son of a mufti and later a mufti himself. Despite their exalted position in
Aleppine society, or perhaps because of it, Ibn al-Hanbali and ‘Urdi, as well as the
latter’s father, seem to have made little effort to leave the town in pursuit of educational
or material ambitions. Most important of all is the fact that they were part of the same
intellectual lineage: Ibn al-Hanbali was ‘Umar al-‘Urdi’s shaykh, and may have even
been influential in his student’s acceptance of the Qadiri tariqa. ‘Umar, in turn,
instructed his son Abu al-Wafa’ and must have doubtless exerted considerable influence
on his intellectual makeup. This inter-connectedness is indisputably a major factor
behind the similarity between Ibn al-Hanbali’s and Urdi’s historical scholarship.
The parallels between the two historians’ approaches to writing history are also
quite obvious. They are both manifestly proud to have the chance to compose a
historical work, and shower much praise on the discipline. The two Aleppines are also
strongly dedicated to the objective of prolonging and perpetuating their town’s
historiographical tradition, itself a telling factor and a definite indicator of the identity
and self-representation of a class of Syrian elites in a particular urban setting. This pride
in the local historiography of Aleppo, as reflected in the genre of biographical writing,
is another part of an intellectual root, alongside the common scholarly lineage, that our
historians share. There is, lastly, the smaller matter of their selectivity and attitude in
writing biographical entries. In this respect, their approaches are practically identical;
they are interested in writing only of their contemporaries and near-contemporaries. The
restrictedness of their methodology is, therefore, based in time as well as geography.
Ibn al-Hanbali and ‘Urdi are also alike in the sense that they both did not claim to
exclude commoners in their biographical dictionaries. In Ibn al-Hanbali’s case, there is
an explicit statement to the effect that some of the less famous strata of society are
included. ‘Urdi is quiet on the subject of inclusion, and thus also does not suggest that
only members of the upper echelons of Aleppine society will be represented in his
work. These methodological similarities can no doubt be owed, at least in part, to the
similar background and shared intellectual lineage described above. As such, the
essential motifs of the Aleppine biographical dictionary in the first two centuries of
Ottoman rule become quite clear. The far more complex, varied, and rich Damascene
30
school of biographical writing is the subject with which we are concerned in the two
sections that follow.
2. Ibn Tulun and the Cultivation of Local and Restricted Historiography in
Damascus
As we have seen in the previous section, Aleppine historians developed the
biographical dictionary as a form of local historiography that was sustained during the
Ottoman period and well into modern times. Local historiography in Damascus
emerged centuries before Ibn al-‘Adim’s history of Aleppo, with the historical work of
Abu Zur‘a (d. 894), now lost. One of the greatest exponents of the Damascene local
tradition is the historian Ibn ‘Asakir (d. 1175), who in fact used Abu Zur‘a as a source
for his history of the city,79 which includes biographies of Damascene notables.80 As
such, Ibn ‘Asakir is understandably viewed, alongside the likes of al-Khatib of
Baghdad, as a pioneer among local biographers not only in Bilad al-Sham, but in the
broader Muslim world as well. The Damascene school of local historiography
proceeded unabated in Mamluk times, even with the rise of a new form of biographical
writing, with a more universalist approach, in the early 14th century.
The best-known Syrian historian of the late 15th and early 16th centuries is
undoubtedly Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun (d. 953/1546), a Hanafi scholar who witnessed
and wrote on the Ottoman takeover of his hometown Damascus and the ensuing final
destruction of the Mamluk state. Among the biographers treated in this study, Ibn Tulun
alone is known to have written an autobiography, and in it he lists every work he had
composed in the various fields of scholarship that captured his interest. His output is, in
total, a staggering 750 works, among which around 60 deal with historical topics of one
kind or the other; the vast majority of Ibn Tulun’s books and treatises is now lost,
whereas others that are preserved remain unpublished. In his autobiography, where Ibn
Tulun divulges little personal information but much about his intellectual growth
through the years, the man at least gives the reader some insight into his ethnic
79 S. Judd, “Abu Zur’a” in EI2 (Brill Online)
80 Dahan, “Local Histories...”, p. 114
31
background. Ibn Tulun reveals that he was of Mamluk ancestry, and that his mother was
a rumiyya. Her name, Özden, suggests that she was most likely of Anatolian-Turkish
extraction. By at least the late 15th century, Ibn Tulun’s family had become firmly
ingrained in Damascene intellectual and administrative life, his paternal uncle having
served as qadi in the city in succession to other members of the family who were also
notable ‘ulama’ in the city.81
Based on the extensive literary corpus that Ibn Tulun produced, one realizes the
great deal of attention the man devoted to writing and scholarship, almost to the
exclusion of other considerations. Such was indeed the case, as Ibn Tulun is not known
to have occupied any of the higher posts in the religious hierarchy of Damascus, and
seems also to have avoided involvement in the politics of the city during both Mamluk
and early Ottoman times.82 Ibn Tulun similarly appears to have had no interest in
joining any of the Sufi orders operating in his hometown at the time. The Damascene
biographer Ghazzi informs us, however, that Ibn Tulun was a noted authority on both
hadith and fiqh (jurisprudence) during his lifetime. Among the Traditionists who taught
Ibn Tulun was the famous Egyptian biographer Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti (d. 1505), and it
was eventually the latter who gave the Damascene scholar his first ijaza (license) via
written correspondence, indicating that Ibn Tulun did not leave Damascus to meet his
master.83 On the whole, there is no evidence whatsoever that Ibn Tulun ever left his
hometown.
As a leading Damascene mudarris, Ibn Tulun’s reputation and fame among the
city’s religious community is attested by his instruction of some ‘ulama’ who went on
to fill rather distinguished roles in the religious hierarchy. According to Ghazzi, Ibn
Tulun trained no less than four prospective muftis of different denominations (two
Shafi’is, a Hanbali and a Hanafi) in Damascus, one of whom went on to teach Ghazzi
himself.84 Despite Ibn Tulun’s lack of interest in the more prestigious and lucrative
positions of the Damascene religious community, his esteemed status in the circles of
81 W.M Brinner, “Ibn Tulun, Shams al-Din Muhammad b. ‘Ali b. Ahmad, al-
Salihi, al-Dimashki, al-Hanafi” in EI2 (Brill Online), hereafter Brinner, “Ibn
Tulun” in EI2
82 Brinner, “Ibn Tulun” in EI2
83 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 52
84 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 53
32
the learned elite is demonstrably clear through his instruction of successive generations
of high-ranking scholars, as well as his truly remarkable collection of writings, which as
Ghazzi notes dealt with a wide variety of interests across several different fields.85
Ibn Tulun’s apparent obsession with the production of religious, literary, and
historical texts among other fields of scholarship has misled contemporary scholars into
making erroneous conclusions about the circumstances of the Damascene historian’s
life. In his entry on Ibn Tulun in the 2nd edition of the Encyclopedia of Islam, W.M.
Brinner writes that Ibn Tulun died “a bachelor without issue”,86 yet the evidence
suggests otherwise. It is now known that Ibn Tulun had at least three children; we learn
this from his biographical dictionary Al-Tamattu‘ bi’l Iqran bayna Tarajim al-Shuyookh
wa’l Aqran (The Joy of Making Connections through the Biographies of Masters and
Peers), where he writes of a son and two daughters. Naturally, his daughters are
included in the section on notable women at the very end of the work. None of Ibn
Tulun’s children appear to have outlived their father, however, as they all passed away
at a rather young age (none exceeding the age of 17).87
But now we move on to discuss a more important matter, and that is the vast
reservoir of historical material that the illustrious Damascene scholar has left us with,
and some other works (and parts of works) that are now no longer extant. Ibn Tulun’s
most famous work on history is a chronicle entitled Mufakahat al-Khillan fi Hawadith
al-Zaman (The Enjoyment, Together with Friends, of the Events of the Time), which in
its present state covers events in Egypt and, in more detailed fashion, Syria, during its
author’s life until 1520. Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, who uses Mufakahat al-Khillan in a
later historical work, informs his readers that Ibn Tulun’s chronicle includes events up
to the end of the year 951/1545,88 which suggests that the part from 1520 to 1545 is now
lost. Nonetheless, the chronicle remains a hugely significant source for the study of
Syria during the late Mamluk period and the subsequent transition to Ottoman rule. It is
85 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 53
86 Brinner, “Ibn Tulun” in EI2
87 See Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun & Ahmad Ibn al-Mulla al-Huskufi al-Halabi,
Mut‘at al-Adhan min al-Tammattu‘ bi’l Iqran bayna Tarajim al-Shuyookh wa’l
Aqran (Beirut, 1999), Salah al-Din Khalil al-Shibani al-Musili (ed.), Vol. 2, p.
876, p. 870, & p. 492, hereafter Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan
88 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 5
33
doubly important in that it gives a contrasting image of the Ottoman conquerors to that
offered by the contemporary Egyptian chronicler Ibn Iyas, who is manifestly hostile to
the new rulers and appears to lament the passing of the Mamluk era.89
Ibn Tulun was noticeably more prolific when it came to the composition of local
histories, although his contributions in this field have not received as much scholarly
attention as Mufakahat al-Khillan. His fondness and attachment to his hometown, and
specifically its Salihiyya suburb in which he was born and of which he was a resident, is
displayed in his comprehensive history of that particular region of Damascus.90 More
importantly, he wrote two chronological, semi-biographical works on the nuwwab
(governors) and qudat (judges) of Damascus. The first, entitled I‘lam al-Wara biman
Wulliya a’iban min al-Atrak bi-Dimashq al-Sham al-Kubra (Acquainting the People
with Those Turks Who Were Governors of Greater Damascus), is as the title implies
concerned with the “Turks” (Atrak) who had served as governors of the province of
Damascus. Effectively, Ibn Tulun meant by “Turks” the Mamluk and Ottoman
provincial administrators whom he listed in I‘lam al-Wara. Ibn Tulun began the work
with a very brief introduction, in which he stated his main purpose: correcting an earlier
work, apparently of the Mamluk period, by a certain Shams al-Din al-Zumulkani, in the
belief that it contained “several delusions.” Ibn Tulun regarded I‘lam al-Wara as an
exercise in both the abridgement and supplementation or extension of Zumulkani’s
original, as he himself writes in reference to the earlier history: “Here I am abridging
(ulakhis) it while making some corrections to its obvious delusions, and simultaneously
composing the supplement (dhayl) to it, from his (i.e. the previous author’s) own time to
our era, based on his own satisfactory method.”91 By “satisfactory method,” Ibn Tulun
no doubt meant Zumulkani’s straightforward chronological treatment of his subject. The
Damascene scholar extends the history of the governors of Damascus to the end of the
year 941/1535, thereby covering the first two decades of Ottoman rule.
89 P.M Holt, “Ta’rikh” in EI2 (Brill Online)
90 Salah al-Din al-Munajjid, Al-Mu’arrikhun al-Dimashkiyyun fi al-‘Ahd al-
‘Uthmani wa Atharuhum al-Makhtoota (Beirut, 1964), p. 82, hereafter Munajjid,
Al-Mu’arrikhun al-Dimashkiyyun fi al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani
91 Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun, I‘lam al-Wara biman Wulliya a’iban min al-Atrak bi
Dimashq al-Sham al-Kubra (Damascus, 1964), Muhammad Ahmad Duhman
(ed.), p. 2, hereafter Ibn Tulun, I‘lam al-Wara
34
It is important to mention at this point that I‘lam al-Wara cannot be considered a
standard biographical dictionary, simply because it did not consist of biographies in the
conventional sense. It rarely includes the dates of birth and, if necessary, death of the
governors whom Ibn Tulun had written on. And although its entries were dedicated to
the individual men who governed the province, it often discusses events in the province
during a concerned governor’s tenure in much greater length than the actions,
accomplishments, dealings, character, and measures taken by the governor himself. As
such, it assumes the character of a local chronicle with unevenly scattered biographical
elements, and in fact adds little to Mufakahat al-Khillan for the years 1473-1520, as far
as events in the Mamluk and Ottoman province of Damascus are concerned. For these
reasons, its content will be treated only sparingly in the chapters that follow, as it cannot
be regarded in the same light as the other more classically organized biographical
dictionaries.
Ibn Tulun’s history of Damascene judges, entitled al-Thaghr al-Bassam fi Dhikr
man Wulliya Qada’ al-Sham (The Smiling Mouth with Regard to Those Who Were
Assigned to the Jurisdiction in Damascus), is considerably wider in scope than I‘lam al-
Wara, as it tackles the development of the legal establishment in the city from its
inception after the Muslim conquest of Syria until the year 946/1540. Like I‘lam al-
Wara, however, it does not consist of biographies, but rather chronologically-organized
entries based on the terms in office of Damascene judges. More than I‘lam al-Wara,
though, it sheds light on the professional conduct of some judges, and often gives
reference to their educational background, a crucial component of any evaluation of a
Muslim judge’s competence. Ibn Tulun’s interest in the individuals mentioned in al-
Thaghr is nonetheless only relevant insofar as they were judges, in particular qadis of
Damascus; we generally learn very little or nothing at all about a qadi’s later career,
after he is assigned in a judicial post outside Damascus or is simply dismissed from the
vocation altogether. Therefore, al-Thaghr will receive limited attention in following
chapters. But of course, the relevance of both I‘lam al-Wara and al-Thaghr lies in that
both were semi-biographical, local histories of Damascus.
Of far greater importance is Ibn Tulun’s alphabetically organized biographical
dictionary: Al-Tamattu‘ bi’l Iqran bayna Tarajim al-Shuyookh wa’l Aqran. In its
original form, this biographical dictionary is now lost. It is thanks to the efforts of the
35
Aleppine Ahmad Ibn al-Mulla (d. 1003/1595)92, who made an abridgement
(mukhtasar), with very few additions of his own to the work, that it has been preserved.
Ibn al-Mulla added the phrase Mut‘at al-Adhhan (The Pleasure of the Minds) to the
original title, and so the full title of the biographical dictionary, in published form, is
now Mut‘at al-Adhhan fi al-Tamattu‘ bi’l Iqran bayna Tarajim al-Shuyookh wa’l Aqran
(The Pleasure of the Minds in “The Joy of Making Connections Through the
Biographies of Masters and Peers”). For purposes of simplicity, it shall henceforth be
referred to as Mut‘at al-Adhhan, although that was not the author’s original title.
Strictly speaking, this biographical dictionary belongs to the mashyakha subgenre,
where a biographer dedicates his volume to his teachers and, often, also peers,
friends in the profession, and occasionally some of his apprentices as well. Naturally,
this genre belongs to the restricted, though not necessarily local, approach to
biographical writing, through its declared emphasis on ‘ulama’ and more particularly,
teachers, colleagues, and sometimes students. In the case of Ibn Tulun, it is also a
locally-oriented dictionary, as the man himself had never left his hometown, and was
therefore taught by men of religion within the confines of Damascus, apart from the
likes of the Egyptian Suyuti with whom he had corresponded in writing. But it is
important to bear in mind that its conception had not been directly intended as local; the
circumstances of Ibn Tulun’s life made it so.
Ibn Tulun’s introduction to the work is, unfortunately, not included in Ibn al-
Mulla’s abridgement. Because it is an abridgement in the truest sense, entries in Mut‘at
al-Adhhan are relatively brief in comparison with most of the other dictionaries treated
in this study. Ibn al-Mulla’s additions to the original biographical entries of Ibn Tulun
are, for the most part, given only where the individuals in the biographical entries of Ibn
Tulun outlived the man himself. As such, we can safely assume that the bulk of the
information provided in Mut‘at al-Adhhan is that which was originally provided by the
Damascene, rather than the Aleppine, author, although some essential elements,
including the introduction of the original biographer, no longer exist. It is a great pity,
however, that the remarkably prolific Ibn Tulun’s only published biographical
dictionary survives only as an abridgement by a later scholar. This means that many, in
92 He was the brother of Muhammad Ibn al-Mulla, mentioned above in the context
of Aleppine local historiography.
36
fact most, of the entries consist of no more than a few lines, with little information of
use to the researcher. There are, though, certain exceptions and, in any case, the fact that
Mut‘at al-Adhhan was composed by a ‘alim who lived during a period of transformation
in Bilad al-Sham makes Ibn Tulun’s biographical dictionary especially significant. A
supplement to Ibn Tulun’s original, entitled Dhakha’ir al-Qasr fi Tarajim ubala’ al-
‘Asr (The Treasures of the Palace with Regard to the Biographies of the Noble Men of
the Age) and composed by the Damascene biographer himself, remains in manuscript
form.93 The fact that Dhakha’ir al-Qasr was intended as a supplement by its author
suggests that it is entirely dedicated to the Damascene ‘ulama’ of the Ottoman period.
There is one more biographical collection by Ibn Tulun that is worthy of note, but it is
terribly unfortunate that it has not come down to us; it is a chronologically-organized
volume dealing exclusively with the lives of Ottoman Sultans.94 A certain Muhammad
al-Muradi, (d. 1169/1756) the granduncle of the 12th hijri century’s centennial
biographer Khalil al-Muradi, continues this rare tradition with his own biographical
work on Ottoman Sultans, but his work, while extant, remains unpublished.95
It is interesting to find that Ibn al-Mulla, an Aleppine, chose for himself the task
of abridging a biographical dictionary by Ibn Tulun. We have already seen how
dominant local historiography had been in Aleppo, particularly when it came to the
composition of biographical collections. But undertaking the abridgement of what was
effectively a history of another city and its ‘ulama’ was surely an entirely different
matter. One quickly jumps to the conclusion that, since Ibn Tulun’s dictionary is an
example of the mashyakha genre, Ibn al-Mulla may have been a student of his who held
a keen interest in the work, but there is no evidence to support this assumption.
Unfortunately, Ibn al-Mulla himself does not reveal why he chose to abridge Ibn
Tulun’s original, and thus the entire affair is shrouded in almost complete darkness.
There is one possible explanation, however, and that is to be sought in Ibn al-Mulla’s
own life experiences, as gathered by later Damascene biographers. The Aleppine
scholar is known to have been to Damascus and resided there for an extended period of
93 Munajjid, Al-Mu’arrikhun al-Dimashkiyyun fi al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani, p. 82
94 Munajjid, Al-Mu’arrikhun al-Dimashkiyyun fi al-‘Ahd al-‘Uthmani, p. 282
95 Salah al-Din Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin wa Atharuhum
al-Makhtuta wa’l Matbu‘a (Beirut 1978), p. 356, hereafter Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-
Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin
37
time in his youth, where his father, “known as al-Mulla, was one of the notables (a‘yan)
among the people.”96 But since Ibn al-Mulla spent a not insignificant part of his life in
Damascus, and may well have been instructed by some of the same ‘ulama’ who were
peers and/or students of Ibn Tulun (though he did not state whether this was the case),
perhaps he saw his mukhtasar as a fitting tribute to the intellectual life of a city that he
dearly loved through the abridgement of a work of its greatest 10th/16th century scholar.
Also interestingly, Ibn al-Mulla, upon completing his studies in his native Aleppo, made
a trip to Istanbul, although the purpose of his trip is not disclosed by his biographers.97
Other works by the Aleppine include a travelogue of his trip to the Ottoman capital,
now no longer extant, and another abridgement (mukhtasar) of an earlier local
biographical dictionary of Aleppo by Ibn Khatib.98 But now we turn our attention to an
entirely different approach to biographical writing and a contrasting vision of history,
that articulated by the universalist biographers of Damascus.
3. A Cosmopolitan Conception of History in Damascene Biographical Literature
In contrast to local and restricted biographical writing, Damascus possesses a
large group of universalist biographers who are at once also cosmopolitan in their
attitude and approach to historiography. This may be termed a “relative
cosmopolitanism” in the Damascene vision of history; it is relative, as distinct from
absolute, cosmopolitanism because of a few important facts: first, despite this
universalist outlook of Damascene biographers, histories of the localist and restricted
variety(s) were still being composed in the city, with Ibn Tulun being the notable local
biographer of the 16th century. Secondly, it is important to point out that, even
considering the inclusion of a great number of non-Damascenes in the universallyoriented
biographical dictionaries, individuals from the city in which the authors resided
were still invariably the best represented among the diversity of individuals from
various geographical locations within the Muslim realms. This last point is, of course,
96 Al-Hasan al-Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan min Abna’ al-Zaman (Damascus, 1959),
Salad al-Din al-Munajjid (ed.), Vol. 1, p. 180, hereafter Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan
97 See Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 180 and Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar,
Vol. 1, pp. 278-280
98 Editor’s Introduction to Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 1, p. 32
38
not at all surprising. After all, it is only expected that residents of a specific town, city,
or region should have a better knowledge of events taking place in their locales and of
the lives of notable men (and women) within their particular surroundings. Last and
certainly very far from least, the cosmopolitanism of Damascus, in contrast to the
localism of Aleppo, was a distinctly Muslim cosmopolitanism; the universality of the
town’s biographical writing naturally extends only to the lands of Islam, as the
composition of biographical dictionaries had at all times been an exclusive practice of
the learned Muslim elite. Furthermore, as a prominent Levantine trading metropolis,
Aleppo could boast greater cosmopolitanism than Damascus in its foreign connexions
and the greater frequency of its commercial contact with a world both within and
beyond the realms of Islam. The greater universalism in Damascene historiography is
thus a matter which requires some clarification, and an explanation of this phenomenon
will be attempted after the necessary discussion of the city’s universalist biographers.
The first universalist among all biographers in the Islamic realms was, as
mentioned earlier, Ibn Khallikan in the late 13th century. The pioneering Ibn Khallikan
himself can be considered at least partly Damascene, as he rotated between Cairo and
Damascus throughout his career while serving as a qadi of the Mamluk administration,
though he completed his biographical dictionary, Wafayat al-A‘yan (The Obituaries of
Notables), in Egypt, where he eventually died.99 In Damascus itself, Ibn Khallikan’s
work was promptly followed up with an abridgement, as well as a supplement, for the
master’s original dictionary, and these were composed by the historian al-Suka‘i (d.
726/1326).100 Soon thereafter, Kutubi (d. 764/1363) and Safadi (d. 764/1363) composed
a total of three biographical dictionaries of the universalist variety between them. One
of Safadi’s collections in particular was similar to Ibn Khallikan’s in scope, as it also
dealt with the history of the Muslim community from the days of the prophet until the
author’s own time.101 The list of Damascene universalists goes on with Ibn Qadi-
Shuhba (d. 851/1447) in the 15th century,102 and near the close of the Mamluk period
with ‘Abdul-Qader al-Nu‘aymi (d. 927/1521), a leading scholar who exerted
considerable influence on Ibn Tulun. Nu‘aymi wrote two universally-oriented
99 J.W Fück, “Ibn Khallikan” in EI2 (Brill Online)
100 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, p. 135
101 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, pp. 183-188
102 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, pp. 237-238
39
biographical works, including a supplement for the history of Ibn Qadi Shuhba, but they
are no longer extant.103 Finally, Ibn Muflih (d. 1011/1603), himself a student of Ibn
Tulun, compiled a comprehensive dictionary of his contemporaries, which is also one of
many historical works by Damascene scholars that is not preserved.104
Our first universalist historian of the Ottoman period is al-Hasan al-Burini (d.
1615), originally a native of the village of Burin in Palestine, who early in his youth
moved to Damascus with his father, where he began his training in the religious
sciences, specifically fiqh, and became a prominent Shafi‘i scholar in the city. Burini’s
father was a man of modest means, an upholsterer-turned-perfumer who did not descend
from a notable family and had never accumulated considerable wealth.105 In this sense,
Burini is quite an exceptional case among the biographers of Bilad al-Sham during the
first two centuries of Ottoman rule as an individual who was not a member of a wellestablished
scholarly family. And yet he successfully managed to carve out for himself
a career of remarkable success in terms of both wealth and repute, thanks to the
connections he established with notable ‘ulama’ of Damascus at quite an early stage.
