16
Shared Things
Inventories of the Islamic World
Uri Zvi Shachar
Eudes of Nevers’s Account-Inventory offers a rare glimpse into the life of a Frankish aristocrat who lived in the final decades of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. More than a dry list of items that were in his possession, the inventory unfolds a fascinating story about the social network to which Eudes belonged, the ties and commitments that shaped his affairs and that continued after his death. Furthermore, the inventory helps us imagine how Eudes and his contemporaries understood the way in which property (and debt, for that matter) in its many cultural forms was seen to endure over time. The potential enclosed in this document—made tangible by this volume—leads us to lament the absence of similar texts from the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The lack of such texts may be the result of contemporary archival practices or of historical circumstances of conquest and displacement. Either way, the absence of similar texts stands in contrast to the cache of documents left by the Mamluks—the successors who came to rule over the same region after 1291—that includes hundreds of inventories very much like the one that was drafted for Eudes. The estate inventories from late fourteenth-century Mamluk Jerusalem relate the stories of individuals from all walks of life, both men and women, Jews, Christians, and Muslim, wealthy and impoverished, equally concerned about the fate of their earthly possessions. This short essay introduces a number of Mamluk estate inventories from the final decade of the fourteenth century, and thus offers an additional regional, cross-cultural perspective within which to frame Eudes’s text.
Jerusalem returned to Muslim hands in 1187, and save for a fifteen-year period following the Treaty of Jaffa that Frederick II negotiated (1229–44), the city remained under Muslim control until 1917. In 1250 a group of military generals effected a coup d’état that brought about the rise of the Mamluk sultanate in Cairo. While the coup successfully ended Ayyubid rule in Egypt, the first decade of the new regime was tumultuous, and the consolidation of its power northward into Syria was slow and uneven. But following his monumental triumph against Mongol forces in ‘Ain Jalut, Baybars, the sixth Mamluk sultan, finally achieved political stability and ruled for seventeen years until his death in 1277.1 During this period, Baybars launched reforms that helped build a centralized, highly sophisticated state administration for which the Mamluk sultanate became famous. Throughout the Mamluk period the military and its subsidiary institutions played a central role in the public domain. Baybars and his successors strengthened existing state offices and instituted new ones, including a katib al-sirr (confidential secretary) and a sahib al-insha’ (head of chancery) among other positions.2 In the second half of the thirteenth century, as part of the effort to legitimize the new regime, both Mamluk sultans and local rulers made major investments in public institutions. The architectural and institutional ingenuity that characterized the early Mamluk period effectively changed the urban fabric of cities like Cairo, Damascus, and Jerusalem, such that many Mamluk buildings still stand to this day. These decades saw the creation and rebuilding of shrines, madrasas, hostels, mosques, Sufi lodges, public fountains, and baths.3 The Mamluks were renowned for erecting or renovating city walls and gates and refurbishing urban fortresses during their rule.
