Scholars in Medieval Damascus

February 17, 2007

Most of what this book (Knowledge and Social Practice in Medieval Damascus 1190-1350 by Michael Chamberlain) has to say about the social world of high medieval Damascus is readily applicable to Cairo in the same period. I thought I would highlight few points which I think are suggestive for the study of the Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi. But first a brief overview of his larger argument.

This book returns me to consideration of the social world of the medieval Islamic city (see this earlier review). The primary problem that Chamberlain takes up is the lack of documentary evidence concerning the nature of this social world. Instead of considering this lack an insurmountable barrier to arriving at knowledge of the social world, Chamberlain demonstrates that the lack of evidence is an important clue as to the nature of this social world. We should not come to medieval Damascus and seek to find parallel institutions.. the colleges and state bureaucracies that mark other social worlds. Instead the social world of Damascus is marked by great flux in terms of wealth and power. In this social world, Chamberlain argues, knowledge and scholarly production acquire a great deal of importance. Investment in scholars is one way that rulers gain prestige and legitimacy with their subjects; excelling in knowledge is the way that individuals gain a role in their social world. It is a unique and informal system that should not be conflated with other more familiar models.. which produced copious amounts of documentary evidence.

1. This view of the social world has direct relevance to the way that we understand the cultural landscape of a medieval city like Damascus or Cairo. The implications are sketched by Chamberlain:

Rulers of the city did not assimilate its topography to a preexisting image of power. Throughout the period, in spite of an active patronage that brought about an "architectural florescence," there were few projects on an imperial scale. Rather, households of ruling elites colonized existing space by building on open lots, by establishing household charitable foundations in palaces and houses, and by restoring the important religious buildings of the city, such as the Umayyad Mosque... Rarely did they integrate a street plan and major buildings with an image of power. [47-8]

The phrase "image of power" in the beginning and conclusion of this quotation seems to imply a centralizing idea. The high medieval Islamic city cannot be read as a whole. Its parts are not directed toward creating a single reading. The city is piecemeal.. a mosaic of individual parts. The physical structure of a city is therefore directly related to its social world.

One could go a step further and wonder whether the writing of such a piecemeal city (in a descriptive work such as the Khitat by al-Maqrizi) is in the end determined by the underlying social world. The social world forms the cultural landscape and that landscape in turn sets the way writers will textualize a city. Perhaps this could explain some of the different strategies in writing about a city.. since the descriptive literature of different cultures is so different (compare the Khitat to Leonardo Bruni's History of the Florentine People).

2. One way to read Chamberlain's book is as a long defense of the value of biographical dictionaries. These biographical dictionaries are multi-volume sets composed mainly of biographical notices about the life and work of important scholars. These biographical dictionaries often focus on a single city.. such as Damascus (Ibn Asakir's work on Damascus ran to about 100 volumes). For Chamberlain these volumes are filled with information that is repetitive, but nevertheless tells us much about the way scholars gained prestige.. the important currency of a fluid society:

Such biographies in some respects represented the "real" history of the city as much as documents did in European cities. The a'yan of Damascus took few measures to ensure the survival of documents, save those which testified to their positions within a chain of transmission. However, they exerted themselves daily to preserve the memory of shaykhs through whom 'ilm passed... moment by moment they brandished the names, gestures, anecdotes, and tests of their shaykhs. [150]

With this note Chamberlain settles the social importance of the biographical dictionary, but he does not address the value of other historical works.. such as the Khitat by al-Maqrizi. Presumably a work such as this would have fit into the same social world.. with all its demands. But how exactly does this understanding change the way we read the Khitat or other works of topography? My instinct is to go back to the point made above and say that if the social world forms the cultural landscape, then a close description of the cultural landscape would end up talking about the social world too.