have handled with considerable trepidation, particularly inasmuch as the manuscripts give numerous variants; published editions of other works that contain the same poems have been of only sporadic assistance in selecting among those variants. In general, I have adopted a minimally invasive approach that seeks to reproduce for modern readers of The Sword of Ambition something of their premodern forebears’ experience. I have not, for instance, attempted to efface genuine ambiguities when translating. Points of obscurity are part of the author’s work as it came down to all of its readers in the manuscript tradition. In the same spirit, I have tried to minimize clutter in the translation by making the Glossary, and not the notes, the repository of most information regarding the many proper names that appear in the text, including the Introduction. Thus readers in search of brief explanations for unfamiliar people, places, and other entities should refer first to the Glossary.
A point remains regarding my use of other English translations. For the Qurʾan, I have used A. J. Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted, with occasional adjustments. Short passages from The Sword of Ambition have been translated in two published articles, by Joseph Sadan and Brian Catlos.51 I have consulted these, but in no instance is my translation based on them. In the notes I have given prominence to translations of Arabic sources, when these exist, over Arabic editions of the same works.
In spite of the shortcomings that undoubtedly remain in this book, it is my hope that readers will look upon it with greater approval than may be reasonably expected from the shade of Ibn al-Nābulusī himself.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 This title differs in minor respects from that given in the manuscripts of The Sword of Ambition.
2 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 61.
3 Possibly the income-bearing property of the Nābulusiyyah Madrasah established by ʿUthmān’s father (al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 678). I owe this reference to Yossef Rapoport.
4 On hiding one’s poverty in medieval Egypt, see Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 43, 49–51.
5 Modern historians, notably Claude Cahen, have read this name as “Muslim,” but the manuscript of the work containing his earliest (and principal) prosopographical entry is quite clear at this point. This manuscript—the Muʿjam al-shuyūkh of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn Khalaf al-Dimyāṭī—was copied during the lifetime of its author. Parts of it were read out loud to him (Dār al-Kutub al-Waṭaniyyah al-Tūnisiyyah, 12909: fol. 75r). For a summary in French, see Vajda, Le Dictionnaire des Autorités, 146. For Cahen’s use of this source, see Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 120ff. Brief notices on Ibn al-Nābulusī in later works confirm the name “al-Salm” or “Salm” (al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 14:936; al-Ḥusaynī, Ṣilat al-takmilah, 1:470; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 678).
6 Much of the material presented here is derived from the manuscript source cited in the previous note and from Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 120ff. The latter study depended primarily on information gleaned from the author’s own works. I have presented some of this material previously (Yarbrough, “ʿUthmān b. Ibrāhīm al-Nābulusī”). See also Catlos, “To Catch a Spy”; Owen, “Scandal in the Egyptian Treasury.” I have benefited, too, from the work of Yossef Rapoport, who generously shared a draft of his introduction to the author’s life.
7 Also pronounced “Ibn al-Nābulsī.” This title could also of course refer to a still earlier forebear. Al-Dimyāṭī’s text refers to our author as “Abū ʿAmr ʿUthmān ibn al-Nābulusī” and “al-ʿAlāʾ ibn al-Nābulusī,” indicating that he was in fact known as Ibn al-Nābulusī. Claude Cahen consistently called him “al-Nābulusī” and virtually all subsequent historians (my own earlier publications included) have followed this convention, which should now be abandoned.
8 The prosopographical literature informs us that he was wealthy (perhaps fantastically so) and well connected as well as pious and learned. See al-Dhahabī, Siyar aʿlām al-nubalāʾ, 21:393–396, no. 199; Ibn Rajab, al-Dhayl ʿalā Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābilah, 2:528–38, no. 233.
9 His emigration may have coincided with that of a large number of refugees who fled Frankish rule at around this time (see Sivan, “Réfugiés syro-palestiniens”; Talmon-Heller, “Arabic Sources on Muslim Villagers Under Frankish Rule”).
10 For this account, see Ibn Rajab, al-Dhayl, 2:532–34. For Ibn Nujayyah’s influence over Saladin, who allegedly referred to him as ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ and acted on his advice, see Ibn Rajab, al-Dhayl, 2:531.
11 For various views on the content of madrasah curricula, see Makdisi, Rise of Colleges; Chamberlain, Knowledge and Social Practice; Stewart, “Doctorate of Islamic Law.”
12 It concerns the Prophet’s preferred supplicatory prayer (duʿāʾ) and is found in the canonical books of al-Bukhārī and Muslim (e.g., Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, 4:2070).
13 Also suggesting an uneasy relationship between madrasah training and state employment is the slanderous accusation leveled at Ibn al-Nābulusī by his rival in a real-estate dispute (on which more below): that he was absent from work, without leave, because he was off studying in one madrasah after another. Muslim officials with scholarly backgrounds had their vulnerabilities, too.
14 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 59, drawn to my attention by Yossef Rapoport.
15 Al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 678, drawn to my attention by Yossef Rapoport.
16 For this information and what follows, see Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 36–44.
17 On al-Asʿad: Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 40 n. 15. He was to become vizier to the first Mamluk sultan, al-Muʿizz. This Nūr al-Dīn was the son of the high emir Fakhr al-Dīn ibn al-Shaykh (d. 647/1250).
18 For a strikingly similar administrative maneuver performed against a Muslim by a Christian official, supposedly in the early Abbasid period, see below in The Sword of Ambition, §1.9.1.
19 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 43.
20 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 61–64.
21 “Rural Society in Medieval Islam,” by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, accessed July 29, 2014, http://www2.history.qmul.ac.uk/ ruralsocietyislam. For a full study of this work we must await the forthcoming publication by Yossef Rapoport.
22 My hypothesis seems the most plausible way to construe the notion, conveyed in the title, of “victory over” certain other Muslims who ally with non-Muslims. The term istiʿānah is used most often in the context of alliance in warfare. For administrative employment the terms istiʿmāl and istiktāb are more common. See al-Maqrīzī, A History of the Ayyubid Sultans of Egypt, 262–64.
23 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 31–34.
24