But the investment in two public institutions in particular left the most noticeable mark on the character of cities in the region during this period, namely, investment in charitable funds (waqf) and in the shar’i religious court. Both, of course, were not invented in this period, but came to play a decisive role in the urban landscape thanks to major state investments and the consistent policies of the central state government. Through these institutions the sultans looked to solidify the supremacy of the religious establishment over civil society and to outsource the responsibility over those who needed institutional care into the hands of nongovernmental Islamic organizations. The choice to invest in these institutions was not an obvious one, seeing as both found legitimacy and authority not in the political establishment that appointed them but in contemporary spiritual leadership and in the Islamic intellectual-religious tradition.4 Yet by supporting these institutions financially and publicly, Mamluk rulers styled themselves as the patrons of Islamic religiosity and in so doing relegated matters that have weighty religious-legalistic bearing—such as the care for the poor and sick—to the purview of nongovernmental bodies.5
How these hybrid (administrative-religious) offices worked is much disputed among historians. The jurisdiction of the religious court vis-à-vis the state tribunals seems to have varied from one place to another and could differ over time in the same city. It is the fourteenth-century Mamluk qadi court that concerns us here. The qadi was not just a judge who ruled in religious disputes (such as divorce, etc.), but also a state administrator who had financial responsibilities. The qadi, for example, often settled disputes between neighbors in questions of building permits where a plaintiff claimed that their property was breached or compromised. What is more, the shar’i court supervised the activity of pious endowments, which in their turn were charged with the education and well-being of the young, sick, and needy in the city. This important institution, the waqf, was the main avenue for urban philanthropic activity. Like the shar’i court, the waqf too functioned in an indistinct space at the intersection between the private and public domains. Through private donation and regular state funding, the waqf administered provisions for beneficent activities and support of various civil causes.6 As a result, in many ways, the shar’i court and the waqf regulated and shaped urban space and society in Mamluk Syria.7
In 1974 a large number of documents, over nine hundred in total, mostly written on paper, were discovered in the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem. The museum resides in a building on the Holy Mount (Haram al-Sharif) that was in existence and in continuous use since the Middle Ages. A tempting assumption, therefore, was that the collection somehow pertains to an institution that used to operate from the same, or a nearby, location, perhaps the court of the qadi itself. However, as the documents were discovered in a storage hatch and their provenance is unknown, scholars were unable to determine conclusively the purpose and the institutional context in which the documents were created and preserved.8 A team of historians from McGill University documented the find and created a meticulous catalogue that Donald Little published in 1984.9
The documents span a time period of 250 years, but the vast majority pertain to the final decade of the fourteenth century. Similarly, the collection contains a range of document types: petitions, reports, records of public sales, acknowledgement deeds, court hearings, marriage and divorce contracts, and the like.10 By far the largest group, about half of the entire collection, is estate inventories drawn up for individuals, both deceased and elderly, from all walks of life. Most of the documents mention the Shafi’i Qadi of Jerusalem, Sharf al-Dīn al-Ḥazrajī, who died in 1395, which led scholars to assume that the collection is associated with the shar’i court in Jerusalem during the period of his office.11
The inventories offer a detailed view of the possessions of various inhabitants of fourteenth-century Jerusalem. In this way, they provide a striking parallel to Eudes’s inventory from the earlier period. The purpose of the inventories was both to record the earthly possessions of a person dead or alive (including debts and loans) and to establish their legal heir(s). Unlike a will, the inventory does not necessarily inscribe a decision about how to divide items or wealth among heirs, but rather it lists and enumerates property. The Haram documents include both inventories that pertain to living people who turn to the service of the court proactively and those of deceased persons, whose possessions sometimes are no more than what is found on or with the dead body. For example, in June 1393, the body of a man was found inside the al-Aqsa Mosque. Seeing as the unidentified person was in possession of only two rags and three old wooden boards (“thalāthah alwāḥ khashaba ‘utuq”), the expense of his burial was determined to be covered by the pious endowment. In contrast, the documentation of the property belonging to a wealthier deceased woman is far more complex. In August of the same year, the court recorded the possessions of a certain Fatima bint Zayn al-Din, whose family apparently came from Damascus. That Fatima was relatively affluent can be seen from the wide variety of garments she had owned: a white linen chemise, a white Ba’albaki tunic (or upper garment, qaba’, from Ba’albek, Lebanon),12 a wrapping (or robe, shamlah) embroidered with blue silk and gold threads,13 a loincloth (‘izār), a Venetian chemise, three old Alexandrian silk underpants, two old kerchiefs, and a Yemenite quilt (or blanket, liḥāf).14 Clearly Fatima had a taste for luxurious products of various kinds hailing from renowned centers of textile production—Ba’albek, Venice, and Alexandria. It is worth noting, however, that this wardrobe is the only property that is attributed to Fatima and that at the time of the inspection both her husband and brother were absent (the former in Ramla and the latter in Damascus); as a result her sister-in-law was the one who oversaw the inventory process.