The father of the Damascene biographer Ghazzi, a Shafi‘i mufti of Damascus, was
among Burini’s earliest influences, and once in his old age welcomed the latter to his
home with the following verse:
“Reaching 80 years of age is a terrible affliction
Which prevents me rising to greet those for whom I feel affection”106
Ghazzi’s older brother was also one of Burini’s earliest instructors in the religious
sciences. This, of course, indicates Burini’s closeness to one prominent notable family
of the city, among many others.107 The 11th hijri century’s centennial biographer
103 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, p. 281
104 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, p. 307
105 Khaled El-Rouayheb, “Hasan b. Muhammad al-Burini (1556-1615)” in Cemal
Kafadar, Hasan Karateke & Cornell Fleischer (eds.), Historians of the Ottoman
Empire (online database: http://www.ottomanhistorians.com), p. 1, hereafter
Rouayheb, “Burini”
106 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 356
107 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 356
40
Muhibbi adds that his grandfather had taught Burini as well.108 But Burini’s dearest
teacher, and the one who perhaps had the most influence on him personally,
intellectually and professionally, was a certain Ahmad al-‘Ithawi (d. 1025/1616),
another Shafi‘i mufti of Damascus, and it was he who gave Burini his first ijaza in the
year 1000/1592. On a more personal level, ‘Ithawi encouraged Burini to marry his
sister-in-law, and consequently the two men, in effect, became brothers in kin as well as
in spirit.109 ‘Ithawi had by then managed to secure several teaching posts in Damascus
for his former apprentice.110
The biographer Ghazzi himself was well-acquainted with Burini, and revealed
that they had several correspondences, in which they often wrote poetry to each other,
as was the norm. Such exchanges, according to Ghazzi, were often of a personal nature,
but unsurprisingly also involved discussions of religious significance.111 But despite the
closeness of their relationship, Ghazzi did not shy away from disclosing certain peculiar
facets of Burini’s character. For instance Burini, according to Ghazzi, was said to be
addicted to alcohol, and although the latter carefully avoided confirming this, he
indicated that it may have been the case since Burini had established close relations
with the temporal authorities in his hometown, and thus joined them in such immoral
activities.112 Without dwelling too greatly on the issue, Ghazzi quickly escaped the
matter and pointed to Burini’s skills as a poet.113
Indeed, Burini’s intimate relationship with the Ottoman authorities in Damascus
could not be concealed, even if it was perceived as morally corrupting at times. But it
undoubtedly made him better-informed about some of the most important issues
surrounding the province of Damascus as well as the Ottoman Empire at large. Having
cultivated the acquaintance and, at times, friendship of certain Ottoman officials in the
province of Damascus, Burini had access to ideal sources of information on such
108 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 52
109 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 144
110 Rouayheb, “Burini”, p. 1
111 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, pp. 370-75
112 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 378
113 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 379
41
pressing developments as the Canbulad rebellion,114 which was an affair of Syrian,
Ottoman, and European interest. According to Ghazzi, Burini’s closeness to the
authorities also allowed him to become the qadi of the pilgrimage caravan, despite the
fact that he was a Shafi‘i, when standard Ottoman practice prescribed offering the post
to a Hanafi.115 Burini, like Ibn Tulun before him, did not establish Sufi affiliations with
any of the various orders that operated in Damascus at the time.
In both official and non-official capacities, Burini travelled within Bilad al-Sham,
to Aleppo and Tripoli, and wrote travelogues describing his journeys. While he was still
a young man, he left Damascus with his father and went to Jerusalem, apparently due to
the spread of famine in the first city.116 Apart from his rather modest travelling
experience in comparison with later Damascene biographers, Burini’s universalist
outlook must have been shaped by his close relations with the Ottoman administration
in the province of Damascus, and notable visitors to the city with whom he interacted
such as Hussein al-Tibrizi, who taught him Persian.117 Ghazzi offered another
interesting side to his friend’s character: Burini was apparently popular among
commoners (‘awam), since he often mingled with them, listening attentively to their
popular form of zajal singing, and even helping to improve their techniques.118 A man
of talent, knowledge, and considerable influence, Burini was evidently also a humble
individual; it was possibly his own unglamorous background that allowed him to mix
unashamedly with the lower strata of Damascene society.
Burini’s biographical dictionary also has a rather uncomplicated title: Tarajim al-
A‘yan min Abna’ al-Zaman (Biographies of the Notables Among the People of the
Age), but a large part of it (from the letter qaf onwards) remains unpublished. In his
introduction to the work, Burini mentions several biographers whose dictionaries he
claims to have read, and declares that he had developed an interest in history many
years before finally undertaking the task of writing a historical work. Among the
114 Rouayheb, “Burini”, p. 3
115 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 376
116 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 51
117 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 52
118 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 376
42
biographers he cites are the universalists Ibn Khallikan and ‘Asqalani,119 though
Burini’s own work did not come close to the comprehensiveness of either of his
predecessors’ methods of selection. Despite Burini’s relative universalism, he writes
exclusively of individuals who were alive at one point or another during his lifetime,
and openly declares that this had been his intention. Nevertheless, he claims to be more
comprehensive in terms of class and occupation. In addition to the spiritual and
temporal authorities who were conventionally considered as having constituted the
notable classes, Burini notes that he includes those who had acquired fame for honing
their skills in certain arts.120 As such, he casts his net wide and does not stick to the
traditional conception of notability. It is conceivable that Burini’s recognition of his
own rise within the social ranks, and the awareness that he had ascended from a less
privileged position in Damascene society, led to his clear statement that lesser castes
also deserved a measure of representation in Tarajim al-A‘yan.
By his own admission, Burini was encouraged to begin writing Tarajim al-A‘yan
by a friend of his, the Ottoman defterdar of Damascus Mehmed Emin Efendi. The
Damascene historian claimed to have been too preoccupied in earlier years to consider
undertaking such a venture,121 and one gets the impression from his introduction that,
had it not been for the defterdar, Burini may never have gotten around to writing his
biographical dictionary. According to the only extant published biography of Mehmed
Emin Efendi by Burini’s contemporary Ghazzi, the defterdar “enjoyed reading and
bought many books,”122 which explains his encouragement of Burini to compose
Tarajim al-A‘yan. This is a significant point, because it is quite likely that ‘Ajami’s
support and encouragement of Burini helped shape the latter’s approach to composing
his work. The friendship of the two men and Burini’s admiration for the Ottoman
official, so evident in his introduction, may well have influenced the Damascene’s
process of selection in the dictionary. As such, Burini’s Tarajim al-A‘yan is at once of a
highly personal nature, since the author himself is present in most of the biographical
entries, and had enjoyed a personal acquaintance with almost all those of whom he had
chosen to write. The biographical dictionary was thus a token of friendship from an
119 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 4
120 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 4
121 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, pp. 4-5
122 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 198
43
Arabic-speaking religious scholar to a Turkish-speaking Ottoman bureaucrat, and
Burini fittingly reveals as much about himself and his own experiences as he does with
regard to the subjects of his work. Sadly, however, Burini’s entry on Muhammad Emin
Efendi himself remains unpublished.
A glaring inconsistency in Tarajim al-A‘yan is its author’s stated intention of,
for the most part, mentioning only the virtues of those on whom he chose to write. If
anything, Burini leveled greater criticism against certain individuals than perhaps any of
the other biographers of his time, and this criticism is often colored by some cynical
remarks. Burini’s denigration of certain individuals does not merely consist of
condemning certain conducts in professional life, which was a rather usual form of
criticism, but also includes some openly negative assessments of character. This
highlights Burini’s very personal involvement with some of the characters mentioned in
his historical work, as well as his unusually colorful character. Having produced a
history dedicated to his contemporaries, a sizeable portion of whom were also his
acquaintances, Burini relied almost exclusively on oral sources.123
Interestingly, Ghazzi does not make the slightest reference to Burini’s historical
work in his biography of the man. Later in the 17th century, Muhibbi mentions Tarajim
al-A‘yan both in his introduction and his biography of Burini, but does not choose to
comment on its quality. There is a point that is worthy of note, however, and it is the
fact that Burini’s biographical dictionary was, later in the 17th century, edited by none
other than Fadlallah al-Muhibbi, the father of the more famous biographer from the
same family.124 The younger Muhibbi adds in his introduction to his own biographical
collection that Fadlallah had also composed a supplement (dhayl) for Tarajim al-
A‘yan,125 no doubt indicating that his father, like Burini, wrote of his own
contemporaries. One final point is necessary: we must be careful not to exaggerate
Burini’s universalism in Tarajim al-A‘yan; his biographical dictionary was conceived in
the manner of the cosmopolitan school of Damascene historiography, yet its
123 Rouayheb, “Burini”, p. 1
124 C. Brockelmann, “Al-Burini, Hasan b. Muhammad al-Dimashki al-Saffuri
Badr al-Din” in EI2 (Brill Online)
125 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 3
44
cosmopolitanism pales in comparison to the vast comprehensiveness of his successor
Muhibbi, and even his younger contemporary Ghazzi, to whom we now turn.
a. Two Centennial Biographers of Ottoman Damascus
The centennial dictionary is a specific variant of biographical writing which
deals with a particular hijri century, and lies firmly within the universalist tradition of
historiography. It is perhaps unusual that centennial volumes dedicated to specific
geographical locales or social and occupational groups have not been composed, but
such is indeed the case: centennial biographers had at all times approached their
subjects in a universalist, cosmopolitan manner. The first centennial biographical
dictionary was written by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Hajar al-‘Asqalani (d. 852/1449) in
the 15th century, and it was a history of the notables of the 8th century AH (roughly
corresponding to the 14th century). Muhammad al-Sakhawi (d. 902/1497), another
Egyptian historian, followed ‘Asqalani with a biographical dictionary of the next hijri
century,126 and thus, with its initial center in Egypt, another new tradition in
biographical writing emerged. It is interesting, however, that Egyptian scholars of the
next century did not choose to prolong this tradition. Rather, it was the Damascene
hadith expert Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1061/1651) who did so, with his collection
entitled al-Kawakib al-Sa’ira bi A‘yan al-Mi’a al-‘Ashira (The Revolving Stars
Regarding the Notables of the 10th century), and this is a fact of great significance
which we shall return to at a later stage.
By the early 17th century, when Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi had achieved prominence
as a leading scholar of the Ottoman Bilad al-Sham, the Ghazzi name had already
produced countless celebrated ‘ulama’ who served the Damascene intellectual
community with distinction. The family, originally from Gaza, as its name indicates,
established itself in Damascus in the 14th century. Its first members immediately
immersed themselves in scholarship and, by the 16th century, Najm al-Din’s father Badr
al-Din al-Ghazzi had achieved the rank of Shafi‘i mufti in the city, a position which
several other Ghazzis would fill in later times. The later importance of the Ghazzi
family is evidenced by the 18th century Damascene biographer Muradi’s inclusion of no
126 Paul Auchterlonie, Arabic Biographical Dictionaries: A Summary Guide and
Bibliography (Durham, 1987), p. 8
45
less than fourteen of its members in his historical work.127 Indeed, in the 18th century,
the Ghazzis virtually monopolized the post of Shafi‘i mufti in Damascus, and continued
to dominate it well into the 19th century.128 But it wasn’t merely in the religious sciences
that the Ghazzi family played a leading role; the Ghazzis also took an interest in history.
Radiyy al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 864/1459), Najm al-Din’s great grandfather,129 wrote a
biographical dictionary of Shafi‘i scholars, indicating his family’s pride in belonging to
the madhhab.130 Centuries later, Shams al-Din al-Ghazzi (d. 1167/1754), another Shafi‘i
mufti and the grandnephew of Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi,131 wrote a voluminous
biographical work of the universalist variety, beginning with a biography of the
Prophet. The work is still extant, but only in manuscript form.132
Najm al-Din Ghazzi himself was a prominent hadith scholar and mudarris in his
native city, but never attained the position of mufti as his father had done before him.
Like so many of the ‘ulama’ in Bilad al-Sham, he was also a Sufi, having joined the
Qadiri order in Damascus.133 A contemporary of Burini, Ghazzi made the acquaintance
and friendship of several of the same individuals that his older colleague had also met.
Most important among them was surely Ahmad al-‘Ithawi, who helped guide Ghazzi’s
career as he had done earlier for Burini. Ghazzi also established a close relationship
with his master, who offered his daughter’s hand in marriage to the then young scholar.
When she died of the plague soon thereafter, Ghazzi married another of ‘Ithawi’s
127 Linda Schatkowski Schilcher, Families in Politics: Damascene Factions and
Estates of the 18th and 19th Centuries (Stuttgart 1985), p. 169, hereafter
Schilcher, Families in Politics
128 Schilcher, Families in Politics, p. 121
129 See Schilcher’s genealogical table of the Ghazzi family in Families in Politics,
p. 170
130 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, p. 245; It appears that
members of the Ghazzi family, insofar as they achieved any prominence, had
always adhered to the Shafi’i rite.
131 See Schilcher’s genealogical table of the Ghazzi family in Families in Politics,
p. 170
132 Munajjid, Mu‘jam al-Mu’arrikhin al-Dimashkiyyin, p. 354
133 Michael Winter, “al-Gazzi, Najmuddin Muhammad b. Muhammad” in Cemal
Kafadar, Hasan Karateke & Cornell Fleischer (eds.), Historians of the Ottoman
Empire (online database: http://www.ottomanhistorians.com), p. 1, hereafter
Winter, “al-Gazzi”
46
daughters,134 a sign of the great respect and paternal devotion that ‘Ithawi held for his
pupil, who had lost his father at quite a young age.
‘Ithawi was of immense assistance to Ghazzi in professional as well as personal
affairs, securing several teaching posts for the man, many of which he himself gave up
in favor of his younger Damascene counterpart.135 And such teaching posts were, of
course, in addition to the Ghazzi family’s already considerable financial resources,
another source of great wealth. Ghazzi’s biographer Muhibbi remarks that Ghazzi went
to the Hijaz for the hajj on several occasions.136 This is not only indicative of Ghazzi’s
religious zeal, but his privileged position as an exceptionally affluent ‘alim of
Damascus, and the member of a long-established and prestigious family in the city. It is
unlikely that Ghazzi could have managed several trips to the hajj had he not been so
wealthy, as even the better off 'ulama' of the Ottoman period seem to have found it
unreasonably costly to go to the Hajj more than once in their lifetimes.137 On the whole,
the Damascene biographer seems to have been an exceptionally well-travelled
individual; apart from his journeys within Bilad al-Sham and his numerous visits to the
Holy Cities, he is known to have been to Istanbul on one occasion. Among his works, in
fact, is a travelogue in which he spoke of his journey to the Ottoman capital, now no
longer extant.138 Other writings of Ghazzi that are of less obvious historical value
include his contributions to the fields of Arabic literature and poetry, but also several
treatises on linguistics.139 In addition, he dedicated a lengthy biography to his father and
composed it as a separate work.
Ghazzi’s most famous historical texts are, however, two biographical dictionaries,
the first of which dealt with the 10th century of the hijra. His Kawakib dictionary is
unusual in that it adopts a particular tabaqat division, in which the individual tabaqa,
134 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, pp. 313-14
135 Winter, “al-Gazzi”, p. 2
136 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 198-99
137 Rafeq, Abdul-Karim, “Qafilat al-Hajj al-Shami wa Ahammiyyatuha fi al-'Ahd al-
'Uthmani” in Buhouth fi al-Tarikh al-Iqtisadi wa al-Ijtima'i fi Bilad al-Sham fi al-'Asr
al-Hadith (Damascus, 1981), p. 204, hereafter Rafeq, Qafilat al-Hajj al-Shami
138 Winter, “al-Gazzi”, p. 5
139 Editor’s (Mahmoud al-Shaykh) introduction to Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1,
p. 118
47
according to Ghazzi’s own preference, constitutes 33 years. Within each tabaqa,
however, entries are alphabetically organized, making for an effortless and easily
accessible fusion between the chronological and the alphabetical. There is, though, one
exception to the otherwise straightforward alphabetical classification; the biographies of
those who are named Muhammad come first in each of the three tabaqat, as a clear
mark of veneration for the Prophet. The structure of Ghazzi’s work is, for these reasons,
unique among the biographical dictionaries of Bilad al-Sham during the Ottoman
period. Ghazzi’s inclusion of women at the end of each letter is, on the other hand, not
unusual, but nor was it the general practice of Muslim biographers, for not every
biographer chose to include members of the other sex.
It is clear that, in his Kawakib, Ghazzi uses earlier biographical works
extensively, particularly for entries on the first half of the 10th/16th century. Among the
dictionaries he explicitly mentions as sources for his own collection in the introduction
to Kawakib, there is the famous history of the Ottoman historian Tasköprüzade, written
in Arabic. Ghazzi also mentions Ibn al-Hanbali’s Durr al-Habab, but in the process
unleashes a scathing critique on the Aleppine biographer’s methodology and the overall
quality of his work. He claims that Ibn al-Hanbali was not a capable historian, and the
foundation given for Ghazzi’s assertion is his predecessor’s lack of selectiveness in his
approach to biographical writing. Ghazzi alleges that Ibn al-Hanbali must have included
certain individuals in his dictionary so that “perhaps… the letter (in question) is not
devoid of entries.” Individuals of certain classes and occupations, such as artisans,
merchants, and singers are for this purpose alone included in Ibn al-Hanbali’s
biographical dictionary, according to Ghazzi.140 The obvious suggestion here is that
Ghazzi, in writing Kawakib, professes a greater selectivity than Ibn al-Hanbali, and
indeed learns from the errors of his supposedly less judicious predecessor.
Ghazzi’s claim is, however, far from consistent or congruent with several of the
selections in his centennial history, and the Damascene biographer in fact writes some
lengthy entries on many members of the professional groups he had initially criticized
Ibn al-Hanbali for including in his own work. Ghazzi’s final entry in Kawakib, for
instance, is dedicated to a certain Yunus “the garbage man” (al-zabbal), who
140 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 6
48
purportedly became one of the notable men of Damascus, although the information
provided by his biographer gives little evidence that he had grown to be anything more
than a minor scholar.141 Ghazzi was doubtless touched and inspired by Yunus’s rise
from obscurity to the minor ranks of the learned community in his city, but this alone
hardly qualifies the latter for inclusion among the notables of Damascus, much less
those of the Muslim umma. Moreover, with his final entry in what is a voluminous
centennial dictionary, it is impossible to claim that Ghazzi went out on a high note.
It is a significant statement, however, that Ghazzi makes in criticism of Ibn al-
Hanbali, regardless of the Damascene biographer’s own consistency in practice. The
Aleppine Abu al-Wafa al-‘Urdi, writing after Ghazzi, also took exception with certain
aspects of Ibn al-Hanbali’s work, though in contrast to Ghazzi’s critique, ‘Urdi thought
that his Aleppine forerunner had wrongly excluded certain individuals. The criticism
leveled at Ibn al-Hanbali by later biographers is in itself rather important, since it
confirms that, not only did the “science of history” become legitimate as a domain of
scholarship among the intellectual elite, but intra-scholarly debate concerning the proper
methodology and skill in writing history had also come to the fore. Other historical
works, such as the now lost biographical dictionary of Ibn Tulun’s teacher Nu‘aymi, are
also cited as sources by Ghazzi. More importantly, Ibn Tulun’s Mut‘at al-Adhhan
dictionary, as well as his chronicle, are mentioned and utilized extensively in Ghazzi’s
composition of biographical entries for the first half of the 10th hijri century.
Ghazzi’s attitude towards those of whom he writes biographical entries is varied.
The Damascene biographer’s stated intention is, naturally, to sing the praises of those
who have deserved a measure of esteem and admiration. He is careful, however, to
distance himself from certain negative commentary afforded to some individuals in his
biographical dictionary. In his introduction, Ghazzi indicates that such criticism, where
it is to be found, is invariably based on some external source. This information is
gathered from “some informants (or transmitters of information)” (ba‘d al-naqilin),142
which must surely include individuals with whom Ghazzi conversed. Ghazzi, though,
does not specify the identity or nature of these “informants”, and thus one may conclude
that these also include the authors of historical works which Ghazzi consulted before
141 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, p. 223
142 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 7
49
writing Kawakib. In any event, despite his clear suggestion that some negative
observations are made with regard to a select group of people, Ghazzi is unsuccessful in
entirely distancing himself from the criticism of certain individuals. Thus, a second
aspect of inconsistency exists in his biographical dictionary.
But possibly the most important element of Ghazzi’s introduction to his
biographical dictionary is the statement where he identifies his interest in composing the
work. Ghazzi clearly indicates that his eagerness to write of the notable individuals of
the 10th century AH was the result of a simple reality: no other scholar had yet
undertaken that task.143 This is a crucial point, and is reminiscent of an earlier statement
by Ibn al-Hanbali, where the Aleppine biographer suggests that he wrote biographies of
his contemporaries in order to carry through his city’s historiographical tradition. In the
case of Ghazzi, a particular sub-genre, the centennial dictionary, is the historiographical
tradition which, in the mind of its practitioner, must be sustained. And the centennial
dictionary is, of course, itself a variant of the broader universalist school of biographical
writing. In this sense, Ghazzi is consciously perpetuating a particular type of
universalist biography, as Aleppine ‘ulama’ had perpetuated localist biography in their
works. It is strange, however, that Ghazzi does not mention the earlier centennial
biographers, the Egyptians ‘Asqalani and Sakhawi, although he was clearly their
successor as far as the art of historical writing was concerned.
In succession to Kawakib, Ghazzi also compiled a second biographical work,
entitled Lutf al-Samar wa Qatf al-Thamar min Tarajim A‘yan al-Tabaqa al-Ula min al-
Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashar (The Pleasure of Evening Conversations and the Gathering of
Fruit from the Biographies of Notables of the First Layer of the 11th century), which he
dedicated to individuals of the first tabaqa (33 years) of the 11th hijri century. The
introduction to Lutf al-Samar is quite brief, indicating that there is no change in
Ghazzi’s approach, methodology, or general outlook. Indeed, it is stressed as a
supplement (dhayl) by its author,144 and is thus not regarded as distinct or separate from
Kawakib. Structurally, it retains the qualities of the biographical collection that came
before it, with the individuals named Muhammad taking precedence, followed by an
alphabetical arrangement of the rest of the entries.
143 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 5
144 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 3
50
There are certain differences between the two works, however, and these must be
pointed out. The most important has to do with Ghazzi’s sources of information. In
Kawakib, he had had access to several historical works, biographical and otherwise, and
many of these were mentioned in his introduction. The first tabaqa of the 11th century
AH, however, comprised people who were Ghazzi’s contemporaries and, in many cases,
acquaintances. This would, accordingly, reflect on Ghazzi’s method of accumulating
information for Lutf al-Samar. In the first place, the amount of literature which the
Damascene biographer had at his disposal was certainly far less for Lutf al-Samar than
it had been for Kawakib, not least since the latter work dealt with a longer period of
time. As such, Ghazzi could only have hoped to find historical works that had been
composed earlier, but within the same 33-year (hijri) span, and these were few. A
notable exception, of course, was Burini’s Tarajim al-A‘yan, and Burini’s biographical
dictionary included many of the same individuals whom Ghazzi later incorporated in
Lutf al-Samar.
The more important source for Ghazzi in his second dictionary was, however,
surely his discussions with various individuals who supplied him with information for
his biographical entries. Predictably, they themselves were included as subjects of
discussion in Lutf al-Samar. The title of Ghazzi’s second work (The Pleasure of
Evening Conversations and the Gathering of Fruit…) is, in fact, indicative of the nature
of sources that made its composition possible; it points to the dominance of the oral
source above all else. The “gathering of fruit,” in this case, is meant to denote the
collection of information, an objective that was achieved after several enjoyable
“evening conversations”. Ghazzi’s biographer and successor as centennial historian
Muhibbi lavishes praise on both of his predecessor’s historical works, acknowledging
that they are positive contributions to the field of ta’rikh. Nevertheless, he offers a
single, and in the circumstances, entirely justified, criticism: that is Ghazzi’s inclusion
of a number of the same individuals in both of his works.145 Muhibbi is correct to point
this out, and in fact the same applies to Burini’s Tarajim al-A‘yan, in which there are
duplicates of certain entries, though Muhibbi does not point this out. Muhibbi’s
judgment of Ghazzi’s qualities as a historian is in itself of huge relevance, because the
latter had effectively been Muhibbi’s forerunner in that he composed, for the first time,
145 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 197
51
a centennial dictionary from Bilad al-Sham, which Muhibbi diligently followed up with
a centennial history of his own.
Like the Ghazzis, many members of the Muhibbi family had already been
distinguished figures of the Damascene intellectual elite long before Muhammad Amin
al-Muhibbi (d. 1111/1699) wrote his biographical dictionary of 11th/17th century
notables. In fact, the two families were linked through the vast scholarly network that
had existed in Damascus for centuries; the first evidence we have of a Ghazzi-Muhibbi
connection is the biographer Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s father Fadlallah’s
apprenticeship at the hands of the biographer Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi.146 Later in the
same century, Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi returned the favor to a member of the
Ghazzi family. Shams al-Din al-Ghazzi, who has already been mentioned above as a
universalist biographer whose work is unpublished, was Muhammad Amin’s pupil and,
as the 18th century historian Muradi indicates in his biography of Muhibbi, Ghazzi was
greatly enlightened during his years of intimacy with his master.147 It is interesting that
all four individuals mentioned here composed a biographical dictionary (or, in the case
of Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, two such volumes) of the universalist variety, yet only Najm
al-Din al-Ghazzi’s and Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s collections have been
published.
Equally important as their connections within their hometown, the Muhibbis had
at least a century before Muhammad Amin’s birth (ca. 1651) established contacts with
high-ranking members of the religious authorities in the Ottoman center. Our
biographer’s great grandfather, a man who took up judicial posts in different towns in
Bilad al-Sham, made two trips to Istanbul in the late 16th century, entering in the process
the service of the mufti of Istanbul, who became his friend. Upon his return to his
hometown, he was assigned as qadi of the pilgrimage caravan to the Holy Cities of
Islam. Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s father, Fadlallah, made two trips to Istanbul
during his lifetime. Through the efforts of a Rumi ‘alim by the name of Mehmed Izzeti,
he managed to secure two teaching posts for himself, the first in a 25 akçe madrasa in
146 C. Brockelmann, “al-Muhibbi” in EI2 (Brill Online), hereafter Brockelmann,
“al-Muhibbi”
147 Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi, Silk al-Durar fi A‘yan al-Qarn al-Thani ‘Ashar
(Cairo, 1883), Vol. 4, p. 86, hereafter Muradi, Silk al-Durar
52
Bursa and, later, at a 40 akçe madrasa in the imperial capital. The travelogue he
produced on one of his journeys to Istanbul has sadly not been preserved.148
It was fortunate for Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi that he was born into such a
well-connected family, possessing considerable wealth and an empire-wide acclaim in
the fields of Muslim scholarship. It certainly allowed him the opportunity of receiving
top-quality training by the most prominent religious instructors of Damascus during the
second half of the 17th century. His family’s age-old connections to members of certain
families of the Ottoman center’s learned elite also gave him the opportunity to,
whenever he wished, set forth for other illustrious centers of learning in the Empire.
