Second Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies

Second Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies

Université of Liège, June 2015

Al-Maqrīzī on the descendants of Japheth son of Noah

Mayte Penelas (CSIC, Granada)

First, I would like to apologize for not being present at the conference, and to thank Frédéric Bauden for kindly offering to read this paper out. Of course, I am also grateful to him for inviting me to participate in this session.

The chapter of al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar that is going to be presented here deals with the history of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Franks, and Goths, all of whom are said to be descendants of Japheth son of Noah, as the paper is entitled.

This fragment survives in three manuscripts, which are currently preserved in Istambul: the autograph Fatih 4340 housed at Suleymaniye Kutuphanesi, and the copies Aya Sofya 3366 of Suleymaniye and Ahmet III 2926/5 of Topkapı Sarayı. The collation of the three manuscripts evidences that the two copies, both dating from the last quarter of the fifteenth century, are based on the autograph and are independent of each other, as indicated, for example, by the omissions from one of them which are not shared by the other.

In 2013 an edition of the whole work, prepared by Khālid Aḥmad al-Mallā al-Suwaydī and ʿĀrif ʿAbd al-Ġanī, was published by “al-Dār al-ʿarabiyya li-l-mawsūʿāt” of Beirut. This edition is based—at least as far as the chapter on the descendants of Japheth is concerned—on the copy preserved at Topkapi Sarayi, even though the editors do not say anything in this regard. The 2013 edition shares the omissions, misreadings and misspellings of the Topkapi copy, having, in addition to those, several other omissions as well as countless misreadings and misspellings. The first thing that catches the eye is the fact that the headings of the chapter are either omitted without further ado or substituted for a title between brackets that has been fabricated by the editors “as an addition required by the context” (Ar. ziyāda yaqtaḍīhā al-siyāq). The reason for this is likely the fact that the editors did not use the manuscript itself but a microfilm housed at Juma Almajid Centre for Culture & Heritage of Dubai, in which the titles in red ink may be illegible; this may also account for the numerous misreadings and gaps in the edition, or at least for some of them. Therefore, a new and truly critical edition is undoubtedly justified.

The chapter on the descendants of Japheth is included in the fifth volume of al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar. This volume begins with a chapter on the brigand-poets of the Jāhiliyya, which is followed by the narrative of several battles between Arabian tribes in the pre-Islamic period. Next, the author’s attention shifts to the history of the Persians until the last Sassanid king Yazdegerd III (r. 632-651). Between the end of the Achaemenids and the beginning of the Sassanids some sections are introduced dealing with Alexander the Great, his mother Olympias, his tutor Aristotle, and the so-called mulūk al-ṭawāʾif, that is, local kings who, having been appointed by Alexander the Great, ruled over this region prior to the Sassanids. The chapter following the fall of the Sassanid Empire deals with the history of the Israelites (Ar. Banū Isrāʾīl) from Joshua’s death to the destruction of the Second Temple. Our chapter comes next, and with it, the fifth volume of al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar concludes.

The title that heads the chapter is “al-Khabar ʿan dawlat al-Yūnān wa-l-Rūm”, meaning ‘An account of the empire of the Yūnān and the Rūm’. Who were these Yūnān and Rūm? The word Yūnān reflects the name Ionians, denoting the ancient Greeks. Al-Maqrīzī says that Yūnān was one of the sons of Yāfith b. Nūḥ, ‘Japheth son of Noah’, and that his name in the Torah is Yāfān, which was arabized into Yūnān. He is obviously referring to Javan, who is mentioned in Genesis 10,4 among the seven sons of Japheth. With regard to the word “Rūm”, both the Romans and the Byzantines are referred to by this name. In al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar other genealogies for the Yūnān and the Rūm are recorded, including that given by the ninth-century philosopher Abū Yūsuf al-Kindī; the latter speaks of Yūnān as the son of Eber, and hence as a descendant of Noah also, but through his son Shem instead of Japheth. However, al-Maqrīzī affirms that the correct genealogy is the one which traces the origin of the Yūnān and the Rūm back to Yūnān, son of Japheth. And this is, in fact, the genealogy most widely accepted in Arabic historiography.