In November 1393 a certain Nafisa b. Ali b. Jami turned to the court in order to make a deposition pertaining to her possessions. The document created from this process yielded one of the richest and most detailed inventories found among the Haram records. Estate inventories, like other documents found in this collection, are formulaic in that scribes tended to follow a highly rigid structure: beginning with an invocation of God (“the best of all judges”) and the prophet, there is then the date and a phrase that states the type of form—usually, in our case, indicating that an inventory was recorded. The document next introduces the owner of the surveyed property by name, and then marks the legal ramifications of the statement by addressing their physical condition, specifically whether alive or dead, elderly or young, and the like. Here the text states that the subject of the inventory, Nafisa, “was in sound mind and in possession of her mental faculties but sick in body.”15 Her imminent death, in other words, created the need for the document.16 Like in the previous examples, Nafisa owned a sizeable collection of clothes, including chemises, tunics, undergarments, cloaks, overcoats, turbans, and veils of various manufacture. She also possessed abundant housewares including a number of carpets (both a small and a large Rumi/Byzantine mat, bisāṭ; and a cotton prayer rug, sajjadah); one white-blue Qudsi (from Jerusalem) towel and another large Shami (Syrian) towel; copper bowls; trays, plates, and cases all made of brass; chests, shelves with some Ba’albaki glassware on them, and a number of chairs.
Like Eudes’s inventory, Nafisa’s also closed with a section detailing her financial obligations and the possession of coinage. Here we learn that a number of individuals, all living in villages not far from Jerusalem, owed Nafisa money: Ali b. Yusuf owes her 350 silver dinars, a certain Sidiqi from Qusur owes her 28 dinars, and a certain Amir from Urtas has an outstanding debt of 44 dinars. Furthermore, we learn that Nafisa owned a vineyard (lit. grape vine plants, ghirās karm) in Dayr Abu Thawr, which is also in close proximity to Jerusalem, as well as trees or plants of unspecified type in the same place.17 In the immediate context of these items the document states that Nafisa owned a “young Muslim black female slave named Mubaraka.” If the decision to place these items together is not arbitrary, it is possible that Nafisa was in the business of growing and distributing produce (grapes and other fruits) in and around Jerusalem. She is said to have owned an apartment in Jerusalem, which could have been a storefront or a warehouse. Mubaraka could have worked in this firm, and a number of individuals, or more likely vendors, in the region are shown to have incurred some debt. A possible indication that Nafisa was indeed a wealthy merchant is the fact that she bore a golden ring (with an unspecified stone, faṣṣ) on her right hand and a necklace with precious stones (’aqīq—could be onyx, agate, jacinth, or ruby). Be that as it may, unlike most other inventories, Nafisa does leave instructions regarding her property to be carried out after her death. She asks that one hundred dirhams go to her granddaughter (the daughter of Nafisa’s daughter), Fatima, who was nine years old at the time the document was signed. Additionally, she bequeaths the same amount, one hundred dirhams, “for the honorable complete recitation [of the Quran] and for charity,” and asks that her husband oversees the disbursement of the money.18
The inventory of another relatively affluent individual gives yet more insight into the objects and possessions that animated the eastern Mediterranean and the world of Outremer. This inventory was drafted in October 1393 for a certain Muhammad b. Muhammad b. ‘Umar, who we are told was “weak,” meaning that like Nafisa he was probably in poor health and/or elderly. The statement furthermore identifies Muhammad as a copyist (“nāsikh”).19 As in the previous cases, the inventory begins by listing the clothes Muhammad was wearing and those that were in his possession. These include chemises, turbans, cloaks, overcoats made of fur, linen, silk, or cotton. Significantly, some of the items listed in Muhammad’s home could very well be associated with his profession. This section begins by stating that he owns twelve bound books (or codex volumes). The items that are listed subsequently could have served as his working space: a bench covered with a blue garment, a towel made of velvet, an old leather placement map, and a quilt embroidered with black and green threads. Additionally, he had a striped cloak made of silk and an apron. The inventory then states that Muhammad possessed three additional bound books and lists a number of items that, I propose, could have been used for the production of ink: one desk with a blue cotton tabletop, a copper tray and wooden bowl, a copper cauldron, a copper pan, an iron ladle, a sack with almonds inside, another sack with stones, pebbles, and combustion/lighting material, one leather bag with egg shells, two glass jars and a kettle, another sack with copper and lead inside. Muhammad may have used this equipment to mix, boil, and filter the substances from which he produced ink for his own needs as a copyist.20 The inventory ends with a brief notice regarding sums of money that Muhammad owed and that were owed to him.