Muhibbi, a Hanafi scholar whose expertise lay in the Islamic science of jurisprudence,
came in contact with the Khalwati (Halveti) tariqa and joined that Sufi order shortly
after his father’s visit to Bilad al-Rum (land of the Turks).149 In the 1670’s Muhibbi,
with his father now deceased and his readiness for the rigors of travel complete, began
his own Anatolian journey.
Muhibbi, in fact, is one of the few biographers of Bilad al-Sham in the 16th and
17th centuries who is known to have taken up a teaching post in the lands of the
Ottoman center, specifically in Bursa, where he assumed the same position, earlier
vacated by his father, in a 25 akçe madrasa. The man who managed to secure
Muhibbi’s employment was the same Mehmed Izzeti who had previously offered the
position to his father.150 It is also interesting that the Damascene biographer was
accompanied on his trip not only by his uncle Sun‘ullah, but more importantly a dear
friend of the family, Mehmed b. Abdülhalim of Bursa, who later went on to become the
mufti of Istanbul.151 Mehmed Izzeti’s brother Mustafa, then newly-appointed as
kadıasker of Anadolu, then received Muhibbi and his uncle in Edirne, where the young
Damascene scholar continued his education and made some new acquaintances.152
148 Brockelmann, “al-Muhibbi”
149 Layla al-Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi fi al-‘Asr al-‘Uthmani al-
Awwal: Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi wa Kitabuhu Khulasat al-Athar fi A‘yan al-
Qarn al-Hadi ‘Ashar (Damascus, 1986), p. 73, hereafter Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-
Fikr al-‘Arabi
150 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 95
151 See Abdülhalim Efendi’s biography in Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p.
482-87
152 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 96
53
Finally, after Edirne, came Istanbul, where the two Muhibbis spent five years, and yet it
is unclear if Muhammad Amin managed to secure any teaching posts, or for that matter,
add to his already well-grounded religious education in an Istanbul madrasa during his
time in the capital city. Nevertheless, it is a significant fact that he, alongside his uncle,
quickly decided to leave the imperial capital just a day after their close associate
Mehmed Izzeti passed away,153 indicating perhaps that the Muhibbis were completely
dependent on their patron for his ability to acquire positions for them both.
Upon his return to Damascus, Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s newly-acquired
knowledge of the Turkish and Persian languages immediately won him many
admirers.154 But his journey to the land of the Rumis was not his only expedition beyond
his more familiar Damascene setting; Muhibbi’s biographer Khalil al-Muradi reveals
that the Damascene scholar left for the Hijaz on two occasions, once to fill the post of
deputy judge in Mecca and another, of course, as a hajji to the Holy Shrines of Islam. In
his later years, according to Muradi, Muhibbi devoted his life to writing and teaching in
a madrasa in his hometown.155 Similar to most of the other biographers of Bilad al-
Sham during this period, Muhibbi also had a wide variety of scholarly interests, some of
which were beyond the sphere of the strictly religious. Muhibbi was a noted linguist, as
he produced five books on different Arabic linguistic and grammatical subjects.156
Muhibbi also wrote volumes on literature and poetry; among his most famous works is
a history of poetry in the 11th hijri century, which included a few biographies of poets
who wrote in Arabic, Turkish and Persian, as well as translations into Arabic of some
poetry that was written in the two other major languages of Ottoman culture.157 A
significant number of the same poets also found their way into his centennial dictionary.
Muradi later remarked that Muhibbi’s poetry and prose were equally brilliant and
153 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, pp. 98-99
154 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 107
155 Muradi, Silk al-Durar, Vol. 4, p. 86
156 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 131
157 Khaled El-Rouayheb, “Opening the Gate of Verification: The Forgotten Arab-
Islamic Florescence of the 17th Century”, International Journal of Middle East
Studies 38 (Cambridge, 2006), p. 276
54
inspired, and that the latter had “captivated the minds with his beautiful
composition.”158
But it is his biographical dictionary, Khulasat al-Athar fi A‘yan al-Qarn al-Hadi
‘Ashar (The Purest Marks Concerning the Notables of the 11th Century), that is the work
with which we are most concerned. Muhibbi claims to have been interested in “history
books” (kutub al-akhbar) since he was a young boy, and that he began gathering
information on events that he had heard, and the people surrounding them, at a similarly
early stage. One gets a sense of Muhibbi’s universalism immediately in the opening
lines of his introduction to Khulasat al-Athar; he instantly reveals the type of classes
and individuals he is interested in, and these include not only the political, military, and
intellectual elites, all of whom are mentioned, but also lesser individuals such as poets
and other literary figures.159 Thus, Muhibbi’s conception of notability is not as
avowedly restricted as that of his predecessor Ghazzi. As a result, his inclusion of some
of the lesser classes in his biographical dictionary cannot be considered inconsistent
with his initial claims. Muhibbi also reveals that he went to great lengths to gather
information on the notable individuals (a‘yan) of such faraway lands as Yemen,
Bahrain, and the Hijaz, and that, in the final analysis, he was not entirely satisfied with
the relatively unequal representation he had given them in the dictionary.160 Muhibbi is
perhaps the most cosmopolitan of all the Damascene universalists, as he even
incorporates a number of individuals from India in Khulasat al-Athar. Muradi
exaggerates or possibly commits an error when referring to Muhibbi’s work, claiming
that it included the biographies of “about 6000” individuals,161 when in fact the total
amount of entries is 1289, still a rather large number. In his introduction, Muhibbi
makes a mention of some of the sources he utilized, and these of course included
Ghazzi’s Lutf al-Samar and Burini’s Tarajim al-A‘yan, among numerous other
Damascene and non-Damascene histories. He also cites oral and written
correspondences as major sources for the construction of Khulasat al-Athar.162
158 Muradi, Silk al-Durar, Vol. 4, p. 86
159 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 2
160 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 3
161 Muradi, Silk al-Durar, Vol. 4, p. 86
162 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 3
55
Unlike Ghazzi, Muhibbi does not, in his introduction, directly state how he treated
the individuals to whom he dedicated the biographical entries. Nonetheless, the
decidedly upbeat style with which Muhibbi describes the classes of people he had
selected in his opening lines suggests that his attitude towards the individuals in his
dictionary was largely positive. This is far from the case, however, and although
Muhibbi, like Ghazzi, attempts to avoid a position of open antagonism to the subjects of
his history, not all individuals are treated favorably in Khulasat al-Athar. Of greater
importance is the fact that Muhibbi, like Ghazzi before him, clearly states his intention
to prolong the tradition of centennial (and therefore universalist) biographical writing,
as he declares that the foundation for his dictionary was his “anxiety for gathering what
has not (yet) been gathered” concerning the notable “men” of the 11th century AH.163
With this statement Muhibbi also reveals that his biographical dictionary is dedicated
exclusively to men.
It is worth considering, or at least attempting to reflect, on why Muhibbi, and for
that matter other biographers, chose not to include women in their histories, whereas
some authors, Ghazzi included, did give a share of representation (albeit scant) to those
women who were deemed notable members of their respective communities. This is an
admittedly difficult, perhaps even impossible, question, to answer in a fully satisfactory
manner, yet certain clues do exist which would enable us to form some rudimentary
idea of the reason(s) behind biographers’ inclusion or exclusion of women from their
historical compendia. In particular, Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar offers some evidence
relating to his exclusion, and his forerunner Ghazzi’s, inclusion of women in Khulasat
and Kawakib respectively. In his biography of Ghazzi in Khulasat al-Athar, Muhibbi
quotes a quite telling passage from his Damascene predecessor’s biography of his
father. Significantly, it informs the reader that Ghazzi was apparently very much
attached to both his parents. His great love and admiration for his father, who passed
away while Najm al-Din was still a child, is in any case obvious given that he had
dedicated an extended biographical work to the man, rather than merely including him
alongside the other prominent figures of the 10th century AH in Kawakib. More
interestingly, Muhibbi’s quoted passage reveals the remarkably strong affection the
illustrious scholar felt for his mother as well, particularly his gratitude for her successful
163 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 3
56
nurturing of the Ghazzi young and her concern for their attainment of a well-grounded
religious education.164 Perhaps it is partly due to Ghazzi’s love and appreciation of his
mother that he took the decision to include women in his biographical collection.
Muhibbi, by contrast, does not make the slightest mention of his own mother in
Khulasat al-Athar, not even in biographies of other members of his family, and seems
on the whole to have held most affection for his father and uncle Sun‘ullah, who raised
Muhammad Amin after the latter’s father departed for Istanbul in 1662, and later
accompanied him on his long Rumi voyage.
b. A Longer View of History: Ibn al-Imad’s Millennial Collection of Muslim
Notables
Another individual among those who touched and influenced Muhibbi greatly
during his lifetime was Abi al-Falah ‘Abdul-Hayy Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali (d.
1089/1679). Comparatively little is known of Ibn al-Imad; only Muhibbi writes of the
man in his centennial dictionary, and Ibn al-Imad’s biography does not supply the
reader with much useful information. For instance, one cannot gather from Muhibbi’s
account whether Ibn al-‘Imad was the member of a notable Damascene family or an
individual who, like Burini, managed to scale the heights of the religious hierarchy from
a less privileged socio-economic position. However, there is some relevant information;
for instance, we find that the Hanbalite Ibn al-‘Imad’s specialization within the religious
sciences was fiqh, and that Muhibbi himself was trained by the man at an earlier point
of his career. Ibn al-‘Imad, like so many other ‘ulama’, was an avid poet, who was also
fully capable of composing works in other literary styles, according to his pupil
Muhibbi.165 There is no indication that Ibn al-Imad was affiliated with any Sufi orders.
Whether this owes to his status as a Hanbali jurist, an adherent of the strictest school of
Islamic jurisprudence, is unclear. Several Hanbalis, however, have been known to adopt
and even found Sufi orders, despite the school’s opposition to Sufism in principle.166
Ibn al-Imad spent many years in Cairo, according to his biographer Muhibbi, and
164 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 190-91
165 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 340
166 A notable example is the Shaykh ‘Abdul-Kadir al-Jilani, the founder of the
Qadiri order, to which the biographers Ibn al-Hanbali and Ghazzi belonged, See
H. Laoust, “Hanabila” in EI2 (Brill Online)
57
eventually passed away in Mecca during the hajj in 1089/1679. Muhibbi also made a
passing but positive reference to Ibn al-Imad’s biographical dictionary.167
This historical work, Shadharat al-Dhahab fi Akhbar man Dhahab (The Particles
of Gold in the Experiences of Those Who Have Passed On) is a chronologically
constructed biographical collection beginning, predictably, with a biography of the
Prophet and proceeding in a year by year progression, eventually ending in 1000/1592;
it is thus a millennial compilation. The title itself implies that the biographical entries in
the work are, for the most part, rather short, and merely constitute “particles” of a 1000-
year long history of the Islamic community. They are, in fact, obituaries rather than
biographies in the narrow technical sense, as individuals are mentioned in the year in
which they had passed away. Nevertheless, the information provided by Ibn al-‘Imad in
his entries is not at all different, though usually briefer, than what most of the other
biographers offer in terms of structure and focus. As a source for the construction of
Ottoman history, provincial or otherwise, Ibn al-Imad’s Shadharat is not of great
significance, since it generally does not contribute original information that cannot be
found in other biographical dictionaries or chronicles, though it does reveal certain facts
from other historical sources that are, at this time, either unpublished or altogether lost.
But Ibn al-Imad is, in fact, the first to acknowledge his work’s lack of “originality”, as
he writes that he had gathered all his information from “the a‘yan of books and the
books of the a‘yan.” He cites the work of Ibn Khallikan, among others, but does not
make reference to any of the biographical dictionaries of the Ottoman period.168 There
is no doubt, though, that he used them extensively in his Shadharat, and there are
recurrent attributions and quotes from Ibn Tulun’s work in particular.
In his relatively brief introduction, Ibn al-Imad reveals that his stated purpose for
compiling his voluminous history is simply to enable those who read it to derive moral
values from the many examples of great men included in its pages. There is one more
important feature of Ibn al-Imad’s introduction. He acknowledges that what he engaged
himself with was a work of history, but is unique among the biographers of Bilad al-
Sham in the 16th and 17th centuries in that he provides religious justificatiom for writing
167 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 340
168 Abi al-Falah ‘Abdul-Hayy Ibn al-Imad al-Hanbali, Shadharat al-Dhahab fi
Akhbar man Dhahab (Beirut, 1980), Vol. 1, p. 8, hereafter Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat
al-Dhahab
58
Shadharat. In particular, the millennial historian notes that writing history is important
for establishing the authority of hadith transmitters.169 Such a statement was no doubt
deemed necessary by Ibn al-Imad as he took the longest possible view of Muslim
history, having gone back centuries and revisited the history of Islam in its formative
stages, before the cultural and religious identity of the community was absolutely
established and its intellectual debates settled to a satisfactory degree. Had Ibn al-Imad
decided to produce a biographical dictionary dedicated to the notables of a generation or
even a century, he would probably not have found it necessary to revert to the age-old
religious justifications provided by the biographers of centuries past.
It is also noteworthy that Ibn al-Imad only writes of a handful of Pashas and other
individuals serving the Ottoman temporal authorities in his entries on the 16th century;
the dominance of religious scholars in his work is more noticeable than in any other
biographical dictionary of the period. Ibn al-Imad, who was forced by the very nature of
his work to adopt a more selective approach than other biographers (due to its massive
size and long historical perspective) clearly manifested the common vision of the
‘ulama’: that they themselves were the essence of notability among the peoples of the
Muslim umma, alongside whom only the most prominent of figures in worldly authority
could feature. This, in any case, is confirmed by the overwhelming dominance of the
classes of the learned in all biographical collections of the period in question.
c. Understanding Damascene Uniqueness in the World of Islamic Biographical
Writing
At any rate, one can plainly recognize the significant degree of interconnectedness
that existed in Syrian historical scholarship during the first two centuries of Ottoman
rule. In his efforts to discover whether any salient features may be located in the
contrast between an “Egyptian school” and a “Syrian school” of historical writing in
Mamluk times, Li Guo informs us that the historians of Bilad al-Sham constituted an
“extended network” of scholarship, which helped form broadly common conceptions of
169 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 1, p. 8
59
the world and similar styles and methods of historical writing.170 Evidently, this is true
of the Ottoman period as well, but it may be added that within the larger “extended
network” of Syrian historians that Li referred to, there were unmistakably also two
smaller “networks”, those of Aleppo and Damascus. The scale of the Damascene
network of universalist historians was, however, markedly greater than that of the
localist biographers of Aleppo. Burini was well-acquainted with members of the Ghazzi
family, including the biographer himself; Ghazzi and Burini established a close
relationship with Ahmad al-‘Ithawi, whose personal and professional influence on both
men cannot be overstated. Ghazzi later instructed Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi’s father
Fadlallah in the Traditions, and the latter both composed and edited biographical
collections. Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi himself taught another biographer from the
Ghazzi family and, finally, Ibn al-‘Imad exerted considerable influence on Muhibbi
himself. Though there are some differences in style, methodology, and at times even
approach and attitude between the Damascene biographers, there can be little doubt
that, in the final analysis, they all belonged to a single tradition of universalist,
cosmopolitan historiography, and in fact were the sole representatives of it during the
Ottoman period.
This brings us to another question of considerable import: why was it that
Damascene biographers were alone in their universalism among the scholars of Bilad
al-Sham and, for that matter, those of the Ottoman Empire as a whole? The answer is to
be sought in the distinct historical experiences of different Muslim urban centers. The
differences in the histories of Damascus and Aleppo under the Islamic state are at once
obvious and rather striking. The importance of Damascus in the history of Islam need
not be elaborated at any great length; the historical prestige of the city lay partly, but far
from exclusively, in its earlier status as the capital of the first Muslim dynasty, that of
the Umayyad caliphs, and its long-standing importance as the starting point for the
pilgrimage caravan to the Holy Cities. Aleppo, in fact, did not assume equal political or
religious status with Damascus at any point in its history under the Islamic state, until
the Ottoman period, when it at least obtained official administrative equality as an
eyalet comprising much of northern Syria. And but for the Damascene governor
170 Li Guo, “Mamluk Historiographic Studies: The State of the Art”, Mamluk
Studies Review 1 (1997), p. 26
60
Janbirdi al-Ghazali’s revolt against the then newly-crowned Sultan Süleyman (1520),
with the ostensible intention of resurrecting the Mamluk regime, Aleppo may never
have acquired any measure of independence from Damascus as an Ottoman province in
its own right.171
Even when Aleppo was named an eyalet of the Ottoman state, however,
Damascene influence on the city was still considerable until at least the early part of the
17th century. Although the Arabistan Defterdarı, responsible also for the collection of
revenue from Damascus, was positioned in Aleppo until 1567 when Damascus received
its own defterdar, the Damascene janissary corps was still involved in the gathering of
taxes from Aleppo itself.172 On certain occasions during the 16th century, these
janissaries wreaked significant havoc on Aleppo, having proven their military
superiority over the local authorities in the city. Ottoman Pashas in Aleppo were
effectively powerless to prevent a number of military takeovers of the city by the
Damascene janissaries and their leaders who, upon returning from campaigns against
such rebels as Kara Yazıcı in Anatolia, and others against the Safavids along the Eastern
frontiers of the Empire, inflicted much moral and material damage on Aleppo and its
inhabitants.173 It was effectively not until the reign of the Kurdish chieftains from the
Canbulad family, Hussein and ‘Ali respectively, that the Aleppine administration
managed to curb Damascene influence and, with ‘Ali Canbulad in particular, overturn
the previous state of affairs in Aleppo’s favor, albeit for a brief period.
Another fundamental factor which indisputably allowed Damascene universalist
historiography to flourish was the city’s historical role as a leading proponent of
religious orthodoxy in the Islamic lands. It is by now well-documented that upon Nur
al-Din Zengi’s entrance into the city in the 12th century, Damascus began to project
itself as the bastion of Sunni Muslim orthodoxy in the face of Fatimid heresy in Egypt
and, equally important, Frankish “unbelief” as symbolized by the Latin Kingdoms
established by the Crusaders.174 During the reign of the Zengids and then the Ayyubids,
171 Bruce Masters, “Aleppo: the Ottoman Empire’s Caravan City” in Edhem
Eldem, Daniel Goffman & Bruce Masters, The Ottoman City Between the East
and West (Cambridge, 1999) pp. 20-22, hereafter Masters, “Aleppo”
172 Bakhit, “Aleppo and the Ottoman Military”, p. 30
173 See Bakhit, “Aleppo and the Ottoman Military”, pp. 27-34
174 N. Elisseeff, “Dimashk” in EI2 (Brill Online)
61
Damascus was also the base of operations for Muslim aspirants to the recovery of
Jerusalem and the expulsion of the “infidels” from what was previously Muslim
territory. Certain circumstances in the history of Aleppo under Islam were of a
noticeably divergent nature to the universalist, orthodox Sunni tale that Damascus
weaved for itself through the centuries. In the early centuries of Muslim Empire, Aleppo
was effectively on the periphery of the far-flung domains of the Dar al-Islam. Although
Aleppo, and by extension all of Syria, was part of the territory that is termed the
“central lands” of Islam, the city itself was situated on the boundaries between the
domains of the believers and those of the arch-enemies of the early Muslims, namely
the Byzantines. Far more seriously, it was Aleppo and not Damascus that flirted with
Isma‘ili Shi‘ism for a not insignificant period of time under the Hamdanid regime,
which made Aleppo its political center and its subject population overwhelmingly
Shi‘ite.175
Damascus’ centuries-long self-image as the upholder of Muslim orthodoxy also
allowed it to build for itself a hard-earned reputation as a preeminent center of learning
and scholarship. The Damascene intellectual tradition remained strong throughout the
Mamluk and Ottoman periods, and its position as the center for the hajj caravan without
doubt made it an ideally suited location for the gathering of notable ‘ulama’ of the
Muslim world and the discussion of matters that were of intra-confessional relevance, as
well as the spread of various Sufi orders within the city itself.176 Damascus duly
received more non-Damascene ‘ulama’ as visitors and residents than Aleppo during the
first two centuries of Ottoman rule, and this must have contributed to the relatively
cosmopolitan outlook of the city’s indigenous intellectual elite.177 Significantly,
Damascus was also the Arab city in which the largest number of Rumi ‘ulama’
resided.178 On the other hand, Aleppo was to a large extent “a city whose renown was
vested neither in political nor cultural greatness, but in its trade.”179 Writing in the late
17th century, the Ottoman traveler Evliya Çelebi reported that, among other structures,
175 J. Sauvaget, “Halab” in EI2 (Brill Online)
176 Rafeq, “Qafilat al-Hajj al-Shami”, p. 210
177 Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’ and the Ottoman
State in the Eighteenth Century”, Oriente Moderno 79 (1999), p. 74, hereafter
Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’...”
178 Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’...”, p. 80
179 Masters, “Aleppo”, p. 19
62
Aleppo had 61 mosques, 217 Qur’an schools, and 176 tekkes.180 In comparison,
according to Evliya, there existed around 800 mosques, 2100 tekkes, and 700 qur’an
schools in Damascus.181 Although Evliya’s figures are probably exaggerated, the
proportional discrepancy between his figures for each city demonstrates Damascus’
undoubted supremacy in Bilad al-Sham as the leading center of Islamic learning bar
none. This is despite Aleppo’s greater commercial pedigree, and its larger population,
which modern scholarship has estimated at around 115,000 only a few years after
Evliya’s visit, making the city the third largest Ottoman metropolis after Istanbul and
Cairo.182
The relationship involving the exchange of scholars between Bilad al-Rum and
Sham was, of course, mutual, as several of the Damascene ‘ulama’ also studied in some
of the major Anatolian centers of learning, as well as Istanbul. Aleppo was by no means
left out of the picture, and in fact, the percentage of Aleppine ‘ulama’ who studied in
the Ottoman capital was not less than that of the Damascene ‘ulama’ who did the same,
according to Abdul-Karim Rafeq’s figures from the 18th century. But of course, as
Rafeq himself indicates, this was at least partly due to Aleppo’s relative proximity to the
Ottoman capital.183 Nevertheless such individuals, having been better-travelled than our
Aleppine biographers, may have acquired a more universalist conception of history, the
world around them, and indeed also their own selves as members of a far-flung Ottoman
state and an even larger Muslim umma. Unlike some of their Damascene counterparts
who developed such universalist outlooks, however, this undoubtedly sizeable section
of the Aleppine ‘ulama’, which included the abridger of Ibn Tulun’s history Ibn al-
Mulla among numerous others, does not seem to have taken an interest in the art of
historical composition, which remained the exclusive sphere of local biographers. This
matter may seem slightly perplexing when tackled within a purely Ottoman context, but
can certainly be explained through a broader understanding of Islamic history and
historiography. The bare fact remains that, long before the Ottoman conquest of Bilad
180 Masters, “Aleppo”, pp. 35-36
181 Evliya Çelebi, Seyahatname (Istanbul, 1985), Mümin Çevik (ed.), p. 107
182 Andre Raymond, “The Population of Aleppo in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth
Centuries According to Ottoman Census Documents”, International Journal of
Middle East Studies 16, 4 (Cambridge, 1984), p. 455
183 Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’...”, p. 80
63
al-Sham, it was Damascus, not Aleppo, which alongside Cairo developed and sustained
universalist biography as a distinct historiographical tradition. Cairo, despite its
notorious past as capital of the heretical Fatimids, served as the center for the illustrious
Ayyubid dynasty and later, of course, the Mamluk Sultans. Damascus was similarly a
Muslim city with a proud political, cultural and intellectual history; Aleppo could
simply not be compared to either of the two cities in these terms.
However, one can still raise another thought-provoking matter: given that
Damascus was one of two pioneering examples of universalist biographical writing,
why didn’t the tradition “spill over” into Aleppo or other centers of Muslim
historiography? Admittedly, this is a highly complicated question which one cannot
hope to answer in a manner that is entirely satisfactory. Nevertheless, all evidence
seems to indicate that historiographical traditions, insofar as they are biographical in
nature, are indigenously invented rather than conceived as a result of outside
influence(s). One might point to the early tabaqat literature of hadith scholars in order
to refute this claim, but there are grave doubts as to whether that brand of writing was
indeed consciously historical; history as an independent or semi-independent discipline
came only with the early local biographers, who composed historical works dedicated to
the towns or regions in which they resided, and the universalist school initiated by Ibn
Khallikan in the late 13th century. The cosmopolitan, universalist traditions of Cairo and
Damascus emerged simultaneously; Cairene universalism did not “spill over” into
Damascus, nor did the reverse occur, and the approach of the leading exponents of this
joint Cairene-Damascene tradition was never adopted or imitated elsewhere in the
Muslim world. Presumably, local biographical collections, having appeared during the
waning of caliphal power, as well as being manifestations of local pride, were also
independently conceived. There is no evidence that al-Khatib’s history of Baghdad
inspired Ibn ‘Asakir to compose his work on Damascus; nor is there any
acknowledgement by the Aleppine Ibn al-‘Adim that Ibn ‘Asakir was his forerunner.
