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Abstract
This article explores a sixth/twelfth century memoir of an Andalusi polymath who travelled from the small Ṭā’ifa kingdom of Denia in the Iberian Peninsula, to Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt, in search of patronage at the court of the Fāṭimid vizier al-Afḍal b. Badr al-Jamālī (d. 515/1121). The memoir, called al-Risāla al-Miṣriyya, is authored by Umayya b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz Abū al-Ṣalt al-Dānī al-Ishbīlī (460–528/1068–1134). The memoir concerns Abū al-Ṣalt's stay in Egypt and consists of a description of the place, and those scholars that he encountered in his fields of interest: primarily medicine, astronomy, and poetry. Written after his departure from Egypt, and dedicated to his subsequent Zīrid patrons in Ifrīqiya (present-day Tunisia), the Risāla most directly provides information on the intellectual and cultural world of late Fāṭimid Egypt. In so doing it also provided an example of scholarly travel across the Mediterranean, one that indicated the rarely discussed transmission of knowledge from the western to the eastern Mediterranean, rather than the more commonly assumed eastern to western direction of transmission of knowledge across the Islamic Mediterranean. As well, the Risāla indicated the porousness of confessional boundaries in the Mediterranean, as it entailed the search for patronage by a Sunnī scholar in a Shīʽī court. In all these respects Abū al-Ṣalt's Risāla served to illustrate an intellectual culture that displayed the kind of seamless interaction that led to the ‘fusion’ and ‘synthesis’ in the material culture of the Mediterranean, according to scholars of ‘Mediterraneanism’.
Notes
1 Hodgson was arguably the first to so characterise the exchange of knowledge across the Islamic world, connecting as it did Asia with Africa and Europe, and thus facilitating both the diffusion and fusion of the intellectual heritage of China, India, and Hellenic traditions. The Mediterranean served as the clearinghouse for this activity.
2 The study of the transmission and exchange of knowledge in the Islamic world, if not the Muslim Mediterranean has largely been confined to that of religious scholars. See, for example, Berkey (Citation1992), Chamberlain (Citation1994), and Ephrat (Citation2000). In addition, transmission and exchange of knowledge is generally assumed to flow from east to west across the Mediterranean in this period. Some studies have noted a reverse flow, from west to east, although again with regard to religious scholars (Leiser Citation1999; Gellens Citation1990).
3 Abu'l-Salt made his way into biographical dictionaries of poets, medical authorities and scientists, as well as histories of North Africa and Egypt (Premare Citation1964–66, 8, 179–208).
4 This attempt also sadly failed due to problems of unsuitable location, and the difficult task of engineering an appropriate mechanical device by which to accurately record movements. On the role and importance of astronomy in Ismāʽīlī Shīʽism, see Halm (Citation1997, 84–90).
5 Al-Maqrīzī presented a different reason for Tāj al-Maʽālī's demise. He records for the year 501/1107 that Abū ‘Abdallāh Muḥammad b. Nūr al-Dīn Abū Shujāʽa Fātik, known as al-Ma'mūn al-Baṭā’ḥī, entered the service of al-Afḍal, and rose in his estimation because rumours began to circulate that Tāj al-Maʽālī and his brother coveted the money and riches of al-Afḍal. Al-Afḍal was removed, detained, and jailed on the pretext that Tāj al-Maʽālī worked for the Crusaders and he plotted to kill al-Afḍal himself. Thereafter, al-Ma'mūn al-Baṭā’iḥī inherited all of Tāj al-Maʽālī's previous offices, power, and patronage. It appeared from al-Ma'mūn al-Baṭā’iḥī's rise that he had some hand in the plot to discredit Tāj al-Maʽālī (al-Maqrīzī Citation1973, vol. 3, 38–39).
6 Much of what Abū al-Ṣalt produced at this stage constitutes rare and invaluable sources for later historians of North Africa like Ibn ‘Idhārī and Ibn Khaldūn on the late Zīrids, as noted by Idrīs (Citation1962), in his study on this dynasty. The chapter on the last three Zīrids in particular relies on information from Abū al-Ṣalt on them, preserved in the Kitāb ‘Amal al-‘Alam of Lisān al-Dīn Ibn al-Khaṭīb, 303–406. On the Zīrids of Ifrīqiya, see Tibi (Citation2013).
7 As Idrīs (Citation1962) noted, the Zīrids (in Ifrīqiya) and their cousins the Hammādids (centred in Qal‘a/Bejaia), together had established the power of the Sanhāja Berbers in North Africa, however briefly. Their rule unfortunately coincided with a shifting regional climate though, which saw the decline of their original patrons, the Fāṭimids, and in turn the rise of rival Zanāta Berbers in the form of the Almohads, European powers such as the Normans in their former possession of Sicily, and the city-states of Genoa and Pisa, whose expansion shifted trade to the East, West, and North of them. At the same time, their own hinterlands in Ifrīqiya were destabilised by the Hilālian invasion.