The inventories found in the Haram collection speak to the lives and livelihoods of people living in Jerusalem at the end of the fourteenth century. The court and the pious endowments associated with it served people from all walks of life—both poor and wealthy, free and enslaved—holding a variety of occupations (weavers, merchants, etc.) and coming from various backgrounds. As could be expected in a collection that was overseen by a shar’i court, the majority of individuals mentioned in the documents—as either the subjects of inventories, witnesses, or related stakeholders (spouses, heirs, debtors etc.)—were Muslim, to judge by their names. But a number of Jews and Christians (as well as Sufis) can be found as well.21 Between the lines of dry inventory lists, these documents are able to relate the stories of ordinary people living in late medieval Jerusalem, evoking details of their lives in ways unlike any other narrative or documentary source from the period could.
1. Robert Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages: The Early Mamluk Sultanate (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1985), 39.
2. Irwin, The Middle East in the Middle Ages, 40; Donald Little, “Jerusalem under the Ayyubids and Mamluks: 1187–1516,” in Jerusalem in History: 3000 BC to the Present Day, ed. K. J. Asali (London: Kegan John, 1997), 177–99.
3. Nimrod Luz, The Mamluk City in the Middle East: History, Culture, and the Urban Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 47–68; Zayde Antrim, “Jerusalem in the Ayyubid and Mamluk Period,” in Routledge Handbook on Jerusalem, ed. Souleiman Mourad, Naomi Koltun-Fromm, and Bedross der Matossian (New York: Routledge, 2019), 102–9.
4. Yehoshua Frenkel, “Is There an Islamic Space? Urban and Social Issues as Reflected in the Qadi Courts of Egypt and Syria: 13th–16th Centuries,” in Towns and Material Culture in the Medieval Middle East, ed. Yaacov Lev (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 103–17.
5. Luz, The Mamluk City, 110.
6. Carl Petry, “Waqf as an Instrument of Investment in the Mamluk Sultanate: Security vs. Profit?,” in Slave Elites in the Middle East and Africa: A Comparative Study, ed. John Philips and Miura Toru (London: Kegan Paul International, 2000), 99–116; George Maqdisi, The Rise of the Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 35–74; Muḥammad Amīn, Al-Awqāf Wa-ăl-ḥayāt Al-Iǧtimāʿiyya Fī Miṣr 648–923 H. 1250–1517 M.: Dirāsa Tārīḫiyya Wa-ṯaqāfiyya (al-Qāhira: Dār an-Nahḍa al-ʿArabiyya, 1980).
7. Yaakov Lev, “The Cadi and the Urban Society: The Case Study of Medieval Egypt, 9th–12th Centuries,” in Lev, Towns and Material Culture, 89–90; Luz, The Mamluk City, 121, 139; Petry, “Waqf as an Instrument of Investment,” 99–100.
8. On the resemblance of the Haram al-Sharif cache to the Cairo Geniza, see Marc Cohen, “Geniza for Islamicists, Islamic Geniza, and the ‘New Cairo Geniza,’ ” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 7 (2006): 137.