Traditions of biographical writing are therefore “invented”, and once they are
“invented” seem to be almost effortlessly perpetuated, as the local historiography of
Aleppo and the universalism of Damascus demonstrate. Historiographical traditions
may, on the other hand, disappear just as suddenly as they emerge; nowhere is this more
evident than in Cairo after the passing of the Mamluk period.
64
A significant feature of the Arabic historiography of the Ottoman period is the
relative paucity of Cairene biographical literature, both in comparison with the rich
Damascene tradition and, even more tellingly, in contrast to the city’s own
historiographical heritage in Mamluk times. P.M. Holt’s piece on the Arabic sources of
16th-18th century Ottoman Egypt, for instance, does not mention a single biographical
dictionary;184 nor does the more recent work of Michael Winter, specifically for the 16th
century.185 In fact, modern scholars are largely dependent on Syrian, particularly
Damascene, sources, in addition to Ottoman-Turkish sources, for the construction of
Egyptian history during the early phase of Ottoman rule.186 We now know that there are
indeed a few Egyptian biographical dictionaries dating from at least the 17th century, but
these are all of the local or restricted variety(s). The centennial dictionary, originally a
Cairene creation, is from the 16th century onwards perpetuated as a tradition not by the
Egyptians themselves, but rather by their Damascene counterparts. The art of
universalism in biographical writing belongs exclusively to Damascene historians after
the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands. In their efforts to cover as wide a geographical
scope as possible in their universalist dictionaries, Damascene historians often utilized
written sources from other parts of the Empire, including several Egyptian works. For
instance, we learn of a certain Badr al-Din al-‘Ala’i al-Misri, an Egyptian historian
whose work is now no longer extant, only from Ghazzi’s Kawakib.187 Ghazzi, whose
universalist approach to historiography compels him to consult texts from different parts
of the Ottoman Empire (if not quite the entire Muslim world), thereby reveals the
existence of certain historical works, now lost, that can only be accessed through his
own reproductions of them. We can ponder the nature of al-‘Ala’i al-Misri’s work only
through what is preserved of it in Ghazzi’s Kawakib, and Joseph Escovitz has
184 See P.M Holt, “Ottoman Egypt (1517-1798): An Account of Arabic Historical
Sources” in Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (New York, 1968), pp.
3-12. To his credit, Holt does not claim to be listing all the sources, but his study
is still almost comprehensive, as he mentions 18 historical works, many of which
are still unpublished.
185 See Michael Winter, “Ottoman Egypt, 1525-1609” in M.W. Daly (ed.), The
Cambridge History of Egypt: Modern Egypt From 1517 to the End of the
Twentieth Century, Vol. 2, pp. 1-3
186 See, for example, P.M Holt, Egypt & The Fertile Crescent, 1516-1922: A
Political History (Cornell, 1966), and more recently, Michael Winter, Egyptian
Society Under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798 (New York, 1992)
187 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 5
65
concluded that it is a chronicle combined with obituaries (wafayat) of notables provided
year-by-year.188 As such, it is a semi-biographical work, but it is a significant fact that
Ghazzi uses ‘Ala’i only for his entries on Egyptian notables, indicating that the
historical work is most likely of a local nature.
The 17th century is almost no different; biographical dictionaries produced in
Cairo exist, but they are noticeably restricted in scope, and like Ghazzi before him,
Muhibbi, through his biographies of Egyptian notables, preserves some sketches of
Cairene sources that are now lost. Among them is a certain Mudin al-Qawsuni’s
biographical dictionary dedicated to Cairo’s ‘ulama’ class; others deal with the
litterateurs and poets of the city. Muhibbi also utilizes the voluminous collection of al-
Minawi, who wrote a history of Sufis from the rise of Islam to his own day. Whether
our knowledge of Egyptian biographical writing during the first two centuries of
Ottoman can lead us to a firm conclusion that the tradition had experienced a decline is
a debatable issue. In terms of the level of output of the Cairene school of historiography,
there can be little doubt that, during the period in question, the total number of historical
works pales in comparison to the vast amount of literature produced in Mamluk times.
This in itself may be taken as an element of decline, but what of the fading universalism
in Egyptian biographical literature? Unlike the relatively straightforward task of
enumerating the historical works produced in the Ottoman era and comparing those to
the amount written during the reign of the Mamluk Sultans, the waning
cosmopolitanism and universalism in Egyptian historiography after the Ottoman
conquest cannot reasonably be termed “decline”, but rather a change in approach to
historical writing. Cairo itself had experienced a “decline”, in a sense, having been
superseded by Istanbul as capital of the universal Muslim state. But a political and
military decline does not necessarily correlate with a similar decline in historiography;
the fact that Cairo reverted to local and restricted biographical writing after the fall of
the Mamluk Empire can only be explained by a shift in the focus of its historians, now
eager to highlight the continued significance of their city and its notable individuals
despite its political fall from grace.
188 See Joseph H. Escovitz, “A Lost Source for the History of Early Ottoman
Egypt”, Journal of the American Oriental Society 97, 4 (1977), pp. 513-518
66
Other Arab regions likewise pale in comparison to the Damascene, and even
Aleppine, schools of biographical writing in particular and historical writing in general.
Judging by contemporary academic literature on Ottoman Palestine, for instance, an
indigenous historiographical tradition seems to have been virtually non-existent in the
first two centuries of Ottoman rule. Dror Ze’evi depends primarily on Ottoman
documents for his study of the district of Jerusalem,189 whereas Abdul-Karim Rafeq
utilizes Damascene histories to construct the political history of the city, at least for the
parts of relevance to the 16th and 17th centuries.190 The first biographical dictionary
composed in Jerusalem during the Ottoman period was completed well into the 18th
century by a certain Hasan ibn ‘Abd al-Latif, and this work was rather limited,
containing a very small number of biographies. More importantly, this Tarajim Ahl al-
Quds fi al-Qarn al-Thani ‘Ashar al-Hijri (Biographies of the People of Jerusalem in the
12th Hijri Century) was produced solely for the Damascene centennial biographer
Muradi’s benefit, as the latter had several contacts in different locations within the
Ottoman realms, and these correspondents supplied him with information on the events
and local notables of the city or region in question.191 Even the incomparable Egyptian
historian ‘Abdul-Rahman al-Jabarti initially took an interest in history as a mere
informant for Muradi, before deciding to complete his own work after his master
died.192
The Iraqi biographical dictionary of the 16th and 17th centuries was similar to its
Egyptian counterpart in the restrictedness, though not always the localism, of its
composition. But while Cairo was the sole representative of Egyptian historiography,
Iraq had three major centers of learning and scholarship in Basra, Najaf, and of course
Baghdad. Needless to say, some Iraqi biographers were Shi‘ites, and these had by the
Ottoman period created their own sub-genres of biographical literature, notably the
189 See Dror Ze’evi, An Ottoman Century: The District of Jerusalem in the 1600s
(New York, 1996)
190 See Abdul Karim Rafeq, “The Political History of Ottoman Jerusalem” in
Sylvia Auld & Robert Hillenbrand (eds.), Ottoman Jerusalem, The Living City:
1517-1917 (Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), pp. 25-37
191 Abdul-Karim Rafeq, “The ‘Ulama’ of Ottoman Jerusalem (16th-18th
Centuries)”, in Sylvia Auld & Robert Hillenbrand (eds.), Ottoman Jerusalem, The
Living City: 1517-1917 (Altajir World of Islam Trust, 2000), p. 46
192 David Ayalon, “The Historian al-Jabarti and His Background”, Bulletin of the
School of Oriental and African Studies 23, 2 (London, 1960), p. 224
67
dictionaries of sayyids (male descendants of the Prophet through the ‘Alid lineage).193
Collections of hadith transmitters, by then constituting a generally defunct biographical
tradition in other Muslim lands, were being compiled by Sunni and Shi‘ite scholars
alike well into the 17th century.194 There is also an example of biographical writing that
is devoted to litterateurs, compiled by a certain ‘Abd al-‘Ali b. Nasser (d. 1664), a
native of Bahrain who spent the better part of his life in Basra.195 Another noteworthy
dictionary of the 17th dictionary is ‘Abdul-Qadir b. ‘Umar al-Baghdadi’s (d. 1682)
Tarajim al-‘Ulama’ (Biographies of the Learned), the testimony of a well-travelled
scholar who had been to Cairo, Damascus, and journeyed as far west as Edirne within
the Ottoman realms.196 In terms of their comprehensiveness in geographical scope, the
Iraqi dictionaries were rather inclusive, but they are, in any case, examples of restricted
biographical writing in terms of profession, and thus do not belong to a similar
universalist tradition as that which existed in Damascus.
Ahmad ‘Ahdi (d. 1593), a native of Baghdad and a well-travelled individual,
having wandered through Anatolia and spent some time in Istanbul, wrote his Gülsen-i
Su‘ara (Garden of Poets) in Ottoman-Turkish about the poets whom he met or knew by
reputation through his travels. Individuals of different social status and occupation,
including Vezirs and Sultans, were included in his dictionary, as the main criterion of
selection was whether a person had written any poetry.197 As a Baghdadi who spent the
larger part of his life in his hometown, ‘Ahdi may be counted among the historians of
Ottoman Iraq, but more generally he belonged to the central Ottoman tradition of
biographical writing dedicated to poets, an obviously restricted sub-genre of
historiography. (Whether this was indeed historiography is itself a questionable matter
in any case.) The composition of biographical works on poets, a thriving tradition in
early Classical Islam, was by now all-but extinct in Damascus, due perhaps to the
development of a more universalist character in Damascene biography. Poets were wellrepresented
in the universal dictionaries of Damascenes, and long passages of poetry
193 Imad Abdul-Salam Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun fi al-‘Asr
al-‘Uthmani (Baghdad, 1983), pp. 85-86, hereafter Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l
Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun
194 See Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun, pp. 82-83 & 86-87
195 Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun, pp. 84-85
196 Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun, pp. 88-89
197 Raouf, Al-Tarikh wa’l Mu’arrikhun al-‘Iraqiyyun, pp. 81-82
68
were often quoted in biographical entries, but the dedication of entire volumes to poets
was no longer a common practice.
In the Ottoman center, on the other hand, the sub-genre of dictionaries dedicated
to poets quickly became rather popular and thrived from about the 16th century
onwards.198 These writers of the tezkeres, from prominent urban centers such as Bursa,
Edirne, and Istanbul itself among other locations, were evidently anxious to prolong
their genre just as the localists of Aleppo and the universalists of Damascus
demonstrated their passion for perpetuating their own brands of historical writing.199
But Ottoman Istanbul, then with its recently acquired image as the center of a Muslim
universe, did not create its own tradition of universalist biography. The closest the
Ottoman center came to producing universalist biographical writing was the 16th century
historian Tasköprüzade, though even his biographical dictionary, based at least on stated
intent, focused almost exclusively on ‘ulama’.200 It is significant that Istanbul in
particular did not produce its own variety of cosmopolitan and universalist writing; this
may be adduced to the fact that the great city by the Bosphorus was then relatively new
to the world of Islam, even if it had assumed a position of paramountcy over a great
number of Muslim dominions. One must not forget that, when the Ottomans
triumphantly entered the Arab lands and overcame their last rivals for universal
supremacy in the Sunni Muslim world during the course of the 16th century, Istanbul
had by then been under their rule for little more than half a century. More generally, the
Ottoman center’s cultivation of biographical collections dedicated to poets was
doubtless part of an effort by Ottoman biographers to highlight an aspect (among many)
of the cultural richness of the Empire.
Finally, and for once, we move beyond the Ottoman realms to that state’s Eastern
Frontiers. Persian biographical literature, while existent for centuries, similarly never
assumed the universalist approach that the Damascene and Cairene traditions
developed. Ann Lambton affirms that Persian biographical literature was “perhaps more
198 See J. Stew Art-Robinson, “The Ottoman Biographies of Poets”, Journal of
ear Eastern Studies, 24, ½ (Chicago, 1965), pp. 57-74
199 J. Stew Art-Robinson, “The Ottoman Biographies of Poets”, Journal of ear
Eastern Studies, 24, ½ (Chicago, 1965), p. 65
200 Barbara Flemming, Franz Babinger, Christine Woodhead, “Tashköprüzade” in
EI2 (Brill Online)
69
limited in scope than its Arabic counterpart”, and that the tradition did not include any
authors who resembled the comprehensive approach of the likes of Ibn Khallikan.201
Rather, biographical dictionaries in Persian were at all times restricted to certain social
or occupational groups, including Sufis and poets, but an almost inordinate proportion
of them were dedicated to Shi‘ite religious figures.202 Such was the case even before the
16th century, when the new Safavid sovereigns started working towards the
establishment of doctrinal uniformity in the lands of the old Persian Empire. The
Persian tradition also included several examples of local historiography, a genre which
was perpetuated for centuries.203 This is in stark contrast to the Sunni universalism of
certain strands of Arabic historical thought, and may be considered to represent a
localist attitude adopted by the vast majority of Persian scholars. It also indicates the
pride, conscious or otherwise, of the Persian intellectual elite in the glories of the pre-
Muslim past, before their age-old civilization was superseded by the Muslim empire,204
which at least in theory represented a more universally-oriented culture. At first, that
“other” civilization that had absorbed Persia into the lands of Islam was distinctly Arab
in terms of its political, military, and intellectual elite. The growth of localism in Persian
historiography can therefore also reasonably be attributed to a historical memory of the
shu‘ubiyya205 in the early centuries of Islam. In any event, it can now clearly be
observed that Damascus stood alone in the Ottoman period as the only major Muslim
urban center among countless others to have developed and sustained a biographical
tradition that was universalist and cosmopolitan in vision and scope.
201 Ann Lambton, “Persian Biographical Literature” in Bernard Lewis & P.M Holt
(eds.), Historians of the Middle East (London, 1962), p. 141, hereafter Lambton,
“Persian Biographical Literature”
202 Lambton, “Persian Biographical Literature”, p. 142
203 Lambton, “Persian Biographical Literature”, p. 144
204 Lambton, “Persian Biographical Literature”, p. 142
205 The Shu’ubiyya was an early movement in Islam denying the privileged
position of the Arabs in Muslim society; See S. Enderwitz, “Shu’ubiyya” in EI2
(Brill Online)
70
Part II.
A.
Ottoman Lives, Arabic Portraits: Situating Syrian Biographical Literature in an
Ottoman Context
The distinct natures of biographical writing in Aleppo and Damascus are patently
clear, and the contrasting historical visions of the two cities’ leading intellectuals are
also no less apparent. A question of greater difficulty arises, however, and that is the
connection between established historiographical realities and the self-identification of
their leading exponents. It can be taken as given that the identification with a Muslim
umma, as a self-evident truth and as a spiritual rather than geographical entity, was of
similarly utmost importance in the minds of all biographers, as they were themselves
members of the learned elite in Muslim society. This becomes obvious when
considering the predominance of the historians’ own kind (the ‘ulama’) in the
biographical dictionaries. But the umma, more specifically as a Dar al-Islam (House of
Islam), existed equally as a geographically limited area where the rule and law of Islam
prevailed, and stretched from India in the east to the Maghreb in the west. It is with this
geographical, as distinct from spiritual, “House of Islam” that the Damascene
universalists felt a markedly greater association than their Aleppine localist
counterparts. Evidence for this is the great effort exerted by Damascene historians of the
universalist tradition to gather information on notable men (and less often women) from
remote areas within the Dar al-Islam, areas which the biographers had never visited (ex.
Persia and Western North Africa) and with which they had never shared a similar
71
historical experience as part of the same Muslim state (India). Biographies of
individuals from those distant lands include entries not only on their ‘ulama’ classes,
but also rulers and, somewhat infrequently, state bureaucrats and administrators. By
contrast, Aleppine historians made a conscious effort to exclude notable individuals
within the umma who had never at least entered Aleppo itself, let alone the Ottoman
realms or the greater Bilad al-Sham region.
It is important for us to determine the levels of identification which the
biographers chose for themselves, in terms not of culture or religion, for which the
answer would be obvious, but rather geography. More specifically, what we are most
concerned with here is situating our biographers, and some of the individuals on whom
they wrote in their dictionaries, within an Ottoman setting, if that is indeed possible. It
must be stressed that the exercise here is not concerned with establishing whether there
was a high degree of loyalty to the Ottoman state, a matter which can and has been
easily answered in the affirmative, but rather the extent of the biographers’ (and some of
their subjects’) belonging to an Ottoman world. In attempting to offer some insight,
albeit slightly inconclusive, to this question, some key themes must be addressed.
Paramount among them is the discourse(s) on the Ottoman state and dynasty,
particularly the language and terminology used to portray and describe the Sultans and
the Empire as well as, on occasion, the capital city Istanbul. Also important are
biographies of certain members of the Ottoman bureaucratic and religious elite, both
provincial and central, as well as lesser men of non-Arab extraction; these may help us
establish general patterns of representation and reveal some principles through which
the biographers judged the subjects of their historical works. Ethnic awareness and
prejudice in the biographies of both Turkish-speaking and Arabic-speaking individuals
will also be discussed. Finally, accounts of Arabic-speaking travelers to the lands of the
Ottoman center, and Turkish-speaking Rumis going the other way, will be investigated.
The themes explored will allow us to shed greater light on the extent of the historians’
(and other Arabic-speaking individuals’) mental integration in an Ottoman world and
state.
72
1. From Rulers of Rum to Masters of Islam: Images of Sultan and State
Apart from the biographies of his “masters and peers” in the fields of Muslim
scholarship, who constitute the main purpose of Mut‘at al-Adhhan, the Damascene Ibn
Tulun writes on no more than a handful of provincial governors, but finds it necessary
to write on the two longest-reigning and most famous Mamluk sultans of his lifetime
(Qaitbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri) and, strangely, Tahmasp I the Safavid Shah, who is
instantly and derogatorily referred to as a “Kharijite heretic” (al-khariji al-mulhid).206
Most importantly, Ibn Tulun gives a biographical sketch of the Ottoman Sultan
Mehmed II, but chooses not to write on any of his successors (three of whom reigned
during Ibn Tulun’s lifetime).
It is a significant point that Ibn Tulun chose to write comparatively lengthy
biographies of the two Mamluk Sultans, but only a few lines on Mehmed the
“Conqueror,” and nothing at all about the latter’s successors Bayezid II, Selim I and
Süleyman I. In his chronicle Mufakahat al-Khillan, the Damascene historian offered a
mostly sober assessment of the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk domains, and if
anything seemed to look more favorably upon the Ottomans while condemning certain
practices of the Mamluks, such as their pillaging of Syrian villages while heading to the
field of battle at Marj Dabiq.207 His decision to include Qaitbay and Ghawri is
understandable, however, as they had ruled over the biographer’s native Damascus for
the longest period among the Mamluk Sultans of his lifetime, and were also perceived
as the most prominent. His choice of Mehmed II alone among Ottoman Sultans,
however, requires some explanation. The selection of Mehmed II is itself obvious, the
exclusion of his successors, in particular Selim and Süleyman, less so. Mehmed II was a
natural choice: a “mujahid, murabit” (both essentially meaning holy warrior, with
murabit often also connoting “frontier warfare”),208 and the conqueror of
Constantinople, the last vestige of Eastern Christian power, and a city that had eluded
capture since the very early days of Islam. Yet there is a strikingly erroneous detail that
206 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 311
207 See Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun; Mufakahat al-Khillan fi Hawadith al-Zaman
(Cairo, 1964), 2 Vols.
208 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 709
73
Ibn Tulun adds to his short biography of Fatih: “After him, his son Bayezid, known as
Yıldırım, meaning thunderbolt, assumed power.”209
Of course, Bayezid II was not known as Yıldırım; that was the title of an earlier
Sultan by the same name, and the reign of this Yıldırım Bayezid I ended a full 80 years
before Bayezid II ascended to the throne. This factual blunder leaves Ibn Tulun’s reader
in a state of complete bewilderment at the extent of his (lack of) knowledge of Ottoman
affairs. The Ottoman state and dynasty seems, to Ibn Tulun’s mind, not only remote, but
almost irrelevant, judging by his sheer ignorance of even the most basic historical facts.
The term murabit, which Ibn Tulun used to describe Mehmed II, is quite likely also an
indication of the perceived distance and remoteness of the Ottoman Sultan, since a
murabit is a person who engages in ribat, a term that often denotes the engagement not
merely in regular jihad (holy war), but holy war at the frontier.210 At any rate, the
Damascene biographer’s poor state of knowledge when it came to the Ottoman world,
as manifested in Mut‘at al-Adhhan, appears also to have been combined with a general
lack of interest, which explains his exclusion of Selim I and Süleyman I from the
dictionary, despite the fact that the former passed through Ibn Tulun’s hometown on
two occasions during his campaigns against the Mamluks. We do know that, at some
later point, Ibn Tulun did indeed develop a keener interest in the Ottoman dynasty,
dedicating a biographical collection to its Sultans, a work that is now lost. One wonders,
however, whether the Damascene historian committed similar errors of fact in that
volume as the one he made in connection to Mehmed II.
Ibn Tulun cannot, however, be taken to represent the general Damascene or even
Arab outlook towards the new rulers in terms of his apparent lack of knowledge and
interest, even at that very early stage. Ibn Tulun’s Damascene contemporary, Badr al-
Din al-Ghazzi, the father of the biographer Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi, took a trip to Rum as
early as the 1520’s and left a travelogue recording his experiences, in which he offers a
generally very flattering picture of the lands of the Ottoman center.211 The late 17th
century millennial biographer Ibn al-‘Imad also reveals that there was apparently some
209 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 709
210 For more on the term ribat and its various nuances, see J. Chabbi, “Ribat” in
EI2 (Brill Online)
211 An unpublished manuscript of this travelogue can still be found in Köprülü
Library in Istanbul; ms. No. 1390
74
Arab interest in the Ottoman state and dynasty long before the Ottomans acquired their
status as unrivalled masters of the Muslim world. According to Ibn al-Imad, Shihab al-
Din Ahmad b. al-Hussein of Mecca (d. 926/1519-20) composed a treatise dedicated to
Bayezid II, in which he offered eulogies of praise to the Sultan.212 This is a slightly
unusual case, not least because there is no indication that Shihab al-Din ever travelled to
Rum, or even left Mecca, where he eventually died and was buried. Nevertheless, it
confirms that there was, in certain circles, an interest in the world of the Rumis prior to
the Ottoman takeover of the central lands of Islam.
Ibn al-‘Imad offers more biographies of Arabic-speaking ‘ulama’ who exemplify
a relatively early Arab interest in the Ottoman world. In his Shadharat, we find some
examples of ‘ulama’ from Bilad al-Sham who went on fruitful journeys to Rum before
the Ottoman conquest. An outstanding case, ‘Ala’addin ‘Ali (d. 901/1495-96), known as
al-‘Arabi, was an Aleppine scholar who spent many years in the lands of the Ottoman
center, learning and teaching in Edirne, before finally passing away in Istanbul.213 There
are even individuals from Arabic-speaking regions which were never officially part of
the Ottoman realms but nevertheless chose to explore the Ottoman lands, seemingly out
of pure curiosity. One such example is ‘Ali b. Maymun of Fas (d. 917/1511-12), who
passed through Mamluk Egypt and Syria on his way to Rum, where he settled in Bursa
for some time, finally dying in Bilad al-Sham on his way back to the Maghreb. He
composed a travelogue in which the details of his journey were recorded, according to
Ibn al-‘Imad. ‘Ali b. Maymun’s biographer also reveals that he “did not acquire fame
for his knowledge and wisdom until he reached Hamah (in Syria) upon his return from
the lands of Rum (Bilad al-Rum).”214 Although Ibn al-‘Imad does not indicate why this
was the case, there is an implication in his statement that the Ottoman region of Rum
was already quite respected for its intellectual tradition in Syria even before the coming
of the Ottomans.
Indeed, there is also a clear effort by this universalist biographer to include several
Rumi and Ottoman individuals who had, crucially, lived before the Ottoman conquest of
Syria, the vast majority of whom were unsurprisingly ‘ulama’. This is significant
212 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 141
213 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 5
214 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 82
75
because the earlier dictionary of Ibn Tulun, a contemporary of those Rumis on whom
Ibn al-‘Imad wrote, had not demonstrated similar interest in the scholars of Rum. This is
surely related to the nature of Ibn Tulun’s work, which is of course predominantly
localist in scope and essence, but may also indicate the greater mental integration that
Damascene ‘ulama’ experienced in the next century as part of a greater Ottoman world.
In Ibn al-‘Imad’s millennial history, Rumis are recognized not simply as a minor or
secondary part of a far-flung Muslim community, but as an important constituent of the
umma even before the Ottomans’ expansion into the Arabic-speaking world.
The examples of Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi in Damascus, ‘Ala’addin al-‘Arabi in
Aleppo and Shihab al-Din Ahmad in Mecca indicate that, to some Arabic-speaking
elites, the Ottoman Empire was not an entirely remote or alien entity, and that they
themselves had (or would have had, in the case of al-‘Arabi) little difficulty in being
integrated in it once Selim I’s forces successfully conquered their lands of origin. ‘Ali b.
