Pre-Modern Political History

Reprinted from the Middle East Studies Association Bulletin, Winter 2000 (with changes in orthography to HTML standards).
Copyright 2000 by the Middle East Studies Association of North America
Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans: A Study in Power Relations, by David Ayalon. 376 pages, index. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1999. $38.00 (Cloth) ISBN 965-493-017-X

David Ayalon’s last book, published shortly before his death, comprises new and previously used material on a subject which first attracted his attention when he started studying the Mamluks: the place occupied by eunuchs within medieval Islamic centers of power. Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans discusses the phenomenon of eunuchs within the general cultural and dynastic structures of the Islamic lands, investigating its origins and linking, through it, the early Umayyad and later Mamluk periods. Next, it presents instances where eunuchs appear under the Abbasids, Fatimids, Seljuks, Zengids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks. Finally, twelve appendices, ranging from eighty pages to a page and a half, deal with subjects such as prices, castration, marriages, role as educators, military commanders, and other occupations.

These appendices contain, in embryo, topics for a socio-cultural history of eunuchs in Islam. The eunuchs' permeation of social and political institutions was restricted because of the demographic limitations imposed on them by castration and the resultant high mortality rate. As the author notes, much of the validity for claiming that eunuchs existed in considerable numbers lies in accepting the term khadim to indicate a eunuch in addition to the more usual term, khasi. Ayalon confirms that in the Caliphal period eunuchs were found only in the court and the circles associated with it. In the Mamluk period, however, their role expanded and, because of the nature of the political regime, they appeared in more segments of society. The author's objective is to document what he believes to have been "a great triangle" composed of eunuchs, women, and the Mamluks which could in fact have extended to include the entire phenomenon of the court as a political institution in Islamic societies, allowing women to influence political and military decisions. By carefully noting every instance in the chronicles and literary annals where a eunuch appeared, Ayalon has constructed a portrait of a court culture where, through relations of servitude, exclusion, and seclusion, a limited number of individuals with no authentic roots in the Islamic society in which they lived came to exercise a considerable influence.

The subject of eunuchs is clearly innovative and its interpretation complicated. The findings need to be integrated into other complex historical questions such as gender relations and sexuality, as well as into the larger topics of law and society. The phenomenon is intriguing, not so much because of the power that a single outsider exercised on the ruler—a situation found in all centralized and dictatorial regimes—but because of the inhumane treatment which these unfortunate creatures suffered at the hands of their fellow men and the suggestion that large numbers of them actually survived the castration process, something not mentioned in Islamic medicine and surgery manuals.

Professor Ayalon deserves our recognition for highlighting this sub-culture which unified Islamic courts across the ages, yet has received very little attention. Eunuchs, Caliphs and Sultans could have been improved with some editorial attention, eliminating some of the overabundant cross references and correcting the use of terms.

Maya Shatzmiller
University of Western Ontario
The History of al-Tabarī, Vol. 5: The Sāsānids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen, translated and annotated by C. E. Bosworth. 458 pages, bibliography, index. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1999. $26.95 (Paper) ISBN 0-7914-4356-6
Finally it’s done! The Tabarī translation project which began several decades ago is complete with the most copious volume, volume five, covering the Sasanian empire and its periphery in late antiquity. For the last 120 years, T. Nöldeke’s translation with even more copious notes has been the standard work and a major source of reference for Sasanian history. Recently, the trend among Sasanian historians has been to avoid the Arabic sources for various reasons, but al-Tabarī’s work has withstood the test of time. Even historians critical of the use of Islamic sources cannot, for this period, do without this invaluable source. For this reason the re-translation of the work by Bosworth is a welcome feat. The reason that this fifth volume of the Tabarī translation project was published last was probably the necessity that the translator not only be competent in Arabic, but also be familiar with Sasanian history, have some idea of the Middle Persian language, and be able to match Nöldeke’s expertise and notation. Bosworth met all these criteria and in many instances surpassed the nineteenth-century translator, although Nöldeke’s invaluable footnotes must still be consulted in doing Sasanian history. Another improvement over Nöldeke’s translation is the inclusion of the Lakhmids and Yemen, which Nöldeke omitted.

The division of chapters and sections is based on the reigns of individual Sasanian monarchs, and the Lakhmids and Byzantines are inserted intermittently according to chronology. The 1031 footnotes include up-to-date notes on the Middle Persian spellings for the kings' names, bibliography, and a historical overview of each period, and mention divergent accounts in Arabic, Persian, and modern historical works. This facilitates the use of the work by researchers, obviating the need to cross-reference alternative sources.

Finally, I would like to add a note to the translation. This is in regard to Shapur II (309-379 CE), known in the Islamic sources as dhū al-aktāf, which Nöldeke translated as “the man with broad shoulders” and Bosworth as “Man of the Shoulders” (p. 63). Bosworth attributes this title to the legend that Shapur II pierced the shoulders of Arab captives from eastern Arabia, which according to him is a fanciful explanation (n. 143). However, there is the issue of Persian hūyah sunbā, attested by al-Khwarazmi and al-Isfahani, which renders “shoulder auger.” I should mention that all the Persian historians who wrote in Arabic based their information ultimately on Middle Persian sources. In the Zoroastrian encyclopedic work, the Bundahisn, under the section “On the Calamities which befell Iranshahr,"” we can emend a passage in regard to Shapur II which corroborates the story that the king “pierced many shoulders,” giving us the Middle Persian title of šānag āhanj, which would be equivalent to Arabic dhū al-aktāf.

One can make many more arguments and emendations to Tabarī, but none of these decreases the monumentality of what Bosworth has achieved in translating and significantly improving upon Nöldeke’s work. This work will probably be the standard translation for the next 120 years.

