Research Highlights

I have been studying medieval and early modern Arab history for nearly forty years, particularly the social history of Egypt during the Mamluk (1250-1517) and Ottoman (1517-1798) periods. I have also written many papers on Cairo, which maintained a population size of 300,000 to 400,000 throughout these periods. This huge city on the banks of the Nile holds precious memories for me, as I spent more than two years studying abroad there in my late twenties. A few years ago, I came across the Mabāhij (lit. “joys”), a relatively unknown Arab history written by Ibn al-ʻAjamī, a weigher from Cairo, the provincial capital of Egypt under the Ottoman Empire.

My fascination with the unique world he depicts led me to the town of Gotha in Thuringia, Germany, where I was fortunate enough to visit the only library with a handwritten manuscript of the book. There, I was able to examine the physical copy with my own hands. I was also delighted to come across another handwritten Arabic manuscript written by Ibn al-ʻAjamī titled Ta’rīkh Āl ʻUthmān (History of the Ottomans), which was written later as a sequel to the Mabāhij. These two manuscripts, which deal with the history of Egypt in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, describe various events in Cairo and the surrounding area from the point of view of an educated man of the middle-class who, despite his education, made his living weighing commodities in the city’s markets and exchanges. In his work, we see the reality of people living around the Nile River port of Boulaq, the district of Cairo where he lived.

His personal accounts are many and include visiting the holy tombs in the city’s southern suburbs with fellow pilgrims, sightseeing in the city, the shocking murder of his father following a business dispute, his interaction with the "living saints," his pilgrimage to Mecca with his family, and his business trips to the Mediterranean ports of the Nile Delta. The book also contains economic information like price fluctuations on food and other essentials, the reality of urban development under the waqf (endowment) system, and scathing criticism of market administration by the governor and muḥtasib, the supervisor of bazaars and trade. Ibn al-ʻAjamī’s two histories, which span a total of 392 folios, are a veritable treasure trove of unique insights.

The work of deciphering these handwritten texts and comparing their vivid descriptions against contemporary historical materials and previous research is a quiet but thrilling task. I hope that my work elevates his work’s significance within a larger historical context and contributes to a new portrayal of Arab regional history, one based on the detailed accounts of this citizen historian on a world that has been all but lost to history.

(2022/4/1)