Maymun’s case is itself quite interesting, as he visited Rum well before Ottoman troops
came within touching distance of his homeland, and even received the benefits of Rumi
scholarship during his journey.
There is, however, a second important feature in Ibn Tulun’s biography of
Mehmed II; one of the terms used to describe the Ottoman Sultan is “the Sultan of the
lands (or country) of Rum (sultan bilad al-rum).”215 In Kawakib, Ghazzi uses the
synonymous term “the Sultan of Rum (sultan al-rum)” to describe Bayezid II,216 but to
no other Ottoman Sultan is the same term applied in Ghazzi’s first dictionary, nor does
it appear at a single point in his second biographical work Lutf al-Samar. It is known
that the Ottomans themselves described their Sultans as Sultan-i Rum, a Persianized
equivalent of the Arabic sultan al-rum, serving to indicate Ottoman mastery over the
territories of the defunct Byzantine (and therefore Roman, from which Rum derives)
Empire. Thus the branding of the House of Osman as Sultans of Rum is necessarily
considered an indication of the dynasty’s prestige; in the Arabic sultan al-rum,
however, the term assumes a second meaning, which is not contradictory to the first but
not as flattering either. In Ghazzi’s Kawakib, all Ottoman Sultans after Bayezid II are
described as “Sultans of Islam”; the implication by Ghazzi here is that, while the
215 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 709
216 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 122
76
Sultans of his lifetime certainly represented the entire Muslim umma, Bayezid is merely
recognized as the sovereign of a realm that is both territorially designated and spatially
(as well as spiritually) limited. The significantly more exalted title of later Sultans as
sovereigns of Islam certainly surely has to do with the Ottoman conquest of the Arab
lands, and more specifically their newly assumed status as protectors of the Holy
Shrines of Islam, which to Ghazzi gave the Ottomans a universal Muslim appeal that
they had previously lacked. Indeed, under Selim I, the Ottoman state becomes “The
Muslim Sultanate (al-saltana al-Islamiyya)”.217 This is in direct contrast to the
Mamluks, who are never referred to as such by Ghazzi or even earlier historians of the
16th century like Ibn al-Hanbali or Ibn Tulun.
Bayezid II, the subject of another biography by Ibn al-‘Imad, is again described
by the latter as “Sultan al-Rum”.218 In Shadharat, Selim I is also described as “the king
(malik) of Rum,” but only in the biography of the penultimate Mamluk Sultan Qansuh
al-Ghawri, and in the context of the second Mamluk-Ottoman war.219 That Selim is
given this title in his adversary’s biography is understandable because the Ottoman
dynasty, before vanquishing the Mamluks, had not yet acquired the right or privilege of
considering itself the sole Muslim power with universal appeal. In Selim I’s own
biography, however, the House of Osman is viewed rather differently; no longer was its
rule regarded as territorially restricted to Rum, but rather came to be seen as a “house
(i.e. the House of Osman) on which the foundations of the Muslim Sultanate were
raised by God.”220
Only in the works of Ibn Tulun, Ghazzi, and Ibn al-‘Imad are Ottoman Sultans
ever referred to simply as rulers of Rum, and this invariably occurs in a historical
context preceding the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands. Abdul-Karim Rafeq is
therefore mistaken in his assertion that sultan al-rum was a designation consistently
applied to all Ottoman Sultans after 1516. He is correct, however, in indicating that,
while Mamluk rulers were frequently referred to as “our Sultan (sultanuna),” their
Ottoman successors did not receive the same label. As Rafeq himself explains, “the
217 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 1, p. 208
218 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 86
219 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 114
220 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 143
77
reason, it seems, is that the Mamluk Sultan… was more visible locally. He governed
from the capital in Cairo, visited Syria on occasion, defended the country, and died and
was buried in it. The Ottomans, by contrast, for the first time in Arab-Islamic history
transferred the seat of power outside the Arab world, to Istanbul.”221 While it appears
true that Ottoman Sultans seemed more alien to their Syrian-Arab subjects than the
Mamluks, it is by the same token not unreasonable to suggest that the Ottoman dynasty,
to its Syrian-Arab biographers, held greater Islamic prestige. In the dictionaries of
Ghazzi, Ibn Tulun and Ibn al-‘Imad, Mamluk Sultans are nowhere referred to as
“Sultans of Islam,” an honorific denoting universality that was given only to the
Ottomans, and also frequently used by other biographers such as Burini, Muhibbi, and
the Aleppine ‘Urdi. Other complimentary phrases were coined or recycled by the Syrian
biographers to describe their rulers. On one occasion, Burini refers to Ahmed I as “the
king of kings of all the lands (malik mulook al-anam)”, while his predecessor Mehmed
III earns the title “servitor of the Two Holy Cities (khadim al-Haramayn al-Sharifayn)”
in Ghazzi’s Lutf al-Samar, and is in fact the only Sultan in all Syrian biographical
collections of the 16th and 17th centuries to receive it.222
Ottoman Sultans are also often referred to as al-Sultan al-A‘zam (the greatest or
most exalted Sultan) as distinct from merely al-Sultan al-‘Azim (simply great or exalted
Sultan), a term reserved for other, lesser Muslim sovereigns such as rulers in the Indian
subcontinent and the Maghreb. This is particularly the case in Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-
Athar. The designation of the Ottoman Sultan as a Sultan A‘zam naturally stems from
the dominant position of the Ottomans among other Muslim states, but can also be
regarded as a conscious acknowledgment by the biographers that they were situated
within the Ottoman realms and an Ottoman world. It is inconceivable that historians
writing in other Muslim states would have used the term Sultan al-A‘zam in reference to
the rulers of the Ottoman Empire. The transformation of the Ottoman Sultans’ image
from rulers of a specific region called Rum and a particular people (Rumis) to
sovereigns of a universal community of Islam in the eyes of their Arabic-speaking
221 Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’...”, p. 87
222 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 153. Needless to say, this does not mean that
the other Sultans were not considered to have held the same title, but only in
Ghazzi’s biography of Mehmed III does it appear.
78
biographers was, thus, achieved in as little or even less time than the Ottoman state’s
own rise from obscurity as an Anatolian beylik to a major Mediterranean power.
Apart from the language and discourse used to depict the Ottoman Sultans, there
is not much information that is of great interest in their biographies, nor do these
biographies add much to our knowledge of the Sultans’ lives or reigns. The biographers,
however, focus on certain themes in their portraits of the ultimate sovereigns of Islam.
All Sultans are depicted, quite naturally, as pious and committed Muslims; a reader of
the biographical dictionaries would scarcely notice any signs of one Sultan seeming less
virtuous or morally-guided than any of his predecessors and successors. The Sultans’
patronage and construction of religious foundations and the treatment of the ‘ulama’
class of Istanbul (always positive) are also commonly discussed, but again one would be
hard-pressed to detect any significant differences in the portrayals of the different
Sultans’ custodianship of pious institutions. When a Sultan is known to have been an
avid poet, that is sometimes mentioned and, on occasion, their poetry is cited and even
discussed (always flatteringly). Due to the relative concision of his entries, the
millennial biographer Ibn al-‘Imad appears less interested in the Ottoman Sultans’
poetry than the likes of Ghazzi and especially Muhibbi, the latter of whom generally
provides the greatest amount of detail in his biographies.
The Sultans’ military exploits or, otherwise, the successful conquests
accomplished in their names (when Sultans were in fact not active participants in
military campaigns) also receive special attention. In an article on the Damascene
biographer Ghazzi, Michael Winter rightly indicates the peculiarity behind this
historian’s neglect of Süleyman I’s military campaigns in the latter’s biography in
Kawakib. Winter writes on Ghazzi’s biography of Sultan Süleyman: “his campaigns are
not mentioned, which can be taken as an indication for the extent that Ghazzi was
obsessed with religious considerations to the exclusion of almost everything else.”223 It
is of course rather evident that Ghazzi’s emphasis in Kawakib as in Lutf al-Samar was
on religious matters, but this does not distinguish him greatly from the other
biographers, with the possible exception of Burini, whose close relations with Ottoman
bureaucrats in Damascus gave the temporal authorities greater representation in Tarajim
223 Winter, “al-Gazzi”; p. 2
79
al-A‘yan than in other dictionaries. But more seriously, Winter fails to note that
Ghazzi’s inattention to Süleyman’s campaigns represent an exceptional lapse, rather
than a general pattern of emphasis which the Damascene biographer followed in his
entries. This becomes evident in the biographies of other Sultans in both Kawakib and
Lutf al-Samar. For instance, the only aspect of Mehmed III’s tenure as Sultan that
Ghazzi elaborates on in some length is his achievement on the field of battle against
Christian armies in the West.224 As for the similarly brief biography of Ahmed I, Ghazzi
identifies the Ottomans’ defeat of some Celali rebels among the principal achievements
during that Sultan’s reign.225 And as Michael Winter himself indicates, Selim I was
admired for his accomplishments in the field of battle, particularly his defeat of the Shi‘i
Safavids.226
One last point seems worthy of note in the context of the Syrian scholars’
biographies of Ottoman Sultans. It is significant that the Damascene Muhammad Khalil
al-Muradi, writing in the late 18th century, does not include a single Ottoman Sultan in
his centennial biographical collection. And yet he chose to include a Muslim sovereign
in the remote lands of the Indian sub-continent in the dictionary.227 Quite naturally, this
indicated the growing irrelevance of the authorities in the Ottoman capital with the
gradual rise of certain centrifugal tendencies and the semi-autonomous status achieved
by the ‘Azm family in the province of Damascus, which had been dominated by it since
the 1720s. As such, Muradi manifests an ostensibly localist sentiment within a
universalist historiographical framework; the historical worldview of the Damascene
intellectual elite had not changed, but its attitude (or at least that of one of its major
exponents) towards matters of a more specific nature was being slowly transformed as
local forces successfully consolidated their power in the city. We are of course not
directly concerned with Muradi, whose biographical work clearly reflects a period of
historical change in Damascus during the 18th century, but his example sheds some light
on our own biographers, particularly the universalists among them. Although it is
difficult, with any degree of precision, to determine the extent of the Damascene
historians’ integration into an Ottoman world solely through their depictions of their
224 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, pp. 153-155
225 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 273
226 Winter, “al-Gazzi”; p. 2
227 Rafeq, “Relations Between the Syrian ‘Ulama’...”, p. 87
80
sublime sovereigns, it is nevertheless clear that they had a greater feeling of belonging
to the Empire than their successor Muradi by mere virtue of having included Sultans in
their biographical collections. And they, of course, played a not insignificant role in
perpetuating the Ottoman dynasty’s image as a legitimately universal Muslim line of
rulers, nobly and virtuously serving the Dar al-Islam, over which they reigned supreme.
In direct correspondence to the transformed image of the House of Osman from
Sultans of Rum to universal Muslim sovereigns, discourses on the Ottoman state and
capital equally stressed the universality of the state and eulogized the imperial city. The
special religious significance of Istanbul, then a relatively newly emergent reality, and
one which would have been unthinkable only decades earlier, is clearly manifest in Ibn
al-Hanbali’s and Ghazzi’s works, the latter repeatedly referring to the imperial city as
Islambol, a term he must have picked up while on his journeys in Rum. Ghazzi’s father
Badr al-Din, an even earlier observer and a visitor to the city, repeatedly refers to
Istanbul as “glorious/much exalted Contantinople (Qustantiniyya al-‘Uzma)” in his
travelogue.228 Also in the 17th century, ‘Urdi describes Istanbul as “the home of the
Sunni Sultanate (dar al-saltana al-sunniyya)”,229 a tribute to both dynasty and capital
city, while Muhibbi uses the term “Dar al-Khilafa,” literally meaning the house or
home of the caliphate, in reference to Istanbul, where he spent 5 years. That the
Ottoman capital is, at this relatively early stage, regarded as the home of a universal
caliphate by an Arabic-speaking observer, is quite significant.230 No less important is
‘Urdi’s designation of the city as a “home” for a universal, Sunni dynasty, particularly
considering ‘Urdi’s defamatory attitude towards the Shi‘ites and Druzes in his
dictionary.231
228 See Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi; Al-Matali‘ al-Badriyya fi al-Manazim al-Rumiyya;
ms. no. 1390; Köprülü Kütüphanesi, Istanbul
229 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 69. There is a distinct possibility that sunniyya
may in fact be saniyya, meaning brilliant/splendid. It is unfortunately quite
impossible to draw definitive conclusions from the context in which the phrase
occurs, but in any case the word saniyya would be no less flattering than sunniyya.
230 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 12
231 See, for instance, biographies of the Druze Abu Bakr al-Armanazi in Ma‘adin
al-Dhahab, pp. 65-68, and the Twelver Shi’ite Baha’ al-Din al-‘Amili, pp. 287-
292. Despite his personal relations with some members of the Shi’ite community
in Aleppo, ‘Urdi, as Shafi’i mufti in his hometown Aleppo, was clearly intolerant
of the creeds and practices of heterodox and heretical sects in Islam.
81
‘Urdi was just as vocal in his praise for the state, using such expressions as “the
Ottoman state, may God uphold its authority till the end of days”232 and, when speaking
of the House of Osman, wishing that “god preserve their rule for all eternity.”233
Admittedly, it is difficult to assess whether such phrases as those in ‘Urdi’s and other
biographical dictionaries are in fact mere expressions of loyalty or actual manifestations
of a feeling of belonging in an Ottoman setting. As these and other eulogistic phrases
appear frequently in several historical sources of the period in question, distinguishing
those among them that may be effective statements of self-identification from others
that are not much more than simple flattery is far from a straightforward task. In the
specific case of ‘Urdi, it would be exceedingly difficult to accept that the Aleppine
biographer, having never left his hometown and possessing relatively little knowledge
of the outside world, could identify with a broader Ottoman world, though that is still
not entirely impossible. Nevertheless, the mere inclusion of such expressions in the
biographical dictionaries is itself significant.
When referring to the position of mufti in Istanbul, ‘Urdi’s Aleppine predecessor
Ibn al-Hanbali feels forced to correct himself when initially naming it “mufti of the
Rumi dominions (mufti al-mamalik al-Rumiyya),” adding the phrase: “or rather, the
mufti of the Muslim dominions (mufti al-mamalik al-Islamiyya).”234 Ibn al-Hanbali’s
self-correction is an apt demonstration of the shifting discourse on the Ottomans in
Syrian historical sources of the 16th century; the Aleppine biographer recognizes the
universality of the state and its chief religious officer, the mufti of Istanbul, while
bringing to mind memories of a bygone era, when that same prestigious position in the
Ottoman realms could not boast universal Muslim appeal. Muhibbi, writing over a
century later, also refers to a number of muftis of Istanbul as “mufti al-mamalik al-
Islamiyya,” which importantly indicates that Arab ‘ulama’ were not only resigned, but
readily acceptant, of the Turkish-speaking Rumis’ dominance of the highest positions in
the Ottoman religious hierarchy.
Another important point relates to the Ottoman state (dawla) which, along with its
ruling dynasty, acquired universal Muslim appeal after the Ottoman conquest of Syria
232 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 313
233 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 332
234 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 2, p. 604
82
and Egypt in 1516-17. Prior to the conquest, the Ottoman state was never referred to in
terms denoting universality, but rather as a “dawla rumiyya” (Rumi state) or “mamlaka
rumiyya” (Rumi kingdom). Allusions to a “Rumi state,” a “Rumi kingdom” or even a
“dawla turkiyya” (Turkish state) can still be found, particularly in Ghazzi’s Kawakib, in
reference to the Ottoman state after its successful takeover of the Arab lands, but they
are few and not as consistently used by the biographers as descriptions of the Ottoman
state as, for example, “al-dawla al-jarkasiyya” (literally “the Circassian state”) is in
connection with the Mamluk state. When the term dawla is used, at any rate, it does not
always denote “state”, but often may also mean “turn,” indicating the turn in power of a
specific group, dynasty, or even people (in this case “Turks” or “Circassians”).235 This
is evidently the case when biographers use the term “dawla rumiyya,” in which they aim
to demonstrate that the historical epoch they are describing is the “period” or “turn” of
the Rumis.
2. Of Vice and Virtue
There are a number of entries in the biographical collections, Damascene and
Aleppine alike, which epitomize the biographers’ approach to the assessment and
characterization of notable individuals in their works, either as possessors of features
that are praise-worthy or, otherwise, men whose qualities could only be regarded as
derogatory. These allow the reader to draw certain conclusions concerning the general
outlook of the biographers and the attributes that they themselves regarded as necessary
for the portrayal of individuals in a positive or negative light. Some common themes do
appear, notably the administration of justice (or lack thereof) by provincial or district
governors as well as Ottoman judges. Another, related and complementary to but not
identical with the first, concerns the proper exercise of worldly power, be it morallyguided
or corrupt and oppressive. A recurrent theme in all biographical dictionaries
concerns the treatment of the ‘ulama’ classes, in Ottoman Syria as in other regions of
the Ottoman and Muslim worlds, by rulers and state bureaucrats. At times there are
even discussions of the piety of individuals serving in the structures of temporal
235 For more on the term dawla, see Bernard Lewis, “Devlet and Hükümet” in
Political Words and Ideas in Islam (Princeton, 2007), pp. 3-10
83
authority. Below is a select group of examples, mostly individuals from Ottoman
administrative circles, which typify the major characteristics of vice and virtue
discussed by the biographers, but some, particularly those in which the individual in
question is negatively treated, are also among the most interesting and thoughtprovoking
entries offered in the biographical collections.
Ibrahim Pasha (d. 1013/1604-1605), known as Hacı for his noted piety, was first
a defterdar and later a beylerbeyi in Aleppo. His greatest achievement was apparently
the expulsion of Damascene janissaries wreaking havoc in Aleppo and its countryside,
an accomplishment which his Aleppine biographer ‘Urdi predictably applauds. Hacı
Ibrahim Pasha was apparently most reputed for his sense of justice and righteousness,
however; according to ‘Urdi, Ibrahim Pasha himself presided over several court cases,
to the point that “during his time, the judge’s doors were shut.”236 Evidently, the
Ottoman qadi of the time, Muzaffer Efendi, was no longer needed, nor was he consulted
by the governor of Aleppo, a situation that was greatly unusual, and probably without
precedent, in the history of Ottoman Syria. The people of Aleppo, having grown so fond
of their governor, reportedly wept for Ibrahim Pasha after he was transferred to the
governorship of Egypt,237 where he came to be involved in local Mamluk intrigues,
eventually leading to his violent murder.238
There is a single crucial element in ‘Urdi’s biography of Ibrahim Pasha, and
indeed in other biographies which give reference to the Damascene janissaries’ violent
acts in Aleppo. Whenever the transgressions of Damascene janissaries in Aleppo are
mentioned, the troops are referred to as “Damascenes” (dimashqiyyun), which is
unusual considering the fact that ‘Urdi certainly knew that the majority of these
janissaries were not actually Damascenes by birth or origin, nor were they speakers of
Arabic. This, however, is possibly an indication of a sense of local rivalry, resentment
and even envy that Aleppine elites may have felt with regard to the superior political
position of Damascus in Bilad al-Sham during the Ottoman period and in earlier epochs
as well. The description of the janissaries of Damascus as “Damascenes” rather than
merely disorderly Ottoman troops speaks volumes about the state of mind of the
236 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 77
237 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 78
238 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 80
84
Aleppine intellectual during the 17th century, but it is difficult to build definite
conclusions since ‘Urdi stands alone as a historian of Aleppo during this period.
Nevertheless, there is a clear contrast between ‘Urdi’s depiction of the Ottoman
troops of Damascus and the accounts offered by Damascene biographers such as Burini
and Muhibbi. In his own biography of Hacı Ibrahim Pasha, Burini, a full generation
older than his Aleppine counterpart, writes only briefly of the governor’s exploits
against the Damascene troops, but of course does not describe them as “Damascenes”.
The term Burini uses, the “janissaries of Damascus (yeniçeriyyat al-Sham)”, is more
accurate and neutral than that which ‘Urdi selects. Similarly, Muhibbi chooses a
straightforward and unbiased term, the “soldiers of Damascus (Jund al-Sham)”, in
reference to the janissaries serving in his hometown and its peripheries.239 Although
Burini does not dwell greatly on the issue or on the career of the beylerbeyi of Aleppo,
he heaps the highest possible praise on Ibrahim Pasha, comparing his spirit of justice
and general goodwill to that of the Rashidun caliphs of early Islam.240 Both Muhibbi
and Burini appear openly sympathetic to the city and people of Aleppo when speaking
of the damage inflicted by the Damascene janissaries on ‘Urdi’s hometown. But they, of
course, do not manifest similar sentiments of local rivalry as their Aleppine counterpart.
Another Pasha known as Hafız Ahmed (d. 1031/1621-22) ascended to the Grand
Vizierate, but before assuming the highest post in the Ottoman bureaucracy served as
beylerbeyi in Damascus for 7 years. On his way to that city, he passed through Aleppo,
which of course enabled ‘Urdi to include him in his history. In contrast to Hacı Ibrahim
Pasha of Aleppo, Hafız Ahmed Pasha is portrayed by ‘Urdi as a gluttonous, moneygrubbing
individual and one who pursued all types of worldly pleasures, elements of his
character which the Aleppine historian views with a great deal of disdain. Hafız Ahmed
Pasha accepted bribes for the appointment of individuals to important posts in the
Damascene administration. He unjustly confiscated the possessions of some
Damascenes and received several additional unwarranted payments from them,
according to ‘Urdi. When Ahmed Pasha became Grand Vezir, people in the Sultan’s
circle purportedly tried to keep a distance between him and the ultimate Muslim
239 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 449
240 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 320
85
sovereign, apparently because they feared that Ahmed Pasha could exert some influence
on the Sultan with his “intelligence, trickery, and deceptiveness.”241
A similarly despised Ottoman governor was Mehmed Pasha (d. 1033/1624), a
beylerbeyi of Aleppo later demoted to the sancak of Adana, a man infamous in much of
Syria and Eastern Anatolia for his unjust administration wherever he governed.
According to Ghazzi, Mehmed Pasha’s reputation for over-taxation and general
oppression preceded him even in Istanbul (Islambol, to Ghazzi’s taste), which the
biographer discovered first-hand during his visit to the imperial capital.242 Ghazzi
claims to have asked some of his colleagues in the ‘ulama’ class of Istanbul about the
circumstances of Mehmed Pasha’s appointment to the sancak of Adana, which was
granted despite his notoriously terrible record of service as governor in Aleppo. The
answer was that the Grand Vezir (who is unnamed, but may well be Hafız Ahmed Pasha
himself) had earlier promised Mehmed the governorship of Aleppo for a huge sum of
money, and fearing potential embarrassment if Mehmed Pasha were to be summarily
dismissed and summoned to Istanbul, whereupon the Grand Vezir’s own reputation may
have been tarnished had Mehmed decided to expose him, he chose merely to demote
Mehmed to the rank of sancakbeyi.243 Sadly for Ghazzi, during the tenure of the next
Grand Vezir Ali Pasha, Mehmed was promoted to the governorship of the province of
Damascus, the biographer’s hometown, purportedly due to Ali Pasha’s close
acquaintance with Mehmed Pasha’s brother.244 His tenure in Damascus was rather brief
and uneventful, however, but somewhat surprisingly Ghazzi reports that his one
personal encounter with the Pasha was pleasant, without indicating the circumstances
behind their meeting.245
Very few individuals, however, are given such horrible and disturbing
assessments as Deli Ibrahim Pasha in Burini’s Tarajim al-A‘yan, and fewer still receive
such vivid descriptions of their careers and characters by their biographers. Deli Ibrahim
Pasha was of Armenian origin, according to Burini, and after serving in the imperial
palace in Istanbul during his childhood and early youth, rose through the ranks and was
241 ‘Urdi, Ma‘adin al-Dhahab, p. 140
242 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 202
243 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 203
244 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, pp. 204-205
245 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 212
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eventually assigned to the governorship of Diyarbakır. His reign was one of great terror
and violence, as he “displayed a brand of injustice that any individual with an ounce of
faith cannot possibly accept.”246 Burini goes on to claim that “he attempted to make the
acquaintance of every woman whose reputation for beauty he had heard of, and by any
means possible.”247 An especially terrible anecdote that Burini relates is Deli Pasha’s
violent confiscation of a considerable sum of money from a certain Recep Hoca, a
wealthy notable of Diyarbakır. After forcibly giving up 5000 gold pieces, Recep was
killed and sliced into four pieces for no apparent reason. The numerous transgressions
and injustices committed by Deli Pasha provoked a reaction from the notables of the
province, who launched a petition to Sultan Murad III, leading to the Pasha’s arrest.248
At his trial, according to Burini, those who had initially accused him of misbehavior
were hugely uncomfortable testifying against the governor in an Ottoman court,
allegedly because Ibrahim’s sister was “very well-liked by the Sultan”.249 Đ.H.
Danismend reveals that Ibrahim’s sister was, in fact, a famous ketkhüda of the imperial
harem, known as Canfeda Hatun, a woman who indeed wielded considerable power.250
Burini himself reveals that this sister had earlier also entered the palace service along
with Ibrahim and another of her brothers (Mahmud).251 Canfeda Hatun’s power and
influence, of course, clearly explains the Diyarbakır notables’ fear of indicting their
governor.