Touraj Daryaee
California State University, Fullerton
A Short History of the Ismailis: Traditions of a Muslim Community, by Farhad Daftary. 217 pages, bibliography, index. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998. $24.95 (Paper) ISBN 1-55876-194-2
Many elements of the Isma’ili movement are well-known among scholars, and have merited well-written and popular treatments. But there have been few attempts to present a comprehensive narrative of the historical and intellectual framework of Isma’ilism as a whole. Moreover, until relatively recently, little of the discourse has been informed by the perspective of participants in the tradition.

The outline of Isma’ili history, and of Daftary’s A Short History of the Ismailis as well, divides into four periods: formative, Fatimid, Alamut, and post-Alamut to the present. Daftary sees Imami Shi’ism, a doctrine of special leadership residing in certain descendants of Muhammad through his son `Ali, established by the time of Ja’far al-Sadiq (d.765), as the common heritage of the Twelvers and the Isma’ilis. Ja’far’s death led to the rise of several Shi’i parties, some of which recognized the election of Isma’il, the eldest son of Ja’far al-Sadiq, who died before his father. At first this group was very secretive, but by the mid-nineteenth century (about a century after Ja’far’'s death) a unified Isma’ili movement had emerged, only to be split apart by the Qarmati schism.

The next stage is that of the Fatimid dynasty (909-1171). Daftary argues that the founder of the dynasty was a direct descendant of Isma’'il. After al-Mustansir (d.1094), Nizaris did not recognize the ‘official’ Fatimid caliphs; from this point it is the Nizaris, not the weakened Fatimids, who maintain the Isma’ili tradition from their stronghold in the Kingdom of Alamut (1094-1256).

Little is known about the period following the fall of Alamut. From the mid-fourteenth to the late eighteenth centuries, there were centers in Iran and the Indian subcontinent. The modern period is ushered in by the eventful life of Hasan `Ali Shah (1804-81). In Iran, the Qajar monarch granted him the title of Agha Khan. In India he aided the British and worked to organize and standardize Isma’'ili beliefs.

Daftary’s mastery of the Isma'ili philosophical, religious, and historiographical traditions allow for insightful portrayals of the Risalat Ikhwan al-Safa (“Epistles of the Brethren of Purity”) and the doctrines of the Nizaris and others. His focus on a connected narrative about normative Isma’ilis downplays splinter groups, such as the Druzes, and places the Assassin legends in the context of medieval legends and western historiography.

As a “Short History,” this book balances between the complexity of events and movements and the need to interweave a single narrative into an overarching conceptual framework. While students may not find this as exciting a read as some of the works focusing on individual time periods, scholars will find it a ready and important reference. Perhaps most important, Isma’ili classic texts and modern Isma’ili historical and religious writings are strongly featured, not only giving us underutilized sources, but also interpreting Isma’ili history from within the tradition and viewing it as an integrated whole. This is a voice that has rarely been heard, especially in discussing some of the most controversial segments of that history.

Seth Ward
University of Denver
From Slave to Sultan: The Career of al-Mansur Qalawun and the Consolidation of Mamluk Rule in Egypt and Syria (678-689 A.H./1279-1290 A.D.), by Linda Northrup. 349 pages, bibliography, index. Stuttgart, Germany: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. DM 128 (Paper) ISBN 3-515-06861-9
The Mamluk period is comparatively rich in sources of a narrative and biographical character, a situation which has enabled specialists to produce in recent years a number of detailed studies of the reigns of Mamluk sultans, for example Peter Thorau’s biography of al-Zahir Baybars, Amalia Levanoni’s close analysis of the third reign of al-Nasir Muhammad, and Carl Petry’s two volumes on the period of the last two major Mamluk rulers, al-Ashraf Qaytbay and Qansuh al-Ghawri.

Northrup’s comprehensive study of the career of the Mamluk sultan al-Mansur Qalawun complements these other recent books, and does so admirably. Her work is not really a biography, in the modern sense of the term; she rightly observes that the nature of the medieval sources makes such a project, with its inevitable effort to analyze the psychological posture of the subject, extremely difficult. It is, rather, an effort to bring together and to analyze data on the administrative, military, economic, and especially political condition of the sultanate at a critical stage in its development. In this, it perhaps resembles most closely Ahmad Darra’'s pioneering study of the reign of sultan Barsbay.

The author’s intention is to be comprehensive rather than synthetic or narrative. Consequently her central theme is perhaps predictable: that “if Baybars was the founder of the Mamluk empire, Qalawun was its consolidator” (p. 21). Nonetheless, we learn a great deal about the process of consolidation which Qalawun oversaw; the author’s analytical description of the organization of the Mamluk military is particularly rewarding. And while the level of detail is sometimes overwhelming, it is always put to good use. So, for example, Northrup draws upon diplomatic treaties and endowment deeds established in the sultan’s name as well as the more familiar literary sources to analyze the various titles and appellations by which Qalawun was known, and in the process sheds light on the irrepressible question of the relationship of the restored Abbasid caliphate to the office of the sultan (pp. 174-76). Her analysis reminds us of the more than residual religious element in the Mamluk sultan's authority.

From Slave to Sultan is well written. The analysis is dense and packed with scholarship; it is one of those books of which specialists will devour the notes with even greater relish than they do the text. Nonetheless, the prose is not impenetrable, and more general readers will benefit from it as well. One of the book’s greatest merits is the wide variety of contemporary sources on which it is based. Northrup does not limit herself to the major published (and mostly later) chronicles and biographical dictionaries, but makes extensive use of earlier materials still in manuscript. Graduate students in particular will be grateful for her first chapter, in which she introduces, describes, and evaluates the various sources.

Jonathan Berkey
Davidson College