This article proposes a new approach to the question of why so few Arabic documents have survived in their original archival context. Taking the Mamluk period as a case study it argues that the category “archive” itself needs to be reconfigured, away from the idea of fixed archival spaces, or even a Mamluk state archive, toward archival practices. These archival practices were spread across the Mamluk realm and involved numerous actors, which included the central bureaucracy in Cairo, individual secretaries, and, (...) most importantly, the small-scale administration managed by officers. These archival practices emerge not from normative and narrative texts, but primarily from a consideration of archival traces on surviving documents. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 91 Heft: 1 Seiten: 6-19.

Die Rifāʿīya aus Damaskus: Eine Privatbibliothek im osmanischen Syrien und ihr kulturelles Umfeld. By Boris Liebrenz. Islamic Manuscripts and Books, vol. 10. Leiden: Brill, 2016. Pp. xvi + 421, illus. $181, €140.

Name der Zeitschrift: Der Islam Jahrgang: 93 Heft: 1 Seiten: 286-290.

A Literary History of Medicine: The ʿUyūn al-anbāʾ fī ṭabaqāt al-aṭibbāʾ of Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah. Edited and translated by Emilie Savage-Smith, Simon Swain, and Geert Jan van Gelder. Handbuch für Orientalistik, 1: The Near and Middle East, vol. 134. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 2020. $865. Open access: https://scholarlyeditions.brill.com/lhom/.

The Intensification and Reorientation of Sunni Jihad Ideology in the Crusader Period: Ibn ʿAsākir of Damascus and His Age, with an Edition and Translation of Ibn ʿAsākir’s The Forty Hadiths for Inciting Jihad. By Suleiman A. Mourad and James E. Lindsay. Islamic History and Civilization, vol. 99. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Pp. xv + 222. $133.