In 1543, a quarter century after the Ottoman conquest of the Holy Cities, the Meccan jurist, hadith scholar, and chronicler Jar Allah Muhammad Ibn Fahd (d. 1547) completed a short work devoted to the construction projects undertaken in the city by the Ottoman sultans Selim I (r. 1512–20) and his son Süleyman (r. 1520–66). The work is highly unusual from the perspective of the Arabic historiographical tradition and constitutes the first comprehensive response by an Arab chronicler to the emergence of an Ottoman imperial architectural idiom around the turn of the sixteenth century. The article situates Ibn Fahd and his work in three interrelated contexts: (a) the incorporation of Mecca and Medina into the Ottoman domains; (b) the emergence of an Ottoman architectural idiom and visual interest in the description of the Holy Sanctuaries across the Indian Ocean, from Istanbul to Gujarat; and (c) the competition between the new Custodians of the Two Holy Sanctuaries and other Islamic rulers, past and present. In particular, the article focuses on the challenges posed by the sultans of Gujarat, who were also quite interested in the Holy Sanctuaries. This interest is captured in Muhyi al-Din Lari’s (d. 1526–27) description of the pilgrimage and the Haramayn, which was written for the Gujarati sultan Muzaffar Shah II (r. 1511–26).
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Necipoğlu, “Dome of the Rock as Palimpsest,” 61, 68. The association of Süleyman with Solomon also appears in the 1525 imperial legal code (ḳānūnnāme) for Egypt (ibid., 101n226).
Cornell Fleischer, “The Lawgiver as Messiah: The Making of the Imperial Image in the Reign of Süleyman,” in Soliman le Magnifique et son temps, Actes du Colloque de Paris, Galleries Nationales du Grand Palais, 7–10 Mars 1990, ed. Gilles Veinstein (Paris, 1992), 159–78; Hüseyin Yılmaz, The Sultan and the Sultanate: Envisioning Rulership in the Age of Süleymān the Lawgiver (1520-1566) (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2005). Other contemporary authors from the newly established Arab provinces, like Ibn Sultan (d. 1544), did refer to the Ottoman sultan as caliph; see Kristof D’hulster, “Caught between Aspiration and Anxiety, Praise and Exhortation: An Arabic Literary Offering to the Ottoman Sultan Selīm I,” Journal of Arabic Literature 44, no. 2 (2013): 181–239.
Guy Burak, “Between the Ḳānūn of Qāytbāy and Ottoman Yasaq: A Note on the Ottomans’ Dynastic Law,” Journal of Islamic Studies 26, no. 1 (2015): 1–23.
Milstein, “Mapping the Sacred,” 166. Even before the Gujarati sultans, other Muslim rulers from the Indian subcontinent had endowed madrasas in Mecca: for example, Ghiyath al-Din Aʿzam Shah b. Iskandar Shah, the sultan of Bengal, endowed a madrasa in Mecca in 1411 or 1412, and the early fifteenth-century Bahmani sultan Shihab al-Din Ahmad Shah also built a madrasa in the city. Fawwāz ʿAlī b. Junaydib Dahhās, al-Madāris fī Makka khilāl al-ʿasrayn al-Ayyūbī wa-l-Mamlūkī (Cairo, 2006), 11–13.
Jār Allāh b. Fahd, Nayl al-munā, 1:357. The additional titles that Ibn Fahd uses to refer to the Ottoman sultan include “the Victorious King of the Time” (1:37), Khunkār (2:611), and “the Alexander of the Time” (2:634).
Jār Allāh b. Fahd, Nayl al-munā, 2:649, 660. ʿAbd Allah Muhammad al-Makki al-Asafi al-Ulughkhani (Hajji al-Dabir, d. 1605), the Meccan chronicler who entered the service of the Gujarati Muzaffarid dynasty, also mentions Asaf Khan’s interest in the scholarly activity in Mecca during his stay. ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad al-Makkī al-Āṣafī al-Ulughkhānī Ḥājjī al-Dabir, Ẓafar al-wālih bi-Muẓaffar wa-ālihi: An Arabic History of Gujarat (English Translation), 2 vols. (Baroda, 1970–74), 1:290–95.
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In 1543, a quarter century after the Ottoman conquest of the Holy Cities, the Meccan jurist, hadith scholar, and chronicler Jar Allah Muhammad Ibn Fahd (d. 1547) completed a short work devoted to the construction projects undertaken in the city by the Ottoman sultans Selim I (r. 1512–20) and his son Süleyman (r. 1520–66). The work is highly unusual from the perspective of the Arabic historiographical tradition and constitutes the first comprehensive response by an Arab chronicler to the emergence of an Ottoman imperial architectural idiom around the turn of the sixteenth century. The article situates Ibn Fahd and his work in three interrelated contexts: (a) the incorporation of Mecca and Medina into the Ottoman domains; (b) the emergence of an Ottoman architectural idiom and visual interest in the description of the Holy Sanctuaries across the Indian Ocean, from Istanbul to Gujarat; and (c) the competition between the new Custodians of the Two Holy Sanctuaries and other Islamic rulers, past and present. In particular, the article focuses on the challenges posed by the sultans of Gujarat, who were also quite interested in the Holy Sanctuaries. This interest is captured in Muhyi al-Din Lari’s (d. 1526–27) description of the pilgrimage and the Haramayn, which was written for the Gujarati sultan Muzaffar Shah II (r. 1511–26).
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1402 | 225 | 32 |
Full Text Views | 240 | 11 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 213 | 23 | 0 |