At any rate, Deli Pasha was immediately restored to his office in Diyarbakır, and
there he exacted vengeance on many of those who had earlier condemned him and
continued with his unrelentingly violent and oppressive ways until the people of
Diyarbakır (commoners as well as notables) were provoked into a state of open
rebellion against the Pasha. Deli Pasha violently suppressed the uprising and committed
acts of unspeakable inhumanity, but his demise came with the accession of Mehmed III
246 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 321
247 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 321
248 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 321
249 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 322
250 Đ.H. Danismend; Đzahlı Osmanlı Tarihi Kronolojisi (Istanbul, 1972), Vol. 3, p.
521. For more on Canfeda Hatun and the extent of her influence, see Leslie
Pierce, The Imperial Harem: Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire
(Oxford, 1993), pp. 131-32
251 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 321
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to the Ottoman throne and the latter, already acquainted with the man and familiar with
his history and temperament, ultimately had him arrested and hanged. In his final hours,
Deli Pasha was surrounded by executioners (jalladun), and after his killing his body
was thrown into the sea, before his sister intervened and pleaded with the authorities to
give her brother Ibrahim a proper burial.252 The fact that Ibrahim was hanged is
testament to the remarkably sinister reputation he had acquired during his tenure in
Diyarbakır. Even some of the most notorious of rebels, traitors and dissenters, such as
Ali Canbulad and some Celalis who were Deli Pasha’s contemporaries, were strangled
to death, as strangling was an (in fact the only) indication of honorable death. Deli
Pasha’s death, on the other hand, was hardly honorable, but to Burini, the man had
surely received his just rewards.253 It is interesting, however, that Deli Ibrahim is neither
explicitly nor latently castigated in any way for his ethnic or cultural origins. Rather,
Burini seems to view his case as one in which Muslim (and Ottoman) justice was
served, even if it was achieved after a long overdue point.
Deli Ibrahim Pasha was not the only Ottoman official responsible for sparking a
popular urban uprising in the eastern provinces of the Empire. Ahmed b. Süleyman, a
contemporary of Burini, an Ottoman judge in Damascus and apparently a native of
Ankara, acquired notoriety for his unparalleled record of corruption, according to his
biographer. Burini claims that Ahmed Efendi never refused a bribe and lacked any
sense of justice.254 During Ahmed’s tenure, even the sale of charitable endowments
(waqf) was seemingly limitless, prompting one observer to compose the following
verse:
“In Ahmed’s time, waqfs were sold in so great a number
Until they were worth little more than cucumber”255
Ahmed Efendi’s term ended in disgrace, as he was stoned by some of the city’s
commoners (‘awam), who demanded that his tenure be terminated, which it indeed was
252 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 322
253 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 322
254 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 85
255 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 86
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shortly thereafter.256 This qadi, among the most disreputable figures in Burini’s Tarajim
al-A‘yan (as well as Ghazzi’s Lutf al-Samar, where Burini’s account is slightly abridged
but otherwise reproduced verbatim), is denounced not for belonging to a certain ethnic
background, but simply for his numerous vices.
Nevertheless, such dishonest Ottoman officials as Ahmed Efendi are naturally
and inevitably counter-posed by men of similar power and prestige who chose not to
use their positions for greater worldly or material gain. For instance, Dervis Pasha (d.
985/1577-78), a beylerbeyi of Damascus, is applauded for his conduct during the spread
of the plague in Damascus. According to Ghazzi, a convicted man who was imprisoned
for failing to pay his debts fell violently ill, and realizing the danger this presented for
the other prisoners Dervis Pasha had him immediately released. He then proceeded to
reconcile all those who were in prison on similar charges with their creditors, and had
the first group released, thus helping avert what may have developed into a human
disaster.257
Nor were vices only indicated by the biographers when they applied to men who
possessed worldly or religious authority. One apparently dishonorable civilian is
Ibrahim of Karaman (d. 964/1557), a man who was considered among the notable
merchants in Aleppo. According to the Aleppine historian Ibn al-Hanbali, Ibrahim,
initially a donkey-seller, made a fortune from his dealings in various markets, both
“forbidden” (haram) and “permissible” (halal), and managed to accumulate 100000
akçes towards the end of his life. Ibrahim also owned many slaves; on two separate
occasions slaves managed to steal some of their master’s money, and were punished
severely. The first attempted to escape but, when located by his master, was promptly
crucified at the gate of one of Aleppo’s old marketplaces.258 The second, dragged
through the streets of the city while attached to the tail of a horse, was a victim of
incessant torture and ridicule.259 Despite his purportedly unlawful trading activities and
his blatant cruelty, Ibrahim is condemned only for his general lack of virtue, and his
256 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, pp. 90-91
257 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 150
258 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 88
259 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 89
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biography is devoid of any allusions to his ethnic or cultural background as causes of
his terrible actions and immorality.
There are certain cases where odd eccentricities of certain individuals, viewed
neither positively nor negatively, are noted. Ibrahim Pasha (d. 1010/1601-2), a governor
in Egypt at one point and eventually an Ottoman and Muslim martyr in the battlefield
against Christian forces in the Balkans, is depicted as a man of many virtues by Burini.
A certain oddity from his career in Egypt, however, stands out as the most interesting
episode of his tenure as governor. Ibrahim Pasha apparently wished to tear down the
pyramids, in the belief that they contained great treasures of earlier monarchs. He was
eventually discouraged from doing so, as a warning came his way that the pyramids
may have unleashed bizarre, even unwelcome, mysteries if torn down. Those who
persuaded Ibrahim Pasha to abandon his initial plan of destroying the pyramids
apparently informed the man that the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun had long ago
attempted and failed in achieving that very aim.260
There are also instances where the biographer is perhaps expected to be more
critical of a notable individual when the latter displays an unquenched thirst for worldly
pleasures. For instance, Muhibbi writes of Hasan Pasha (d. 1054/1644-45), a sancakbeyi
in Gaza whose tenure appears to have been largely uneventful but is nevertheless judged
positively. Hasan Pasha, however, acquired a reputation for his love of women and
engaged in sexual activity with several women in Gaza. In his lifetime, he was the
father of no less than 85 children, according to Muhibbi, and unsurprisingly did not
know most of their names. His insatiable hunger for the pleasures of the material world
put him badly in debt; during his term as district governor, he oversaw the construction
of a lavish park in Gaza which was never completed after his death.261 Such
eccentricities did not receive any negative comment by Muhibbi, who merely remarked
that the Pasha had an enjoyable life, and admired him for his sexual prowess. It is
possible that Hasan Pasha of Gaza was, at one point or another, married to all the
women with whom he engaged in sexual activities, or more likely that his female slaves
were the victims of his lust and bore him children, which by Islamic law would have
260 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 323
261 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 16
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been perfectly legitimate. In any case, he escaped any denigration or criticism from his
Damascene biographer Muhibbi.
Other similarly prominent individuals, of course, were praised precisely for their
avoidance of certain splendors of the material world. Perviz Pasha (d. 1015/ 1606), a
Rumi who was initially a slave in an Ottoman household before rising through the ranks
and becoming a beylerbeyi (of an unnamed province), spent his last years in retirement
in Ghazzi’s hometown Damascus. In his short biography of the man, Ghazzi deems it
worthy of note that Perviz Pasha “did not drink alcohol, and did not look favorably
upon those among his followers who drank it. He punished those who drank alcohol and
removed them from his service.”262 One must assume that, since Ghazzi chose to point
to this fact and recognize the virtue of Perviz Pasha partly through it, other Pashas’
drinking habits were almost taken for granted by the learned men of Bilad al-Sham.
Indeed, allusions to drinking or other such immoral habits are few and far between. As
such, when they are mentioned they must represent anomalies that are worthy of
comment, whether laudatory or derisive. Ghazzi’s friend Burini, it may be recalled, was
also a drinker of alcohol, and according to Ghazzi developed this immoral habit because
of his personal relations with Ottoman officials in Damascus. This, of course, confirms
that the common perception at the time, rightly or wrongly, was that individuals serving
the bureaucratic and administrative institutions of the state were alcohol-drinkers and,
therefore, did not represent the highest of moral virtues. It does not, however,
necessarily mean that Ottomans in particular were viewed as morally corrupt, but
simply that temporal authorities in general were perceived as inferior to the ‘ulama’ in
terms of their knowledge, faith, and therefore also in their morality (which in the
context of Islamic societies was probably true). Perviz Pasha, in any case, died on the
battlefield when he was allegedly close to 100 years old, according to his biographer,
when voluntarily joining Damascene troops in their defense of the city against the
forces of the rebellious Pasha of Aleppo, Ali Canbulad.263
For all biographers, one of the most important virtues that good men in worldly
office possess is a respect, admiration and even appreciation for the ‘ulama’, the class to
which the biographers themselves belonged. It follows, therefore, that those who are
262 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 340
263 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 340
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involved in what is perceived as the ill-treatment of the intellectual elite in Muslim
societies are treated very negatively in the biographical collections. As such, the Rumi
tax-collector in Damascus, Iskender b. Ishak (d. 1061/1650-51), a man who was
apparently of Bosnian origin, is despised by Muhibbi since he “sought to impoverish the
pious (sulaha’) and the learned (‘ulama’).”264 Sadly, Muhibbi does not elaborate on this
contention, nor does he give evidence for the ways in which Iskender had attempted to
deprive the ‘ulama’ of their possessions or finances. Nevertheless, Iskender’s general
unpopularity is noted, and his policies seem to have accomplished their purpose, albeit
temporarily, as Muhibbi wrote that “the power of the ‘ulama’ in Damascus was
decreased and poverty was inflicted upon them.”265 Not long after leaving Damascus,
Iskender was stabbed and killed in Istanbul, and Muhibbi seemed to applaud this violent
turn of events, citing two poems by unnamed authors which rejoiced the killing of a
man who was certainly disliked in the city in which he had served. One of the poems
was particularly cynical and rather scornful:
“They inform us that Iskender has passed on as he was struck by a sword
But the arrow of destiny has struck him and others who are similarly deplored
And he who has not died by the sword will die by other means, Take my word.”266
It is again important to note that the negative qualities of Turkish-speaking Rumis and
Ottoman officials as some of those discussed above were not seen as related to their
ethnic and cultural origins. An individual’s features were, for the most part, seen as
vices or virtues based on preconceived notions and key elements such as justice and
righteousness, corruption and dishonesty, and the person’s background was rarely
mentioned in connection with his personal or professional characteristics. There are,
though, a few cases where the biographers manifested certain prejudicial attitudes
towards Turkish-speaking Rumis, and these will be discussed in the next section.
264 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 403
265 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 403
266 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 403
92
3. Ethnic Awareness and Prejudice in Syrian Biographical Writing
Any exercise involving the evaluation of the levels of self-identification for a
particular social or intellectual group should necessarily take into account the extent to
which its members associated themselves with a certain territorially and ethnically
restricted unit. Nevertheless, it must be kept in mind that ethnic self-identification,
particularly in pre-modern times, should not automatically be regarded as synonymous
with a political adherence to the ethnic group with which a given individual associates
himself, but rather it can also signify a simpler sense of cultural belonging. For the
specific case of the authors of biographical collections in 16th and 17th century Ottoman
Syria, it is important to determine whether sentiments of “Arabness” existed in their
works, or at least establish whether they manifested some conscious understanding of
their existence in an “Arab” setting. Equally significant is uncovering any hints of
prejudice or preconceived pejorative images of groups that were perceived as outsiders.
Of particular interest in this case are the Rumis, since it was their “state” and “turn” to
rule Syria during the 16th and 17th centuries, in the eyes of the biographers.
The question of Arab ethnic prejudice against Turks has been most
comprehensively addressed by Ulrich Haarmann in an article entitled Ideology and
History, Identity and Alterity: The Arab Image of the Turk from the Abbasids to Modern
Egypt.267 In his brief discussion of the Ottoman period Haarmann argues that,
fundamentally, the essential motifs of Arab prejudice against Turks persisted, as the
latter group had been associated with such derogatory qualities as barbarism and
immorality since the days of the ‘Abbasid caliphate. Haarmann does admit, however,
that his evaluation of the Arabs’ attitude toward their Turkish-speaking overlords during
Ottoman times is based exclusively on examples from Egypt. To his credit, he
acknowledges that it would be problematic to construct a conclusive argument on the
general Arab image of Turks by depending solely on Egypt, and concedes that his
“remarks will remain tentative” for the section on the Ottoman period.268 As such, it
would be useful to look at Syrian sources, specifically our biographical material, to
267 Ulrich Haarmann; “Ideology and History, Identity and Alterity: The Arab
Image of the Turk from the Abbasids to Modern Egypt”, International Journal of
Middle East Studies 20, 2 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 175-196, hereafter Haarmann,
“Ideology and History”
268 Haarmann, “Ideology and History”, p. 184
93
check for further examples of “Arab” ethnic prejudice (as well as awareness) against
“Turks”, thus contributing to our limited knowledge of the subject.
Surprisingly, there are almost no ethnic attributions in the Aleppine historian
‘Urdi’s Ma‘adin al-Dhahab. Such terms as Rum, Rumi, Arwam, Turk and Atrak (all
applying to Turks) appear rarely and intermittently in the biographies; the same applies
for other ethnic attributions such as Kurdi (for Kurds) and ‘Ajami (for Persians). In the
rare cases where such terms are applied to certain individuals, there is every indication
that they are strictly geographical rather than ethnic designations, and they serve to
make up for the biographer’s ignorance of the concerned individual’s specific town or
city of origin. Ethnic attributions are more frequent in Ibn al-Hanbali’s earlier
biographical dictionary, but are still much less regular and recurrent than in most
Damascene historical works. There are numerous examples of individuals in Ibn al-
Hanbali’s Durr al-Habab where a geographical designation is given to an individual
(for instance, Karamani, Tabrizi, or Kostantini) but ethnic attributions as Rumi or
‘Ajami are not. Similar to ‘Urdi, Ibn al-Hanbali uses terms which seemingly denote
ethnicity as geographical rather than ethnic descriptions. The same cannot be said of the
Damascene biographers (both localist and universalist), who more often than not place
geography side by side with ethnicity, when utilizing such two-worded phrases as al-
Qustantini al-Rumi (for a Turkish-speaking native of Istanbul), al-Bursawi al-Rumi (for
a Turkish-speaking native of Bursa), and al-Tabrizi al-‘Ajami (for a Persian-speaking
native of Tabriz). With the apparent absence of ethnic attributions in Aleppine
biographical dictionaries, particularly in the work of ‘Urdi, it is also well-nigh
impossible to identify clear examples of prejudice against Turkish-speaking individuals,
whether they were Ottoman officials or not.
Yet there is a noticeably greater sense of ethnic awareness and even pride in Ibn
al-Hanbali’s Durr al-Habab than in his successor ‘Urdi’s Maadin al-Dhahab. Ibn al-
Hanbali writes of Üveys Bey (d. 949/1542), an Arabistan defterdarı (which Ibn al-
Hanbali translates literally and quite accurately as daftardar Diyar al-‘Arab), who
according to his approving biographer was “strongly partial (shadid al-ta‘assub) to the
sons of Arabs (awlad al-‘Arab).”269 Here the term awlad al-‘Arab is most certainly an
269 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 325
94
allusion to the settled, Arabic-speaking population of Aleppo and perhaps other settled
populations in Bilad al-Sham. A second example, Iskender Bey, another Arabistan
defterdarı of the 16th century and a close friend of Ibn al-Hanbali, apparently had a
consummate knowledge of military affairs, which alongside his courage made him
valuable to the governors of Aleppo in their campaigns against people whom the
Aleppine biographer calls al-‘arab.270 The meaning of ‘arab (which in modern times is
a term that denotes all Arab peoples) in this context is certainly “Bedouin Arab”, since
no urban-based revolt or conflict between the Ottoman authorities and rebels based in
Syria is known to have taken place during the middle of the 16th century, when Ibn al-
Hanbali was busy composing his work. Bedouin uprisings, on the other hand, remained
part of a recurring trend for decades during the Ottoman period, and indeed never really
ceased.
Thus, with Ibn al-Hanbali we find a clear example of a distinction between the
two terms awlad al-‘arab, denoting an urban Arabic-speaking population, and ‘arab,
referring to unsettled Arabic-speaking elements. Also with Ibn al-Hanbali, we find the
sole expression of Arab ethnic pride and consciousness in the two Aleppine dictionaries.
It is perhaps unusual that ‘Urdi did not manifest similar sentiments in his Ma‘adin al-
Dhahab; one would generally expect to find examples of attachment to a specifically
defined ethno-cultural group in the work of a local historian, yet ‘Urdi does not supply
his reader with a single such case. ‘Urdi appears not to have given much attention to
individuals’ ethnic origins; the fact remains that to him, an individual’s defining
characteristics, merits and demerits were determined simply by his personal and
professional conduct. Ibn al-Hanbali adopted a similar approach in his work, rarely
alluding to the ethnic backgrounds of notables who were obviously not of Arabicspeaking
stock, but he was distinct from ‘Urdi in his own evident self-identification to
the awlad al-‘arab. This may well be related to his own awareness of having descended
from the fabled Arab tribe of the Banu Rabi‘a, and we may recall that Ibn al-Hanbali
expressed a great deal of pride at being associated with “Arabs” in his brief biographical
dictionary dedicated to that tribe. In that work, his “Arabs” (‘arab) were evidently
Bedouins, rather than fully sedentary Arabic-speaking peoples, but his pride in
belonging to the lineage of an illustrious old Arab tribe that was nonetheless also
270 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 293
95
Bedouin may have contributed to his feelings of affinity to the Arabic-speaking peoples
in a more general sense.
Similarly, in Ibn Tulun’s semi-biographical volume on the governors of
Damascus, the terms awlad al-‘arab and abna’ al-‘arab (both meaning “the sons of
Arabs”) seem to denote exclusively the Arabic-speaking populations of urban centers
such as Damascus, whereas the word ‘arab is clearly used in reference to Bedouin
elements, some of which, according to the author, rebelled against Ottoman authority
under the leadership of some tribal chieftains, but without any success.271 In the
Ottoman portion of his book on the judges of Damascus, Ibn Tulun again uses the terms
awlad al-‘arab and abna’ al-‘arab on several occasions to distinguish the Arabicspeaking
residents of his hometown from the incoming Turkish-speaking Rumis
(alternatively arwam). There is one interesting anecdote that the Damascene local
historian relates on a certain Ahmed Efendi, an Ottoman qadi of Damascus and a native
of Iznik, during the outbreak of the plague in Damascus in the year 930/1524. While he
fled from area to area in Bilad al-Sham to avoid being overcome by the plague, it
became obvious that Ahmed Efendi, alongside one of his companions, was traveling
while being accompanied by a number of unmarried women (harim; Ibn Tulun’s
implication is that these harim were not merely accompanying the judge, but that
Ahmed Efendi was engaged in sexual activity with them). This was viewed with much
disapproval by some of the “wise men (‘uqala’) among the sons of the Arabs (abna’ al-
‘arab)”, according to Ibn Tulun, and Ahmed Efendi’s actions were of course regarded
as unlawful.272 There is a hint of anti-Rumi prejudice in Ibn Tulun’s anecdote, which
clearly reveals that native scholars of Damascus objected to the actions of an Ottoman
qadi when he engaged in unlawful and immoral behavior. The implication here may be
that it is still the Arabic-speaking scholars who, to Ibn Tulun, held the greatest religious
authority and possessed the greatest ability to interpret the holy law, since they were the
original Muslims who brought the religion to other peoples. The Rumi Ahmed Efendi,
on the other hand, is seen as corrupting the position of qadi in the earliest stages of
Ottoman (and therefore Rumi) rule.
271 See Shams al-Din Ibn Tulun, Qudat Dimashq: al-Thaghr al-Bassam fi Dhikr
man Wulliya Qada’ al-Sham (Damascus, 1959), Salah al-Din al-Munajjid (ed.), p.
237 & p. 243, hereafter Ibn Tulun, Al-Thaghr al-Bassam
272 Ibn Tulun, Al-Thaghr al-Bassam, p. 311
96
Awlad al-‘arab is also used in Ghazzi’s Kawakib and Lutf al-Samar to denote
Damascus’s urban, Arabic-speaking population, and the Damascene centennial
biographer frequently applies the term Bilad al-‘arab (the lands of the Arabs) to the
lands where Arabic predominated as a spoken language. Bilad al-‘arab also often
appears in Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar and Ibn al-Imad’s Shadharat, where as in
Ghazzi’s two biographical dictionaries, it is clearly contrasted to another geographical
entity termed Bilad al-Rum, or sometimes simply Rum, denoting the regions of the
Ottoman Empire to the northwest of Syria. Burini, however, seemed to prefer the terms
diyar al-‘arab and diyar al-Rum when referring to the Arabic-speaking and Turkishspeaking
geographies, respectively.
Despite the word ‘arab being generally used in the context of “Bedouin,” there is
some evidence that the term was also used in a more general sense, and at times also
included settled Arabic-speaking populations. In Lutf al-Samar, Ghazzi writes the
phrase “‘arab Ghazza” (the Arabs of Gaza) in reference to townspeople who were
natives of that city;273 there is no clearer indication of the use of the term ‘arab to
denote the population of an urban setting. But Burini supplies us with another
unambiguous, yet far more interesting, case where ‘arab again assumes the same
meaning. Ahmed b. Mehmed Efendi, a qadi in Damascus and later in Mecca, was quite
well-travelled in the Arab lands, even visiting Egypt on one occasion, but the
impression he formed of Arabic-speaking populations was anything but positive. In
Burini’s words, “he considered that being branded as Arab (al-ittisaf bil-‘arabiyya) was
among the greatest of shames.” Ahmed Efendi also insulted Arabs (‘arab) by referring
to them as tat,274 a term which in Ottoman usage probably meant “wretch”, particularly
in the context in which the qadi used it. There is no doubt that, in this case, the term
‘arab, as distinct from the more complicated construction awlad al-‘arab, also includes
urban-dwellers and not simply Bedouin tribes, since here it is used in reference to an
Ottoman official insulting Damascenes.
A namesake of Ahmed Efendi and also a chief judge in Damascus, Ahmed b.
Hasan Efendi (d. 995/1586-87), was a close personal acquaintance of Burini, and his
father Hasan Efendi had once served as kadıasker. When speaking of Hasan in Ahmed’s
273 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 304
274 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 197
97
biography, Burini reveals that he was “very fond of the sons of Arabs (awlad al-‘arab),
to such an extent that he would imitate their style of dress.”275 This is despite the
absence of any indication that Hasan Efendi had ever visited the Arab lands; it appears
that his appreciation of all things “Arab” was developed from afar. Both Ahmed and
Hasan are admired for their deep sense of justice and, equally important, their lack of
interest in material wealth. The integrity and incorruptibility of Hasan Efendi, in
particular, is according to Burini evidenced by his presiding over certain court cases
which involved some of those closest to him, only to rule in favor of their adversaries,
demonstrating his unquestioned impartiality and moral judgement.276 In one anecdote,
Burini claims that Hasan Efendi gave an unnamed woman 3000 akçes for a book
written by the illustrious Celaleddin Rumi, when her asking price was just 1000 akçes,
simply because the distinguished qadi thought that this work of Rumi was far more
valuable than the initial price demanded by the woman.277 Hasan’s attraction to what he
regarded, rightly or otherwise, as Arab culture warrants some comment, however, and
Burini’s mention of that particular side of the Ottoman judge’s personality is especially
noteworthy. Burini’s delight at Hasan Efendi’s pro-Arab inclinations manifests the
Damascene biographer’s own relatively well-developed level of ethnic awareness and
his sense of ethno-cultural pride, though this of course is far from a representation of a
conscious political allegiance to an Arab geography or entity.
When writing of the incomparable mufti of Istanbul Ebu’s-Su‘ud (d. 1574), Burini
expresses his surprise, even disappointment, that the great scholar of Islam never
entered the “lands of the Arabs (diyar al-‘arab),” but rather rotated throughout his
career within the “lands of the Turks (diyar al-Rum) filling post after post.”278 Burini’s
disappointment is clearly a product of his strong identification with the “lands of the
Arabs”, which he appears to have regarded as his own in the cultural as well as the
territorial sense, clearly explaining why he took exception to the qadi Ahmed b.
Mehmed Efendi’s denigration of Arabs. There was perhaps also a belief that even the
most distinguished of Ottoman and non-Arab ‘ulama’ could benefit from the rich
275 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 68
276 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 67
277 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 72
278 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 242
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tradition of scholarship that still existed in the Empire’s Arab lands, with Damascus as
its leading exponent.
For his part, Ghazzi describes Ebu’s-Su‘ud as “the greatest of all Rumi scholars”
and as a man who had “no equal in knowledge, leadership and faith,” and also praises
the mufti for his negative though not entirely uncompromising stance on coffeedrinking.
