These lines of poetry were reproduced by al-Yūnīnī in his entry on Ibn al-Nābulusī, which is dependent upon that of al-Dimyāṭī: al-Yūnīnī, Dhayl mirʾāt al-zamān, 1:504–5. For another brief sample of Ibn al-Nābulusī’s poetry, see al-Madanī, Anwār al-rabīʿ, 5:251–2.
27 On the ghiyār, see Yarbrough, “Origins of the ghiyār.”
28 On possible layers in the Lumaʿ, see Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 122f. For the same in the Iẓhār, see the editor Moritz’s introduction to Ibn al-Nābulusī, Description du Faiyoum, ii (not paginated).
29 Cahen, “Histoires coptes,” 134.
30 As Cahen wrote, “Il est surtout amusant de voir comment l’auteur utilise pour les besoins de sa cause n’importe quel épisode” (“It is above all amusing to see how the author cites all manner of episodes to make his case.”) (“Histoires coptes,” 134).
31 Al-Maqrīzī, History of the Ayyubid Sultans, 294–95; al-Makīn, Chronique, 85.
32 For an example of a passage in an advice work against non-Muslim officials being read out loud to a Mamluk sultan about fifty years later, see Yarbrough, “A Rather Small Genre.” The Luminous Rules, written shortly after The Sword of Ambition and for the same patron, was expressly presented as naṣīḥah.
33 On these works, their interrelationship, and the milieus that produced them, see el-Leithy, “Sufis, Copts, and the Politics of Piety”; Yarbrough, “A Rather Small Genre.”
34 For the unidentified source and its heirs, see Yarbrough, “A Rather Small Genre.”
35 Synesius, Essays and hymns, 2:135. A general study is Cameron and Long, Barbarians and Politics.
36 ʿĀlī, Nuṣḥatü s-selāṭīn; Fleischer, Bureaucrat and Intellectual, 8–9.
37 A few of the relatively recent studies of non-Muslim state officials and doctors are: Abele, Der politisch-gesellschaftliche Einfluss der nestorianischen Ärzte; Cabrol, Les secrétaires nestoriens à Bagdad; Cheikho and Héchaïmé, Wuzarāʾ al-Naṣrāniyyah; Hutait, “The Position of the Copts in Mamluk Administration”; Mazor, “Jewish Court Physicians in the Mamluk Sultanate”; Samir, “The Role of Christians in the Fāṭimid Government Services”; Sirry, “The Public Role of Dhimmīs”; Stillman, “The Emergence … of the Sephardi Courtier Class.”
38 For the beginnings of this discourse, see Yarbrough, “Upholding God’s Rule.”
39 This phase is traditionally known as the “Sunni revival.” This term has been criticized for presuming a continuity between late-medieval Sunni Islam and the pre–tenth-century ideological progenitors to which it traced its own genealogy. See for example Berkey, The Formation of Islam, 189–202.
40 For a rich selection of studies on this development, see Stewart, “The Maqāmāt,” 232 n. 43. See also Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives; Mallett, Popular Muslim Reactions.
41 For these developments in general, see Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice; Ephrat, A Learned Society.
42 Goitein, Mediterranean Society, 2:375.
43 Leiser, “The Madrasa and the Islamization of the Middle East”; Yarbrough, “The Madrasa and the Non-Muslims of Thirteenth-Century Egypt.”
44 For a near-comprehensive list of modern scholarship that refers to the work, see Yarbrough, “ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī.” To this list should be added a few works in Arabic, including: Sayyid, al-Dawlah al-Fāṭimiyyah fī Miṣr, 240; Cheikho and Héchaïmé, Wuzarāʾ al-Naṣrāniyyah, 31.
45 Examples of modern works that have cited works like The Sword of Ambition in this way (there are many) include Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross, 229 n. 101; Sivan, “Notes sur la situation des chrétiens à l’époque ayyubide,” 119–20.
46 On the theoretical dhimmah system developed by Muslim jurists, parts of which were sporadically enforced by Muslim rulers, usually at the behest of religious elites, see (inter alia) Fattal, Le statut légal; Cahen, art. “Dhimma,” EI2; Bosworth, “The Concept of Dhimma”; Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross; Friedmann, Tolerance and Coercion; Papaconstantinou, “Between Umma and Dhimma”; Wasserstein, “Conversion and the ahl al-dhimma”; Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire; Emon, Religious Pluralism and Islamic Law. The well-known “Pact of ʿUmar” (shurūṭ ʿUmar) was sometimes accorded a certain authority in premodern thought concerning the dhimmah system; the most important recent studies of it are Cohen, “What was the Pact of ʿUmar?”; Noth, “Problems of Differentiation”; Levy-Rubin, Non-Muslims in the Early Islamic Empire, chap. 2 and 4.
47 Van Ess, Chiliastische Erwartungen, 13 n. 38; Sadan, “Some Literary Problems,” 365–70; Catlos, “To Catch a Spy”; Rabie, “The Size and Value of the Iqṭāʿ in Egypt,” 131 n. 8.
48 For accessible introductions to the current predicament of certain non-Muslim populations, see Sennott, The Body and the Blood; Dalrymple, From the Holy Mountain.
49 Available in Arabic: Aḥkām; Madhammah; Radd; Ibn al-Durayhim, Manhaj al-ṣawāb; Ibn Taymiyyah, Masʾalah; idem, Iqtiḍāʾ. Modern-day compilations available online: al-Shuʿaybī, al-Qawl al-mukhtār; al-Yāfiʿī, Ḥukm tawliyat ahl al-dhimmah. Translated into English: Gottheil, “An Answer to the Dhimmis.”
50 On Tertullian, see Stroumsa, “Tertullian on Idolatry and the Limits of Tolerance”; on Celsus, Chadwick, Origen: Contra Celsum; on Chrysostom, Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews.
51 Sadan, “Some Literary Problems”; Catlos, “To Catch a Spy.”
THE SWORD OF AMBITION
In the name of God, the Merciful and Compassionate:
0.1
Praise God, who has elevated the religion of Islam above all other religions while demoting the cross-worshippers and those who associate partners with Him.1 I give Him praise for his Eternal Decree concerning what will be and what has come to pass. I testify, both openly and in my heart, that there is no god but Him alone, Who has no partner. I testify, too, that Muḥammad is his devoted servant and messenger, sent to the Arabs and the non-Arabs, to humans and jinn alike.2 May God bless him along with his family, his Companions, and their upright Followers with an enduring blessing that outlasts Time itself.
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I learned recently that a command had been issued by our lord the supreme sultan, who is master of the nations and chief among the kings of the Arabs and all peoples, king of both continents and both seas, protector of the domain of the true religion, shatterer of tyrants and rebels, bane of heretics, subduer of infidels and unbelievers, reviver of justice among mankind, the sultan of Islam and the Muslims, Star of this world and of the faith, Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb. He is the son of our lord the