9. Donald Little, A Catalogue of the Islamic Documents from al-Ḥaram aš-Šarīf in Jerusalem (Beirut: Orient-Institut der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 1984).
10. Christian Müller, “Écrire pour établir la preuve orale en Islam: La pratique d’un tribunal à Jérusalem au XIVe siècle,” in Les outils de la pensée Étude historique et comparative des “textes,” ed. Yusuke Nakamura (Paris: Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 2014), 63–97.
11. Lutfi and Little suggest that the cache was the court archive, the purpose of which was to preserve the records of the various litigants and stakeholders in protection of the public interest; see Huda Lufti, Al-Quds al Mamlūkiyya: A History of Mamluk Jerusalem Based on the Haram Documents (Berlin: Klaus Schwarz Verlag, 1985), 11–13; and Little, Catalogue of the Islamic Documents, 11–22. Christian Müller, in contrast, thinks the cache was a dossier that was compiled as part of an attempt to level corruption charges against the qadi. Müller notes that the documents lack physical uniformity and were not preserved in chronological (or any other) order. Furthermore, the fact that the qadi is mentioned, even if sometimes marginally, in the vast majority of documents suggests that someone may have selected them for a reason from a larger pool of court transactions; see Christian Müller, “The Ḥaram al-Šarīf Collection of Arabic Legal Documents in Jerusalem: A Mamlūk Court Archive,” Al-Qanṭara 32 (2011): 435–59.
12. Ba’albak was associated with the production of luxurious cotton products; see Robert Serjeant, Islamic Textiles: Material for a History up to the Mongol Conquest (Beirut: Libr. du Liban, 1976), 7.
13. Bethany Walker, “Rethinking Mamluk Textiles,” Mamluk Studies Review 4 (2000): 177; Louise Mackie, “Toward an Understanding of Mamluk Silk: National and International Considerations,” Muqaranas 2 (1984): 127–46.
14. Franz Rosenthal, “A Note on the Mandīl,” in Four Essays on Art and Literature in Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1971), 63–99.
15. Lufti, Al-Quds al Mamlūkiyya, 58 (Arabic), 54 (English).
16. Christian Müller, Der Kadi und seine Zeugen: Studie der mamlukischen Haram-Dokumente aus Jerusalem (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag 2014), 312, 351.
17. For a discussion of this place, based in large part on Mujir al-Din, see Amikam Elad, Medieval Jerusalem and Islamic Worship: Holy Places, Ceremonies, Pilgrimage (Leiden: Brill, 1999) 171–72.
18. For the one hundred dirhams to Fatima and the Quran recitation, see Lufti, Al-Quds al Mamlūkiyya, 56 (English), 59 (Arabic).
19. Little transcribed this word as nāsij, meaning “weaver”; see Catalogue of the Islamic Documents, 130 (entry no. 494). The only difference between the two options is whether the diacritic goes above or under the last letter, making it a kha or jim, respectively. In Muhammad ‘Isa Salihiyya’s edition the reading is nāsikh. While it is true that throughout the collection many weavers are mentioned, in this particular document a copyist is more likely, seeing as Muhammad was in possession of several bound volumes or books, something quite rare in this context; see Muḥammad ʿĪsā Ṣāliḥiyya, Min waṯāʾiq al-Ḥaram al-Qudsī al-Šarīf al-mamlūkiyya (Kuwait: Ḥawlīyāt Kulliyat ad-dāb, 1985), 10.
20. On ink in medieval Near Eastern codices, see Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 132–33; Ibrahim Chabbouh, Le Manuscrit (Tunis: Alīf, 1989), 66; François Dérouche et al., Islamic Codicology: An Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script, trans. Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz (London: al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2005), 111–15.
21. Specifically on Jews in this cache, see Donald Little, “Haram Documents Related to the Jews of Late Fourteenth-Century Jerusalem,” Journal of Semitic Studies 30 (1985): 227–64.