279 Coffee-drinking, incidentally, is a recurrent theme in Ghazzi’s Kawakib; a
particularly interesting anecdote that the Damascene biographer relates concerns Yunus
al-‘Ithawi, a Shafi‘i scholar who was also the father of Ghazzi’s teacher Ahmad al-
‘Ithawi. Yunus was vehemently opposed to coffee-drinking, and once delivered a
sermon in which he declared it forbidden for a Muslim to drink that strange concoction,
then a recent discovery in Bilad al-Sham and the Ottoman world, much to the chagrin of
the beylerbeyi Mustafa Pasha and the head judge in Damascus. The two Ottoman
officials seem to have enjoyed coffee and, equally if not more important, had taken
offense to the repeated allusions to “injustice” made by ‘Ithawi in the sermon.280 But
‘Ithawi, who also wrote a treatise in which he elaborately made his case against coffeedrinking,
was reconciled with the authorities despite his uncompromising views, and
came to no harm.281 Most significantly in Ghazzi’s biography of Ebu’s-Su‘ud, however,
there is no comment on the matter which took Burini’s attention: the fact that the mufti
never visited the Arab lands. Burini’s biographies of Ahmed Efendi and Hasan Efendi,
as well as the mufti Ebu’s-Su‘ud, reveal his deep sense of cultural and territorial
attachment to the Arab lands (diyar al-‘arab) and people (‘arab or ‘awlad al-‘arab as
interchangeable), sentiments that do not appear as strongly in any of the other
universalists’ dictionaries. Burini, of course, did not travel outside Bilad al-Sham,
unlike Ghazzi, Muhibbi, and Ibn al-Imad; it can therefore be reasonably assumed that
his greater sense of Arab territoriality derived, at least in part, from his relatively limited
experience of the world outside Syria in general and Damascus in particular.
Although Burini does not consistently use the term Rum in reference to the
primarily Turkish-speaking individuals of cities and towns in Anatolia and regions
further west in the Ottoman world, when he does speak of Rum or Arwam it is
279 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, pp. 35-36
280 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, p. 207
281 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 3, p. 222
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invariably as an indication of ethnic as well as geographical background. One clear
example lies in the biography of a certain Ahmed b. Shahin Efendi, the son of an
Ottoman janissary and a Turkish-speaking mother residing in Damascus. It so happened
that this Ahmed Efendi was Burini’s student at one point and, according to his teacher
and biographer, sought a life of learning and piety, choosing not to follow in his father’s
footsteps. This man, apparently still young at the time when Burini was writing his
dictionary, was “of Rumi origin, even though he was also of Arab (‘arabiyy) birth and
residence.”282 The reference to Rumi here is geographical but also certainly ethnic, and
Burini heaps much praise on this Ahmad Efendi for his efforts in mastering the Arabic
language, though as a resident of Damascus since birth it must have surely been more
difficult for him to learn his “native tongue”, Turkish.
This brings us to another hugely significant point: the admiration of Rumis,
among other non-Arab peoples, by all biographers, Aleppine and Damascene alike, for
their knowledge and sometimes mastery, of Arabic. Mehmed Bostanzade, a mufti of
Istanbul at one time, was close to the Ghazzi family, particularly the biographer Najm
al-Din and his father, before his accession to the highest religious post in the Ottoman
realms. He also possessed a consummate knowledge of Arabic, according to Ghazzi,
and this was worthy of the Damascene biographer’s comment and commendation.283
But not only ‘ulama’ were applauded for their knowledge of the language of the
Muslim Holy Scriptures; lower-level Ottoman bureaucrats and administrators serving in
the Arab provinces also received some praise when they were known to possess a
knowledge of Arabic, and even the odd Pasha was known to have mastered the
language.284
But it is unlikely that the biographers’ praise of Rumis for their knowledge of
Arabic was a sign of Arab ethnic pride. On the contrary, it must be understood as a
conscious feeling, specific to the ‘ulama’, of their native language’s importance in the
context of Muslim literature and learning. The fact that Rumis were praised for their
knowledge of Arabic on more religious than ethno-cultural purposes is attested by
complimentary remarks offered elsewhere to individuals who had in fact been native
282 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 139
283 Ghazzi, Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 104
284 For instance, Cafer Pasha of Yemen in Ghazzi’s Lutf al-Samar, Vol. 1, p. 304
100
speakers of the language, such as Muhammad al-Tunisi in Ghazzi’s Kawakib, among
countless others.285 Further proof of Arabic’s relevance, in the biographers’ unified
view, to any well-rounded understanding of the religious sciences, is that it is often
placed in a list alongside other primarily religious fields of learning when a notable
scholar’s knowledge and overall intellectual acumen are being considered. (for instance,
in Ghazzi’s Kawakib: “the legal sciences (al-‘ulum al-shar‘iyya), logic (al-‘ulum al-
‘aqliyya), the Traditions (al-hadith), and Arabic (al-‘arabiyya).”)286
At times, the biographers’ pride in their native tongue led them to reveal clear
signs of ethno-linguistic prejudice. Indeed, this brand of prejudice is the most recurrent
in the biographical collections, and is again probably more connected to a conscious
attempt at the protection of the Arabic language as the language of Islam than it is a sign
of purely ethno-centric bigotry. The biographers’ pride in the Arabic language is,
therefore, highlighted not only by their praise of those non-natives (and natives) who
were able to speak it fluently, but also in their criticism of those who claimed to but did
not possess a mastery of the language. One example comes from Burini’s Tarajim al-
A‘yan, in the biography of a Rumi judge by the name of Hüseyin b. Abdülnebi.287 Burini
meticulously analyzes Hüseyin Efendi’s poetry, and in what is the longest section of the
latter’s biography criticizes its quality on linguistic and grammatical grounds, while
attempting to demonstrate its lack of clarity and, at times, establish its
meaninglessness.288 Hüseyin Efendi is, on one occasion, described as an “arrogant
egotist”, and his biographer also points to what he believes is his “lack of literary charm
and ability, his stupidity, and his insanity.”289 In his analysis (or rather bashing) of the
Ottoman qadi’s poetry, Burini repeatedly insults the man, on one occasion claiming that
even “jackasses (hamir)” have a better grasp of grammar.290 Worse still, according to
Burini, Hüseyin Efendi had a demeaning attitude towards his father, a facet of his
personality that was not appreciated by the Damascene biographer.291 There is,
285 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 16
286 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 29
287 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 178
288 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 188-194
289 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 186
290 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 189
291 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 186
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however, no indication that Hüseyin Efendi’s ethnic background had anything to do
with his supposedly deficient knowledge of Arabic.
Another example, from Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar, can also more accurately
be classified as a case of linguistic, rather than purely ethnic, prejudice, and is found in
the biography of Nasuh Pasha, an early 17th century beylerbeyi of Aleppo and a later
Vezir. Nasuh Pasha, originally a native of Rumeli and a servant in the Ottoman palace,
quickly rose through the ranks and established himself as a governor in Syria.292
Towards the end of his career, he met Sultan Ahmed I and married his daughter, before
the Sultan decided to execute the damad Pasha for reasons that are undisclosed (or
unknown to his biographer Muhibbi).293 Muhibbi makes a single pejorative comment in
Nasuh Pasha’s biography, and it is in fact not about the governor himself but the “Turks
(atrak).” Apparently, Nasuh Pasha was better known as Nasıf Pasha in Ottoman circles,
despite the fact that the Arabic-speaking population of Bilad al-Sham knew him by his
real name Nasuh and referred to him as such. Muhibbi seems to take offense with the
Ottomans’ corruption of the name when he writes: “It is common practice for the Turks
(atrak) to change words and letters, so they say Nasıf instead of Nasuh; their changes
(of letters) have no discernible limitations, nor is there any grammatical condition to
prevent them.”294 Muhibbi’s irritation at the “Turks’” corruption of the name Nasuh can
be described as a latent example of ethno-linguistic prejudice, but it must again be
pointed out that the Damascene biographer’s feelings of contempt are rooted in his and
the ‘ulama’s recognition of the significance of the Arabic language. As such, Muhibbi’s
statement on Nasuh/Nasıf Pasha can be regarded as an expression of an Arabicspeaking
scholar’s belief that his language, the language of Islam, must not be
corrupted. The fact that Nasuh Pasha’s name was corrupted by those who referred to
him as Nasıf, presumably members of the Ottoman bureaucratic elite, is also telling
since it indicates that it is the temporal authorities who are coming under verbal attack
from a representative of the religious, intellectual elite of Damascus. Nevertheless,
Muhibbi’s statement may also be reasonably considered a mild illustration of “Arab”
prejudice against “Turks.”
292 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, pp. 448-49
293 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 451
294 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 448
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The Damascene scholar ‘Abdul-Baki b. Muhammad, known as Ibn al-Samman (d.
1088/1677) and noted for his literary and poetic skills, was a long-time resident in
Istanbul who eventually passed away in Edirne.295 He was also a friend of Muhibbi,
who met him not in Damascus but in Istanbul during his trip to Rum. Ibn al-Samman
was an exceptionally well-travelled individual, having spent time in Egypt, Rum, and
even the island of Crete. Muhibbi claims that “there wasn’t a single town in the lands of
Rum (Bilad al-Rum) which he did not enter.”296 Muhibbi writes of a number of
interesting encounters he had with Ibn al-Samman, but one in particular stands out as an
apt example of the linguistic prejudice held by certain Arabic-speaking ‘ulama’ towards
the Turkish-speaking population of Rum. The two men were once on a boat, heading to
Besiktas, and began a lengthy discussion on ships, enumerating their different types and
names. Among the ships listed, Ibn al-Samman mentioned one which the Arabs called
“the crow (al-ghurab),” “a long vessel driven by oars.” Ibn al-Samman then pointed out
that certain people (obviously of Turkish-speaking origin) mistakenly believed that the
Arabic name al-ghurab was translated from the Turkish for crow, karga, a mistaken
adaptation for the Turkish (originally Greek) word for vessel or galley, kadırga. Ibn al-
Samman, who took exception to that interpretation, was once forced into a heated
argument with an unnamed individual who upheld it, with the Damascene scholar
apparently prevailing when pointing out that the vessel was likened to a crow since its
color was black and its oars resembled that bird’s wings.297
It is not at all surprising that we find such anecdotes and expressions of linguistic
pride in Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar. After all, the Damascene universalist-centennial
biographer of the 11th/17th century wrote five books on Arabic grammar and linguistics,
including one entitled Qasd al-Sabil fima fi Lughat al-‘Arab min Dakhil (An Inquiry
into Loan Words in the Language of the Arabs), which identifies certain non-Arabic
words that had been Arabicized.298 Naturally, such a work indicates the pride of a
Muslim ‘alim in the language of his Holy Scriptures, and must not be interpreted as a
manifestation of Arab localism resulting from a fear of Turkish and Persian
encroachments into the Arabic language. Maintaining the purity of Arabic is almost
295 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 282
296 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 270
297 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 2, p. 273
298 Sabbagh, Min A‘lam al-Fikr al-‘Arabi, p. 131
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tantamount to preserving the purity of the early Islamic literature which had helped
define the specific culture and self-image of Islamic civilization. It is within such a
context that Muhibbi’s and other intellectuals’ work on Arabic grammar and linguistics
is best viewed.
It is difficult to detect many signs of purely ethnic (as opposed to partly linguistic)
prejudice in Muhibbi’s Khulasat al-Athar. Only one example stands out as particularly
striking. Before Muhibbi made his journey to Rum in the company of his uncle
Sun‘ullah and Mehmed Izzeti, his father went on a similar trip, accompanied by another
Mehmed known as Ismeti, a Rumi and soon-to-be kadıasker. Fadlallah al-Muhibbi, in
fact, took two trips to Rum in his lifetime, visiting his old patron Mehmed Ismeti in his
home on one occasion during his second journey.299 Our biographer Muhammad Amin
al-Muhibbi quotes part of his father’s biography of Ismeti in Fadlallah’s now no longer
extant dictionary of contemporaries, in which the older Muhibbi writes favorably of the
man himself but quite derogatorily of his people in the following verse:
“In truth, the way he treated me did not change
Which considering the infamy of his background is quite strange”300
Apart from the verse above, which in any case is attributed to Fadlallah not Muhammad
Amin al-Muhibbi, there are precious few hints of purely ethnic prejudice in the
biographies of non-Arab notables in Khulasat al-Athar.
Cases of direct or even latent bigotry against the Rumis are just as scarce in other
Damascene sources. There is not a trace of anti-Ottoman or anti-Rumi prejudice in Ibn
al-‘Imad’s entries on 16th century notables, for instance. There is one case in Ibn
Tulun’s book on the Mamluk and Ottoman governors of Damascus that stands out as
perhaps the most blatant illustration of ethnic prejudice against the Rumis in the
biographical literature. Ibn Tulun reports that, after the death of an early beylerbeyi of
Damascus named Ferhad Pasha (d. 928/1522), the people of the city feared the
“plundering of the Turks” (nahb al-arwam), apparently because of a certain
preconceived notion held by Damascenes that it was customary for Rumis to engage in
299 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 112
300 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 4, p. 114
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such acts following any of their leaders’ deaths. But Ferhad Pasha’s deputy (qaimmaqam
or kaymakam; sub-governor), Ali Pasha, managed to set the people’s minds to
rest. And there are no indications that Ottoman troops acted violently or maliciously in
Damascus in the aftermath of the beylerbeyi’s death.301 Nevertheless, the reader would
be hard-pressed to locate a more apt demonstration of Damascene stereotyping and
prejudice against “Turks” in any of the historical sources of Ottoman Syria during the
period in question.
Ghazzi’s Kawakib supplies us with another, which he derives from his father’s
Rumi travelogue. Muhayya b. Muhammad al-Misri al-Rumi, a native of Egypt who
spent most of his life in Rum and is thus also termed a Rumi, met Ghazzi’s father Badr
al-Din on the latter’s trip to the Turkish-speaking lands. He was held in the lowest
regards by Badr al-Din, although Najm al-Din does not explain why. According to the
younger Ghazzi, his father had described Muhayya as “insane (safih)”, and his “people
(qawm, which may also denote tribe or family)” as “dirty (badhi’)” and “low
(khasis)”.302 This is the one clear example of ethnic prejudice associated with a Rumi in
Ghazzi’s two biographical collections. As such, it is rather curious that Michael Winter,
in his article on Ghazzi in the database Historians of the Ottoman Empire, wrote that
“there are several anti-Ottoman or anti-Turkish expressions.”303 Although Winter does
concede that they are ethnic and cultural rather than political, one still struggles to find a
handful, let alone “several,” examples in which there is explicit or even implicit ethnocultural
prejudice in the two dictionaries that Ghazzi composed, and sadly Winter does
not provide any specific cases or references in his article where such an instance was
recorded. Even in Muhayya al-Misri’s biography, the obvious example of ethnic
prejudice is ascribed not to Ghazzi himself, but rather his father Badr al-Din, though
perhaps this is a minor point. It is also not entirely clear whether the group that has in
this case been ethnically stereotyped as “dirty” and “low” is the Egyptians or the Rum
(or perhaps even neither, if what Ghazzi meant by qawm was simply tribe or family),
although it does appear more likely that Muhayya was castigated for his Rumi rather
than Egyptian “qualities”. That is because natives of Egypt, as Arabic-speakers who
301 Ibn Tulun, I‘lam al-Wara, p. 240
302 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 252
303 Winter, “al-Gazzi”, p. 2
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were considered less alien than Turks both culturally and linguistically, were not nearly
as susceptible to ethnic stereotyping as Rumis. Also, Badr al-Din al-Ghazzi had met
Muhayya in Rum, not in Egypt.
In terms of ethnic consciousness and prejudicial attitudes towards the “other” or
“outsider” in linguistic, territorial and ethnic terms, the worldviews of Damascene and
Aleppine historians differed significantly. Aleppo’s greater trade links with the world of
Islam, as well as its historians’ almost exclusive concern for events in the city itself,
may have mitigated the ethnic awareness and prejudice of its elite residents. Damascene
historians, on the other hand, may have preserved some memory of their city’s great
Arab past as the center of a Muslim Empire ruled by a distinctly Arab elite, thus
forming a clearer self-image and a distinctly if moderately more negative attitude to
those who were perceived as “different” or “other.” Yet obvious differences also exist
among the individual biographers of each city. In the Aleppine case, ‘Urdi’s ethnic
awareness is, at best, muted, while his predecessor Ibn al-Hanbali does manifest a
certain Arab pride, but without seeming to exhibit any negative attitude towards Rumis
or other non-Arab and non-Aleppine individuals. Ibn Tulun appears to be the most
prejudiced of Damascene historians, perhaps owing to his localism and relatively
limited knowledge of the world outside his hometown, as well as being an eyewitness to
the conquest of Damascus by a remote and distant Rumi power. It is somewhat
paradoxical, however, that Ibn Tulun manifests the greatest sense of Arab ethnocentrism
among all biographers, considering his own origins as a descendant of a
Mamluk and son of a Rumi mother. Burini, a universalist who cultivated the friendships
of many Ottoman officials but nonetheless never left Bilad al-Sham, displays a greater
sense of Arab particularism and territorialism than the other (more) universalist
biographers, as evidenced by his biography of the mufti Ebu’s-Su‘ud among others. As
such, there is an unmistakable connection between an individual historian’s travel
experience and the level of ethnic consciousness and prejudice that he may develop.
Whereas Ibn al-Imad does not provide us with a single expression of any negative
attitudes towards Rumis, those offered by his pupil Muhibbi appear to be predominantly
rooted in linguistic rather than ethnic proclivities. Ghazzi’s one example across the 133
hijri years he writes on in his two voluminous works, Muhayya al-Misri, is taken from
an external source, albeit one that was composed by his father.
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More substantively, it is quite obvious that Ulrich Haarmann’s discussion of
Arab-Egyptian prejudice against Ottoman Turks cannot be accurately applied to the
Syrian historical literature of the same period. We may therefore conclude with absolute
certainty that speaking of the “Arab” attitude toward “Turks”, or simply attempting to
evaluate it within a single analytic totality, would be dangerously misleading. There
emerges a clear difference between Egyptian and Syrian images of Ottoman and Turk
even if the reader accepts Haarmann’s study of Egyptian prejudice without question.
Furthermore, it would be exceedingly difficult, perhaps even impossible, to draw a
specifically Syrian image of Rumis, considering the drastically contrasting worldviews
of Aleppine and Damascene historians.
4. The Arab Discovery of Rum, and the Yearning for Home
The biographical collections of 16th and 17th century Ottoman Syria provide us
with countless examples of Arab travelers,‘ulama’ and otherwise, who journeyed to the
lands of the Ottoman center for various reasons. The motivations for such trips were
varied, occasionally having to do with commercial interests, pure curiosity or even
political exile, in which case Ottoman Istanbul was sometimes the chosen asylum. Most
frequently, however, individuals went on their long journeys to Rum to gain further
religious education in prestigious Ottoman schools and, in many cases, to acquire
lucrative teaching posts. The Muhibbi family, of course, represents one such example,
with Muhammad Amin, Sun‘ullah and Fadlallah all spending lengthy periods in the
cities of Bursa, Edirne and Istanbul. The Ottoman conquest of Syria also resulted in an
influx of Rumi scholars to the major urban centers of Bilad al-Sham, and on the whole
the exchange of scholars between the Arabic and Turkish-speaking lands was
substantial and continuous. Thus, Arabic-speaking scholars in Syria and elsewhere had
ample opportunity to “discover” their Rumi counterparts, through a process of
communication and interaction within the Arab lands and, for some, a more ambitious
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process involving the crossing of many miles and spending extended periods of time in
the towns and cities of Rum.
And yet a certain pattern appears in many, if not most, of the biographies of
individuals from both ethno-linguistic groups. Many Arabs and Rumis, after leaving
their cities and lands of origin, experienced a deep sense of longing and desire to return.
Some of these cases resulted from feelings of despair after negative personal and/or
professional developments took their toll on the individuals’ collective psyche, but the
vast majority occurred despite successful lives and careers being carved out in distant
lands. The careers of members of the Muhibbi family, in particular, testify to this case,
but so too do those of the Ghazzis (the biographer Najm al-Din and his father Badr al-
Din), whose respective periods of residence in Istanbul we currently know little about,
though it is quite evident from the younger Ghazzi’s Kawakib that both father and son
had managed to cultivate the acquaintance of several prominent Ottoman ‘ulama’.
There are, of course, numerous exceptions that appear in the dictionaries. One
such case from the Rumi side is Ebu Bekir Karaoğlu (d. 926/1520), a remarkably welltravelled
Hanafi scholar, born in his hometown Khurasan and brought up in Aleppo,
later moving on to Tabriz, then Istanbul and finally, Cairo and Damascus.304 From Ibn
Tulun’s brief biography of the man, it is evident that Ebu Bekir had exerted
considerable influence on Ottoman policy-making during the time of Bayezid II. Ibn
Tulun claims that Ebu Bekir was influential in reconciling Bayezid II and the Mamluk
Sultan Qaitbay, thus helping end the first Mamluk-Ottoman war.305 Indeed, Shai Har-El
mentions Ebu Bekir (as Abu-Bekir) in his work on the Ottoman-Mamluk war, entitled
Struggle for Domination in the Middle East, where he refers to the Rumi scholar as an
Ottoman “envoy.” According to Har-El, Ebu Bekir’s master was the famous Ottoman
mufti ‘Ala’addin ‘Ali al-‘Arabi, a scholar of Aleppine origin who was better known in
Ottoman circles as Molla Arap.306 Molla Arap, in fact, led the Ottoman negotiating team
304 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 216
305 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 217
306 Shai Har-El, Struggle for Domination in the Middle East: The Ottoman-
Mamluk War, 1485-1491 (Leiden, 1995), p. 202, henceforth Har-El, Struggle for
Domination in the Middle East. Har-El’s source is not Ibn Tulun’s biographical
account of Ebu Bekir, but rather the same author’s more famous historical work,
the chronicle Mufakahat al-Khillan fi Hawadith al-Zaman.
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that concluded the treaty of 1491 with the Mamluks; by that time, Ebu Bekir had
already spent several months in Damascus and Cairo.307 It was not to be his last visit to
the Arab lands. Ibn Tulun himself reveals that when Selim I eventually dealt a decisive
blow to the Mamluk state, Ebu Bekir accompanied him first to Damascus, then to Cairo,
and finally took the decision to reside in the first city for the rest of his life. During his
time in Damascus, according to Ibn Tulun, he initiated the construction of a madrasa,
which was abruptly halted during the uprising of Janbirdi al-Ghazali in 1520 and never
completed after Ebu Bekir’s death.308 Ebu Bekir Karaoğlu is nonetheless certainly
among the first Ottoman scholars, and one of the most prominent, to take the
momentous decision of settling in a Syrian city soon after the Ottoman conquest.
A somewhat similar reverse case involves an Aleppine scholar and Hanafi jurist
by the name of Ibrahim b. Muhammad (d. 956/1549). Ibrahim was a long-time resident
in Istanbul and eventually died in the Ottoman capital, and is one example of a Syrian
scholar who left his hometown to settle and pass away in a region of Rum. According to
his Aleppine biographer Ibn al-Hanbali, Ibrahim was a man of considerable influence
whose reputation for knowledge preceded him, as he was regularly consulted by Sa‘di
Çelebi, the mufti of Istanbul, in some pressing legal matters.309 Ebu Bekir Karaoğlu and
Ibrahim b. Muhammad, however, seem to be in a minority among the ‘ulama’, or at
least those among them who are represented in the biographical collections, in that they
left their lands of origin to spend the rest of their careers elsewhere.
There are, however, also examples of Arabic-speaking individuals who were not
of the ‘ulama’ class but still had certain skills to offer to the populations of the Empire
beyond Bilad al-Sham. A certain Taqi al-Din b. Sharaf al-Din (not to be mistaken with
his namesake and more famous contemporary, the astronomer Taqi al-Din b. Ma‘ruf al-
Shami al-Sa‘di, also a native of Damascus), a Damascene physician and traveler who
took very little interest in the religious sciences,310 took a trip to Istanbul, managed to
make his way into the Ottoman palace and won Sultan Murad III’s favor by
successfully healing some of the Ottoman palace’s child servants who happened to be
307 Har-El, Struggle for Domination in the Middle East, p. 210
308 Ibn Tulun, Mut‘at al-Adhhan, Vol. 2, p. 217
309 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 94
310 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 108
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ill.311 Abu Bakr al-Suhyuni (d. 993/1585), a native of the Suhyun mountains in Syria, a
gifted religious scholar but more famous as a leading astronomer of his age, travelled to
Istanbul in order to assist in the launching of a scientific, specifically astronomical
project, which according to Burini was quickly discontinued for reasons that the
biographer chose not to elaborate upon. (It is most likely that Burini was referring to the
launching of the Taqi al-Din observatory in Istanbul, which functioned for a very brief
period (1577-80) before being shut down.) But even after the termination of the initial
plan and of the tasks that were given to him, al-Suhyuni remained in Istanbul until his
death, although there is no evidence that he participated in any other scientific or
observatory enterprises.312
A reader of the dictionaries would find less difficulty, however, in locating
biographies of Arabic-speaking individuals who went to Rum and came back to their
original homes. Ibrahim Ibn al-Tabbakh (d. 1006/1597-8), a Damascene scholar who
gained much of his education in Rum and spoke very good Turkish, decided not to wait
for promotion from a 40 akçe post in a Bursa college to the most lucrative of Ottoman
teaching positions at a daily wage of 50 akçes, instead leaving to return to his
hometown, which he saw as a “paradise with limitless fruits.” Another of Ibn al-
Tabbakh’s motivation for deciding to remain in Damascus and never again return to
Rum was, according to his biographer Burini, the man’s realization that the city “did not
possess any great ‘ulama’.”313 Whether Ibn al-Tabbakh’s attitude to the city’s
intellectual elite was sound or correct is questionable; his deep sense of duty toward his
hometown, to which he ostensibly returned to reinforce its scholarly tradition, was
nonetheless apparent regardless of the validity of his views. One wonders whether Ibn
al-Tabbakh’s outlook on the state of Damascene scholarship was influenced by his own
intellectual formation, which he gained primarily in Anatolia, according to his
biographer. Perhaps the scholarly tradition of Damascus at the time had developed and
moved in a different direction from its central Ottoman counterpart(s) in its methods
and approach to the instruction of the religious sciences, and this may well have been
perceived by Ibn al-Tabbakh as a demonstration of the city’s intellectual obsoleteness
311 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, pp. 109-110
312 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 276
313 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 300
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and the poor quality of its men of knowledge. Nevertheless, this among many examples
indicates the affinity that Damascene, and more generally Syrian scholars, had for their
cities and perhaps also regions of origin.
