Year: 2020
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: In Rajab 889/July-August 1484, the Mamluk sultan al-Ashraf Qāytbāy appointed Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. al-Muzalliq chief Shāfiʿī qāḍī in Damascus.1This office was the most distinguished and lucrative post for members of the religious elite in late medieval Syria, and the holder of this position enjoyed a status as a high-ranking member of the ʿulamāʾ, as well as substantial material compensation and power within the ruling hierarchy of the state.Shams al-Dīn's family had been a cornerstone of the economy and social fabric of Damascus for most of the 15th century, and provides an illustration of the historical changes that affected the development of the Sultanate more broadly in this period.The qāḍī's grandfather, also known as Shams al-Dīn, Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Muzalliq, was not a judge, but made the family's fortune in trade with India in the late 8th/14th and early 9th/15th centuries.His commercial contacts, in combination with the political alliances he forged during the period of civil war in Syria in the first decade of the 9th/15th century, assured his family's position of wealth and influence for generations to come.In this chapter we consider what the history of the Banū Muzalliq at Damascus suggests about the historical development of the Mamluk Sultanate's state.Members of the family were merchants involved in Indian Ocean and Red Sea trade in the Hijaz, as well as Syria, filled positions in the military and financial administration of the Sultanate by the second generation, and occupied roles in the religious judiciary by the third.The Muzalliq family aligned their interests locally in Damascus, as well as transregionally, with those of the sultans, beginning in a period at the start of the 9th/15th century when Syria had fallen outside of the direct control of Cairo, and gradually integrated with the Sultanate's political elite as Syria itself was more firmly re-integrated into the realm.An examination of the commercial elite of Syria suggests parallels to the broadening of the Sultanate's religious and intellectual elite of the same period, as individuals with ties outside the Cairo citadel, and across political boundaries, became servants of the state.
Source: BRILL eBooks
Author: Patrick Wing
Language: English
Subfield: History
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W3045282713