Historiography and the Making of the Sultan’s Court in 15th Century Cairo. The case of the court office of ‘the Chief Head of the Guards’ (raʾs nawbat al‐nuwab)

This article addresses the changing organization of the leadership of the Syro-Egyptian sultanate of Cairo between the late 14th and the early 16th centuries. Our aim is to further the understanding of how Arabic manuals of courtly protocol and texts of history from the 15th and early 16th centuries were active participants in a contested discourse of state formation that was directly involved in this changing organization on the one hand and that, on the other hand, mediated all medieval and modern encounters with it. Representations of the office of ‘the Chief Head of the [sultan’s] Guards’ (raʾs nawbat al-nuwab) are foregrounded here as a case study and a representative example of these discursive agencies. Exploring the representation of ‘the Chief Headship’ by 15th- and early 16th century scribes and historians as well as by modern scholars, this article demonstrates how they all, one way or another, participated in the sultanate’s complex processes of courtly configuration and state formation

Arabic · Archaeology · Art · Historiography · Linguistics · Literature · Political science · Politics · State formation · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Classics · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Medieval History and Crusades · Philosophy