This same Ibn al-Tabbakh, incidentally, was purportedly also a man with a keen
sense of righteousness, as he routinely “objected to actions by the judges that violated
the Holy Law,” to the extent that a friend of Burini, the Ottoman qadi Tacettin b. Yahya
Efendi, cynically observed: “with the death of Ibrahim, we are now rid of he who holds
us to account.”314 The last statement may be an effective admission of guilt by an
Ottoman judge to corrupt conduct. More importantly, it is also an implicit but seemingly
unashamed admission by Burini himself that he had formed relations with certain
individuals who did not always adhere to the moral standards of the learned in Muslim
society. In fact, Burini openly admits to committing some acts that may be deemed
immoral. Two of the Damascene historian’s acquaintances, Ahmad and Shams al-Din,
two brothers and scholars from the Khalidi family of Safad in Palestine, were infamous
for their pederastic tendencies in their hometown.315 On one occasion, the two men were
put on trial in Damascus for the sexual abuse of one of Shams al-Din’s young male
pupils, but Burini intervened to testify in their favor, despite prior knowledge that the
allegations leveled against them were true. The Khalidis were found innocent, and in
Ahmad’s biography Burini appears rather unapologetic about the entire affair.316
Another outstanding example is Muhammad Ibn Maghush, a Maliki ‘alim from
Tunisia, who went to Istanbul by sea and once there mingled with the city’s finest
scholars, even meeting the greatest of Ottoman Sultans, Süleyman I. According to
Ghazzi, the Sultan took quite a liking to the man, inviting him to stay in the imperial
capital while promising him a salaried post. But Ibn Maghush chose not to remain there
for long, informing the Sultan that he was “fed up with the winter of Rum (shita’ al-
Rum) and the severity of its cold.”317 Ibn Maghush soon took a long overland trip to
Egypt, along the way passing through several cities in Bilad al-Sham, including Aleppo
and Damascus, and resided in each of them for an extended period of time, adding to his
314 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 303
315 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 24
316 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 1, p. 25
317 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 16
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growing list of pupils in the process. Among his students was Ibn al-Hanbali, Aleppo’s
historian for the first half of the 16th century.318 Ghazzi indicates that another of them,
Shihab al-Din al-Tayyibi of Damascus, wrote a book in honor of his master in which he
recorded the many tales of Muhammad Ibn Maghush’s epic journey.319
‘Abdul-Latif b. al-Jabi (d. 1026/1617), the son of a Damascene merchant and
therefore not a member of the city’s intellectual elite, decided to follow a different path
than that which his father had chosen, pursuing his religious studies in his hometown
before spending some years in Rum and eventually coming back to teach in a Damascus
madrasa.320 Muhibbi claims that ‘Abdul-Latif composed a short travel book, in which
the author expressed his deep admiration for certain islands in the Marmara Sea and the
Aegean. It appears that this particular Damascene scholar travelled by sea as well as by
land. Particularly noteworthy for ‘Abdul-Latif was an exotic fruit that he had found in
the Aegean island Sakız (Chios), which he described as a “yellow watermelon.”321
A certain Aleppine scholar by the name of Ibrahim b. Ahmad, known as al-
Kawakibi, took a trip to the lands of Rum, where he added to the education he had
received in Aleppo, and was assigned to Egypt as a judge before returning to Istanbul.
On his initial journey in Rum, he married the daughter of a Rumi scholar, Abdülbaki
Torsunoğlu, and shortly after Kawakibi’s return to Istanbul from Egypt, both his wife
and father-in-law passed away.322 Ibrahim requested that he be relieved of his duties in
the Aya Sofia college, but when his request was refused he left without prior notice to
return to his hometown Aleppo. In Aleppo, he experienced a falling out with his
parents, and though they were reconciled thanks to the best efforts of his teacher, the
historian ‘Umar al-‘Urdi, Kawakibi decided to leave Aleppo again when offered the
post of qadi in Mecca.323 One wonders whether Kawakibi’s distressing personal affairs
contributed to his decision to leave Aleppo for a second time, despite his obvious pining
to return home in the aftermath of even greater personal tragedy in Istanbul. It is also
unclear where the Aleppine scholar eventually passed away, but the circumstances of
318 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 16
319 Ghazzi, Kawakib, Vol. 2, p. 17
320 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 17
321 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 18
322 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 12
323 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 13
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his life and career are an apt demonstration of the sentiment that many prominent
‘ulama’, Arabic-speaking or otherwise, attached to their hometowns.
There is an almost infinite supply of similar cases. Jar-Allah b. Abu Bakr, a
Hanafi scholar and native of Jerusalem, made a trip to Anatolia and reached Istanbul,
gaining some posts and additional education along the way, before returning to his
hometown and eventually being assigned as its mufti.324 Muhammad b. Sha‘ban (d.
1020/1611-12) of Tripoli in North Africa visited Istanbul towards the end of his life,
where the mufti Sunullah received him and, apparently in recognition of Muhammad’s
love for his hometown, promised that he would be assigned qadi of Tripoli.325
Similarly, Muhammad b. ‘Abdul-Haqq (d. 1033/1623-24) was a scholar who, upon the
completion of his education in Rum, requested that he be offered a teaching post in his
hometown Jerusalem. Only two days after his return to the city, however, disaster struck
the man as he fell violently ill and passed away.326
There are also men who were forced to flee their homelands because of their
fears of imprisonment or death due to political pressure, only to return once the danger
had passed. Yusuf Ibn al-Amiri (d. 943/1537), a native of Aleppo, a bureaucrat in the
city during Mamluk times and a man who accumulated considerable wealth, fell out of
favor with the Mamluk authorities due to fiscal irregularities and was forced into exile,
choosing Istanbul as a new home for himself.327 As soon as word of Ottoman victory in
the East reached the imperial capital, however, he went back to “the land of the Arabs
(diyar al-‘Arab)”, where he eventually passed away in the Salihiyya suburb of
Damascus, according to Ibn al-Hanbali.328 Ibn al-Amiri’s strong affection seems not to
have been restricted to his hometown Aleppo, but embraced a greater geographical area
which certainly encompassed Bilad al-Sham, and most likely the Arab lands in a more
general sense.
Another victim of forced political exile, but from the Ottoman side, was
Abdürrahman of Amasya (d. 922/1516-17), who came to join the closed circle of Prince
324 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 127
325 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 474
326 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 482
327 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 2, p. 601
328 Ibn al-Hanbali, Durr al-Habab, Vol. 1, p. 602
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Bayezid (soon to become Sultan Bayezid II). Abdürrahman eventually fell out of favor
with members of the Ottoman elite in Istanbul, and Mehmed II soon called for his
capture and execution. Upon hearing this news, Bayezid saved his long-time friend and
associate from the wrath of his father, offering him a hefty sum of cash and a horse so
he could begin his escape to Mamluk Syria by night. Abdürrahman reached Aleppo,
where he received the bulk of his education in the religious sciences, but did not hesitate
to return to Rum upon Bayezid’s accession to the Ottoman throne. Obviously,
Abdürrahman saw for himself an opportunity to acquire important and lucrative
administrative posts during the reign of his friend the Sultan, but he was doubtless also
motivated by a desire to re-acquaint himself with the land that he regarded as home. The
highest rank he attained in Rum was as kadıasker, first of Anadolu and then Rumeli.
Abdürrahman also accompanied Selim I on his campaign against the Safavid Shah
Ismail I in 1514, but soon became senile and had to spend the last months of his life in
retirement.329
It appears, therefore, that scholars of Arabic-speaking lands were not alone in
harboring feelings of deep attachment to their homelands when they left for pastures
anew. Ibn al-‘Imad writes of a Rumi (from an unspecified hometown) by the name of
Alaüddin Ali b. Yusuf (d. 903/1497-8), who in his youth made a journey to Persia
(Bilad al-‘Ajam), passing along the way through Herat, Samarkand and Bukhara, where
he received a well-rounded education and acquired posts as a professor of the religious
sciences. Then, in Ibn al-‘Imad’s words, “his love of his homeland (hubb al-watan)
overcame him, so he decided to go back to the lands of Rum (Bilad al-Rum).”330
Alaüddin Efendi later achieved great success in his homeland Rum, acquiring a teaching
post in Bursa before ascending to the position of head judge in the city, and finally
passing away while serving as the kadıasker of Rumeli.331
Some individuals did not yearn for a return to a larger homeland like Rum, but
simply to a specific city or town. Abdürrahman b. Hüseyin (d. 954/1547-8), a native of
Bursa who spent most of his life in that city and appears to have been no more than a
minor scholar of modest means, left his hometown for Edirne to occupy a 15 akçe
329 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 109
330 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 18
331 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 19
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teaching post. According to Ibn al-‘Imad, “he (Abdürrahman) came to be ill in Edirne
while living alone in his home with nobody for companionship.” Abdürrahman returned
to Bursa soon after his bout with illness, and fittingly passed away in his beloved city.332
A markedly more prominent individual, Ibrahim b. Ali (d. 1028/18-19), a native of
Iznik who twice served as chief judge in Damascus, showed a spirit of generosity and
respect toward his peers, according to his biographer Muhibbi.333 In particular, Muhibbi
points to Ibrahim Efendi’s positive role during the siege of Damascus by the rebel Pasha
‘Ali Canbulad, which took place at the time of Ibrahim’s first tenure as qadi. The judge
reportedly convinced Canbulad not to enter Damascus after emerging victorious in
battle, so that additional strife and bloodshed could be avoided.334 According to Burini’s
biography of Canbulad, who was his contemporary, the Pasha of Aleppo was also
offered 125000 pieces in silver to abandon his siege.335 At any rate, Ibrahim Efendi, so
influential in averting what seemed a likely disaster for the Ottoman city of Damascus,
later decided to retire and spend his last years in piece in his hometown Iznik.336
There are numerous other examples of Rumi ‘ulama’ and people of other
professions leaving their original areas of residence and establishing themselves for
years in “foreign” lands, only to go back to their “homelands” (mawtan, watan, or
balad) with the ostensible aim of passing away and being buried there. The natural
human sentiments of devotion to one’s perceived land of origin seem to have been
similarly and equally experienced by both Arabic-speaking awlad al-‘arab in Rum and
Turkish-speaking natives of Rum in the Arab and other lands. There are a few cases, on
the other hand, of individuals who overcame their deep affinity to their homes and
ended up residing in self-imposed “exile” for the duration of their lives. One such
example is Badr al-Din Abu al-Fath of Cairo (d. 963/1555-6), who during his youth had
the fortune of meeting Bayezid II on a trip to Istanbul, where he presented the Sultan
with a book he had written on the 9th century Traditionist Bukhari. Bayezid, in turn,
rewarded Badr al-Din and offered him a lucrative teaching post in the Ottoman capital,
which the Cairene scholar declined because “he wished to go to his homeland (watan).”
332 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 303
333 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 31
334 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 32
335 Burini, Tarajim al-A‘yan, Vol. 2, p. 279
336 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 1, p. 32
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The lure of Istanbul may have been difficult to resist for long, however, and soon after
the Ottoman conquest of Egypt Badr al-Din returned, spending most of the remaining
years of his life in the imperial city while earning a daily salary of 50 akçes in
retirement.337
Then there are also certain very limited and peculiar cases of eccentrics, such as
the Damascene scholar of the Hanafi school Muhammad b. Ahmad, better known in his
time as Ibn al-Akram. Like his biographer Muhibbi, Ibn al-Akram set out for Rum
shortly after the death of his father. He then returned to Damascus, and there is very
little in his trip to Rum that is particularly worthy of note, based on Muhibbi’s
biography of the man. A unique facet of his character grabs the attention of his
biographer, however. After returning to his hometown, Ibn al-Akram started dressing
like Rumi scholars, according to Muhibbi, wearing “long dresses with wide sleeves.”338
This is most likely an allusion to the Mevlevis, the most prominent Sufi order in
Anatolia at the time; Muhibbi also reveals that Ibn al-Akram “wore the dress of the
Sufis”,339 but does not indicate whether Ibn al-Akram was a Mevlevi or a Sufi himself.
Ibn al-Akram is a clear representation of individuals who, despite returning to their
homelands, adopt certain customs of a people in a geographical locale that they had
visited, demonstrating an affinity to the people of the region in question and their
specific culture. In Ibn al-Akram’s case, it was obviously the “Rumi dress” that made
the greatest impression on his vision and memories of Rum. Ibn al-Akram had other
eccentricities as well, most notably declaring himself a shaykh al-Islam when he was no
more than a mere mudarris in Damascus.340
It cannot be stressed enough that such individuals as those described above,
though expressing an obvious affection for their hometowns and/or homelands,
experienced such sentiments only in cultural and territorial terms. “National” or
political motivations were, of course, furthest from a Muslim scholar’s mind when
making a return to his land or city of origin. Nevertheless, the numerous examples of
“homecomings” that the reader can find in the biographical literature of the 16th-17th
337 Ibn al-Imad, Shadharat al-Dhahab, Vol. 8, p. 336
338 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 354
339 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 355
340 Muhibbi, Khulasat al-Athar, Vol. 3, p. 354
116
centuries indicate that a clear sense of belonging and integration into an Ottoman world
was, for Arabic-speaking scholars of Ottoman Arab lands, not quite widespread or
comprehensive, though it was still far from non-existent. The unquestioned political
loyalty to the State as a legitimate and universal bastion of Sunni Islam did not
transform itself into similarly strong sentiments of belonging to a far-flung and
enormously diverse Ottoman world. Rather, it is safe to assume that the foremost geocultural
entity with which most Arabic-speaking scholars identified was the pre-defined
territorial unit from which they originated, whether this was restricted to a town, city, or
perceived as a much larger region and in terms of a greater homeland. This appears to
apply, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, even to the universalist scholars of Damascus. It
is clear from Burini’s language and discourse in Tarajim al-A‘yan that this was the case.
And even the better-travelled, markedly more cosmopolitan biographers like Ghazzi and
Muhibbi spent the majority of their lives in their native Damascus after enjoying fruitful
journeys to the lands of Rum, and cultivating the friendship of some prominent scholars
in the Ottoman center. But it must be kept in mind that the universalists are classified as
such not in the absolute sense; rather it is in contrast to the Aleppine localists, and
indeed other scholars in the lands of Islam, that they may be branded as cosmopolitan
and universalist. Rumi scholars and Ottoman officials also exhibited similar affinities to
Rum and their hometowns within the region, judging by accounts of their lives in the
dictionaries. It is, however, clear and incontrovertible from the biographical data that
the Arabic and Turkish-speaking intellectual elites had not been joined in an absolutely
cohesive system of scholarly and institutional unity. The age of mutual discovery for
Rumis and Arabs, which gained much strength after the ultimate demise of the Mamluks
did not, in the first two centuries of Ottoman rule, drastically alter the self-image of the
Syrian-Arab ‘ulama’, despite the obvious transformation in their perceptions of Sultan
and State. This group of scholars, evidently eager to exploit the full diversity and
richness of the educational institutions (for both knowledge and revenue) in the
Ottoman world, was nevertheless generally unwilling to be fully assimilated into the
Ottoman center, deciding ultimately to bring the financial and intellectual rewards of
Rumi scholarship back home.
117
B.
Conclusion
The Aleppine and Damascene perceptions of the Ottoman State and its major
protagonists through the first two centuries of Ottoman rule were not radically or
fundamentally different, despite the drastically contrasting visions and approaches to
historical writing that the leading intellectuals of each city adopted (with the exception
of Ibn Tulun in Damascus’s case). Aleppo’s biographers, like their Damascene
counterparts, contributed to the transformation of the image of Sultan and state during
the 16th and 17th centuries, and in modifying the terminology and discourse used to
depict the Ottoman center as the indisputably leading temporal and spiritual authority in
the Muslim dominions after 922/1516. This becomes clear when considering the variety
of different terms applied to the Sultan in the post-Bayezid era, all effectively
symbolizing the universality of his rule, as well as the descriptions of the imperial
capital and some of its institutions, most notably the authority of the seyh ül-islam, the
mufti of Istanbul.
The designation of the Ottoman Sultan as a “Sultan of Islam,” a new
terminological development in Syrian historical scholarship during the 16th century and
one that was surely connected to the Ottoman conquest of the Arab lands and the
dynasty’s custodianship of the Holy Cities of Islam, suggests some sense of
identification with a greater Ottoman world. This is particularly true for Damascus,
whose universalist biographers give great attention to the Dar al-Islam as a whole. As
such, the Ottoman Sultan’s perceived status as a “Sultan of Islam”, especially when
combined with the dominant Damascene worldview, reveals a strong awareness and
even attachment, as distinct from mere loyalty, to the Ottoman realms.
And yet there is other evidence which indicates that a general Arab or even
specifically Syrian recognition of association with a predominantly Turkish-speaking
Ottoman world was still far from complete. The large number of Arabic-speaking
scholars who made their way to Rum, only to return to their homelands at a later stage,
reveals the extent to which the intellectual elite still held feelings of affinity to their
118
lands and cities of origin, and that such sentiments outweighed any sense of belonging
to a larger geographical entity, whether that was an Ottoman or even a far wider Dar al-
Islam. These feelings were not at all exclusive to the Arabs of Syria and other lands, but
were shared by the Turkish-speaking Rumis as well, indicating the universality of such
human emotions and, more importantly, demonstrating that most Rumis were equally
uneager to completely abandon their own homelands.
Then, of course, there are those who never leave their homelands at any point in
their lives (probably constituting the majority of the ‘ulama’ class), and this naturally
affects their conceptions of the world around them. In the biographers’ case, Ibn Tulun
stands alone among the Damascene historians as a scholar who appears not to have
wandered beyond the gates of his city, while both Aleppines Ibn al-Hanbali and ‘Urdi
possessed modest (and in the case of ‘Urdi, non-existent) travel experience.
Unsurprisingly, all three men were local historians who were concerned almost
exclusively with writing on the notable men (and in Ibn Tulun and Ibn al-Hanbali’s
case, women) of their cities. But it is obvious that Ibn al-Hanbali and ‘Urdi after him
possessed greater knowledge of Ottoman affairs than their Damascene counterpart,
despite sharing Ibn Tulun’s approach to biographical writing. This, however, is quite
understandable. Ibn Tulun was a localist historian who, crucially, lived and wrote only
during the earliest decades of Ottoman rule, after spending much of his life under the
Mamluk regime. As such, his lack of knowledge and interest in the Ottoman State
merely reflects the fact that he was almost entirely unfamiliar with the Ottoman world
before Selim I’s forces triumphantly entered Damascus. For the same reason, Ibn Tulun
appears as a man who, among all biographers, displayed the most openly prejudicial
attitudes toward the Rumis, who during his time were not as familiar an entity in
Damascus and Syria as they became in later generations.
It may be viewed as paradoxical, on the other hand, that Aleppine scholars did not
exhibit as keen a sense of ethnic consciousness (even considering the case of Ibn al-
Hanbali) and provide as many expressions of prejudice as the Damascene biographers.
After all, Damascenes were universalistic in their attitude and methods of historical
composition, and placing all other variables aside Aleppine historians, as localists with
their own city being the uppermost concern in their minds, should perhaps have
manifested greater Arab ethnic solidarity and given their reader more expressions of
119
hostility towards non-Arabs and even non-Aleppines. But other historical factors come
into play, and these help explain the scarcity of Aleppine examples of ethnic awareness
and prejudice against Rumis. It is true that Damascus attracted a greater number of non-
Arab scholars from different parts of the Ottoman and non-Ottoman Muslim world. But
most such individuals did not spend the majority of their careers in the city for a variety
of reasons, often including a profound sense of attachment to a perceived homeland.
Most often, these ‘ulama’ came to Damascus to acquire some additional education and
possibly also spend a brief stint teaching in a Damascene madrasa or temporarily filling
some other post. Damascus, of course, also received a great number of travelers on their
way to the hajj on a yearly basis, but naturally many of those chose not to remain in the
city for long while passing through it on their identical return route.
Aleppo, on the other hand, was a prominent trading metropolis which was wellaccustomed
to hosting “foreign” peoples, Ottoman and non-Ottoman, Muslim and non-
Muslim, for extended periods of time. Not only Rumis and ‘Ajamis resided in Aleppo in
pursuit of their commercial interests, but a significant number of Frankish “infidels”
from the remote lands of Western Christendom spent much of their lives in the
hometown of Ibn al-Hanbali and ‘Urdi. And Aleppo was, after all, closer to both the
Persian lands and Rum than Damascus in terms of actual geographical proximity,
enhancing its familiarity with the non-Arabic-speaking world that surrounded Bilad al-
Sham. Damascus can, conversely, be precisely described as a city that was situated in
the heartlands of “Arabistan.” Also, the greater religious diversity of Aleppo, which
with its periphery included sizeable Christian and Muslim heterodox communities, in
comparison to the overwhelmingly Sunni Damascus, may have also contributed to its
biographers’ relatively muted ethnic sentiment, if not quite their iconoclastic attitudes
towards notorious heretics.
On the whole, the multiplicity of different religious and ethnic diversities that
constituted an everyday reality in the Aleppine setting did not exist in Damascus.
Aleppo represented the confluence of commercial networks in the Arab Near East and
much more in the cultural sense, while Damascus epitomized the homogeneity and
monolithic nature of a city where Sunni Islam continuously prevailed. Damascenes, of
course, went to distant lands like Rum and explored “other” cultures, but their
interactions with “foreign” individuals were probably less a part of everyday life than
120
was the case for Aleppines, who could capture an image of the world’s diversity simply
by remaining in their hometown. The universalism of Damascene historical scholarship
is merely connected to the universality of its image as the heartland of Muslim
orthodoxy and to its political importance in the context of Muslim history. Its
cosmopolitanism was, therefore, exclusively intellectual; that of Aleppo was social,
religious, and cultural.
At any rate, the Aleppine and Damascene models of historiography present us
with distinct images and perceptions of the Ottomans from those offered, for instance,
by Egyptian observers during the same period, judging by contemporary scholarship on
the subject.341 There is little evidence to suggest that Turks or Ottomans were,
throughout the course of the 16th and 17th centuries, viewed by Syrian historians as
uncouth, barbaric or immoral simply by virtue of their Turkish-ness or Ottoman-ness.
The terms through which individuals were evaluated were concrete and preconceived,
but rarely if ever incorporated specific or unchangeable traits that applied to a single
ethnic or cultural group. It also appears that members of the Syrian intellectual elite
were better (though not fully) integrated into the world of Ottoman scholarship and its
institutions than the Egyptian elite, based on the relative paucity of examples from
Ottoman Egypt of ‘ulama’ who enjoyed successful careers in the lands of the Ottoman
center, or even Egyptian travelers to Rum, who may have been outnumbered even by
the distant and non-Ottoman Maghrebis.
Nevertheless, in order to improve our currently limited state of knowledge and
understanding of the complex web of relations that bound the Ottomans and various
Arab peoples together for no less than four centuries, it is necessary to push forward
with further comparative research on the Arab lands and their intellectual elites. Any
approach to this task that takes the Arab peoples under Ottoman rule as a single and
homogeneous group, however, cannot possibly achieve the required objectives, but will
341 Apart from Ulrich Haarmann’s work explaining Arab-Egyptian anti-Turkish
prejudice, see Michael Winter, “Attitudes Toward the Ottomans in Egyptian
Historiography During Ottoman Rule” in Hugh Kennedy (ed.), The
Historiography of Ottoman Egypt (c. 950-1800) (Leiden 2001), pp. 195-210. See
also by the same author: Egyptian Society Under Ottoman Rule, 1517-1798 (New
York 1992), pp. 29-32. In both works, Winter generally agrees with Haarmann’s
observation that the Ottoman state was viewed as entirely legitimate in its rule
over Egypt, but also points to an “Arab” feeling of hostility towards “Turks.”
121
rather lead us into a state of greater confusion. Rather, a series of comparative studies
focusing on historical development through both time and geographical space, and
based on thorough analyses of the specific social, political, cultural and intellectual
realities that defined the experience(s) of different Arabs during the Ottoman period
would certainly be the most sensible and correct way to proceed.
122
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