As sons of Japheth, the Yūnān and the Rūm share a common ancestry with the Ifranja, ‘the Franks’, and the Qūṭ, ‘the Goths’, who are also said to be descendants of Japheth, through his sons Gomer and Magog respectively. The term Ifranja needs some further explanation. The words Ifranj or Firanj originally denoted the inhabitants of the Carolingian empire but later were applied to Europeans in general, whereas Ifranja and Firanja are normally used to denote the land inhabited by them. However, in this chapter, the four words—Ifranj, Firanj, Ifranja and Firanja—are used to refer to the Christians from Western and Central Europe as opposed to the Christians from Eastern Europe or Rūm, i.e. ‘Byzantines’.

These are, in sum, the nations this chapter is concerned with: Greeks, Romans/Byzantines, Franks, and Goths.

To write al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar al-Maqrīzī drew upon a large number of sources, which fact has been considered one of the greatest values of this book, since some of those sources are lost. This is undoubtedly true for the book in general. However, as regards the chapter that is being presented here, its greatest merit lies, in my opinion, in the fact that it is, for the most part, an almost exact reproduction of the corresponding fragment in the second volume of Kitāb al-ʿIbar, the universal history written by the celebrated Ibn Khaldūn. The introduction to this universal history is the famous Muqaddima, the ‘Prolegomenon’ where Ibn Khaldūn set forth his ideas and thought on history, civilization, human society… It was the Muqaddima, rather than the universal history itself, the work which brought him fame. Ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis in 1332, and settled in Cairo at the age of 50. Among the numerous people who attended his lectures was al-Maqrīzī who was in his early twenties upon the arrival of the Tunisian historian in Egypt.

Ibn Khaldūn’s ʿIbar is not lost but, as is well known, still lacks a critical edition. Al-Maqrīzī’s Khabar usually offers a reading of the ʿIbar original text more faithful than the editions of this work. That was obvious to me while working on this chapter, which on many occasions offers the same reading as, or a reading close to, that given in the source used by Ibn Khaldūn, as contrasted with the corrupt reading given in the editions. Furthermore, I have been able to confirm that by consulting the fourteenth-century copy of the second volume of ʿIbar preserved at the British Library. On countless occasions, this manuscript and al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar give the same reading against the editions. On rare occasions, however, it is the editions which offer the original reading. And this we know thanks again to al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar, which sometimes gives the same reading as the ʿIbar editions against the ʿIbar manuscript. Therefore, this chapter of al-Maqrīzī’s work stands as a valuable fifteeth-century indirect testimony of the corresponding fragment in Ibn Khaldūn’s work.

The chapter on the descendants of Japheth is divided into eight parts: a small introduction plus seven sections. Each part is headed by a small title, and begins with the same formula: “iʿlam anna…”, ‘know that…’. This is followed by a brief introduction containing general information of a genealogical, geographical and/or historical nature on the people to whom the section is devoted.

0.  As said before, the introductory section contains general genealogical information on the Yūnān and the Rūm, and on the peoples who share a common ancestry with them as descendants of Japheth.

1.  The Yūnān, ‘the Greeks’, are the first nation to whom an independent section is devoted. This section begins with a small introduction which helps to place the Greeks on the earth, and informs about the peoples they are divided into, their conflicts with the Persian Achaemenids, and their kings from Yūnān to Philip II of Macedon. Afterwards, the section focuses on the latter’s son and successor Alexander the Great, and on the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.

2.  The next section contains information on the legendary kings of Latium and Rome, and, subsequently, on the establishment of the Republic with ‘the consuls’ (Ar. al-qanšališ). In the middle of this passage, the scanty description of Rome provided by Ibn Khaldūn in his ʿIbar is supplemented with a long fragment drawn from other sources. The section concludes with a passage concerning the foundation of Carthage, the Punic Wars, and the war between Rome and Jugurtha king of Numidia.

3.  and 4. The two following sections deal, respectively, with the pagan Caesars (Ar. qayāṣira) up to Diocletianus and Maximianus, and with the Christian Emperors from Constantine the Great to Heraclius, during whose reign the hegira of the prophet Muḥammad took place.

5.  The next section, entitled “On the rule of the Byzantine Emperors during the Islamic period till their end”, may be divided into three parts:

-  The focus of the first is on hostilities between Byzantines and Muslims from the beginning of the Islamic era to the year 837 of the Common Era (a.h. 223).