8 Both genres – risāla and riḥla – are known to include autobiographical information or at least prologues, although the former usually addressed a particular topic, and was particularly resorted to for the dissemination of philosophical or scientific information by this period, whereas the latter ‘fī ṭalab al-‘ilm’ provided information on the conditions, mundane and extraordinary, of a particular place, as Abū al-Ṣalt in fact does in this work (Arazi and Ben-Shammay Citation1971, 532–539; Netton Citation1995).
9 The cutting of the canal, or breaking of the dam at Fusṭāṭ when the Nile river had reached the requisite height was an important occasion for public appearance by rulers of Egypt, including and especially the Fāṭimids. Abū al-Ṣalt, however, made no reference to the Fāṭimid commemoration of the holiday or to the repair of the Nilometer in 485/1092, where the river's height was recorded.
10 Abū al-Ṣalt added a mention of the excavations of one of the pyramids ordered by the ‘Abbāsid Caliph al-Ma'mūn and discussed the various other theories on who actually built the pyramids, reviewing among them the argument that they were built as monuments to the glory by Hermes otherwise known as the biblical prophet Idrīs, or a king by the name of Surid b. Sahluk, or the biblical Shaddād b. ʽĀd, etc. On the importance of Hermes in Muslim thought in general, and in Ismāʽīlī Shīʽī tradition, see Van Bladel (Citation2013).
11 Abū al-Ṣalt's desire to find Galen in Egypt as reflected in his Andalusi training, where Hippocratic–Galenic tradition was predominant since the fourth/tenth century (Fierro Citation1998, xliv). It was also a tradition firmly established in Egypt, and perpetuated during the Fāṭimid period, thanks to the work of Ibn al-Ḥaytham and others.
12 Al-Mubāshir b. Fātik, originally from Damascus, settled in Egypt and popularised the ancients in a work in which he compiled their sayings (al-Qifṭī, Citationn.d., 176–177; Van Bladel Citation2013).
13 According to Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a (1882, vol. 2, 15), al-Afḍal purchased some tens of thousands of works from him for his library (Abū al-Ṣalt Citation1972, 35).
14 ‘Alī b. Ridwān was most famous for his commentary on Galen's Ars prava, and other medical works. Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'a (1882, vol. 2, 99) provided a list of over 90 works authored by him, and excerpts from his autobiography which indicated that he achieved recognition and caliphal patronage from the time of al-Ḥākim largely through prodigious effort and publications, despite what appeared to be a lack of formal training (Reisman Citation2009, 559–570).
15 The Ḥadīqat al-Adab was a source for later more comprehensive anthologies such as in particular the Kharīdat al-Qasr wa Jarīdat al-‘Asr of the Ayyubid official, ʽImād al-Dīn al-Isfahānī (d. 412/1201).
16 Whereas Abū al-Ṣalt pays him short shrift, Premare Citation1964–66 notes that al-Isfahānī devoted considerable more space to his poetry in his anthology (204–206).
17 Later biographers do not mention anyone by exactly this name among the poets, although they noted that an ‘Alī b. Jaʽfar b. ‘Alī al-Saʽdī al-Saqlabī, known as Ibn al-Qattā’ was held in high estimation by al-Afḍal, although he was a grammarian and historian of Sicily. Premare (Citation1964–66, 206–207) speculated that the two were one and the same, and this would explain why he was not included among the poets in the biographical dictionaries.
18 It was only reopened after Abū al-Ṣalt's departure and al-Afḍal's death (Daftary Citation1990, 264).
19 While al-Maqrīzī made use of the Risāla's information, his only explicit mention of Abū al-Ṣalt appeared in his comments on the events of the year 527/1133, when the long-serving judge of Alexandria, Abū Ṭālib Aḥmad al-Kinānī, died. Al-Maqrīzī stated that he was known for having been responsible for the detention of Abū al-Ṣalt (1973, vol. 3, 151).
20 Historiography on the Fāṭimids focused on explaining their Ismāʽīlī Shīʽism, dependent as it is based on sources which are either sectarian themselves, or reflected in later preoccupations with their sectarian difference. The preoccupation with sectarian difference in some sources had in fact led to the argument that the contemporary Umayyads of Spain were able to exploit this difference in the enhancement of their own legitimacy (Safran Citation2000). Although Fāṭimid material culture, economic and military history have been explored outside the frame of the Shīʽī identity of the Fāṭimid state, the cultural activity and production of this period has as yet to be fully explored.