-  The second part contains an abridged version of the chapter of al-Masʿūdī’s Murūj al-dhahab entitled “On the kings of the Rūm after the rise of Islam”.

-  The third and last part, derived from Kitāb al-Kāmil of Ibn al-Athīr, begins with the mention of John Kourkouas, Domestic of the Schools of Emperor Romanos I who took Malatya from the Muslims in a.d. 934 (a.h. 322). The account of the events concerning the Byzantine emperors continues up to year 1070 (a.h. 463), when Michael VII succeeded to the throne. The focus is on the relations of the Byzantines with the Hamdanids of Aleppo and Mosul, the Buwayhids, the Fatimids, and the Seljuqids.

6.  The section devoted to the Firanj is radically different from the ones discussed thus far and deserves a more detailed outline. Up to this point the chapter on the descendants of Japheth in al-Khabar ʿan al-bashar follows the corresponding fragment in the second volume of Ibn Khaldūn’s ʿIbar closely, even though with some omissions, some slight modifications, and a few additions of minor importance. The scene in this section changes completely, as the information derived from volume 2 of ʿIbar is supplemented with material from volumes 4, 5 and 6. Furthermore, much information is not found in ʿIbar at all: on the one hand, al-Maqrīzī’s work records events that occurred after the death of Ibn Khaldūn in 1406, such as the captures of Rome by Ladislaus I of Naples in 1408 (a.h. 811), of Antequera by Ferdinand of Antequera in 1410 (a.h. 813), and of Ceuta by John I of Portugal in 1415 (a.h. 817); on the other hand, the narrative in Khabar continues beyond the point where the section of ʿIbar on the Byzantine emperors ends, namely, with the recovery of Constantinople from the Latin Empire by the Byzantine Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos in 1261, and the subsequent mention of his son and successor Andronikos II.

Al-Maqrīzī’s work goes on to inform briefly of some events concerning the Ayyubids of Egypt and the Crusades, including the capture of Jerusalem and other cities from the Crusaders by the Ayyubid sultan Saladin, the siege of Damietta by the forces of the Fifth Crusade, the capture of this city by the contingents of the Seventh Crusade, and the death of Louis IX of France in Carthage while leading the Eighth Crusade. As al-Maqrīzī says, all this is recorded in his Kitāb al-Sulūk li-duwal al-mulūk.

Then, the Firanj—so the narrative proceeds—became divided into fourteen independent “kingdoms”, on each of which some information, mainly of a political nature, is provided. These are: Venice, Ancona, Naples, Florence, Pisa, Genoa, France, Aragon, Portugal, Castile, Navarra, Sardegna and Sicily, Hungary, and Cyprus. At the end of the passage dealing with the Kingdom of Aragon, al-Maqrīzī says that many reports concerning this kingdom are recorded in his Kitāb Durar al-ʿUqūd al-farīda fī tarājim al-aʿyān al-mufīda. In fact, the passages of Khabar regarding not only the kingdom of Aragon, but also the kingdoms of Portugal, Castile, and Navarra have been extracted from the biographies of Peter I of Castile and Peter IV of Aragon included in Durar.

It is important to note that the information on the non-Iberian states and their political systems was derived neither from ʿIbar nor from any source which I have been able to identify. As Frédéric Bauden has suggested, al-Maqrīzī may have received this material from a personal informant. It is clear to me, however, that the source of most information on the Iberian kingdoms was Ibn Khaldūn’s ʿIbar, as many fragments are literally found in the fourth volume of this work, even though in disorder, and in a rather confusing and apparently unsystematic manner. And this applies to most of the section on the Franks.

7.  In the last section of the chapter, entitled “On the Goths, kings of al-Andalus”, al-Maqrīzī returns to his usual method throughout it. This section is, therefore, an accurate reproduction of the corresponding fragment in the second volume of ʿIbar. After the usual genealogical, geographical and historical introduction that opens every section, this one describes the events following the sack of Rome by the Goths in 410, the distribution of al-Andalus—that is, the Iberian Peninsula—among Vandals, Suevi and Alans, and the presence of the Visigoths in al-Andalus from Ataulf to the last Visigothic king, Roderic, from whom al-Andalus was taken by the Muslims in 711.