Table Of ContentTrajectories of State Formation across Fifteenth-Century Islamic West-Asia
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Rulers & Elites
Comparative Studies in Governance
Series Editor
Jeroen Duindam (Leiden University)
Editorial Board
Maaike van Berkel (Radboud University Nijmegen)
Yingcong Dai (William Paterson University, NJ)
Jean-Pascal Daloz (University of Strasbourg)
Jos Gommans (Leiden University)
Jérôme Kerlouégan (University of Oxford)
Dariusz Kołodziejczyk (Warsaw University)
Metin Kunt (Sabancı University)
volume 18
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rule
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Trajectories of State Formation
across Fifteenth-Century
Islamic West-Asia
Eurasian Parallels, Connections and Divergences
Edited by
Jo Van Steenbergen
leiden | boston
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This volume is part of projects that have received funding from the European Research Council (ERC)
under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-2007–2013) and Horizon 2020 research
and innovation programme (Grant agreements No. 240865, 681510).
Cover illustration: Timur holds audience in Balkh on the occasion of his accession on April 9, 1370:
surrounded by his people, servants, sons and royal attributes he receives congratulations and gifts from his
kneeling amirs. Miniature painting from the illustrated Zafar-namah manuscript of the Timurid ruler
Sultan-Husayn Bayqara (r. 1469–1506) attributed to one of the most famous Persian miniature-painters,
Kamal al-Din Bihzad (c.1450–1537).
Sharaf al-Din ʿAli Yazdi (d. 1454), Zafar-namah [Book of Conquest] (Baltimore or Garrett Zafar-namah)
(manuscript on paper, text finished in 1467, miniature-paintings probably dating from the 1480s or 1490s),
Garrett Library Manuscripts, Non-Circ, Gar. 3 c. 1, folios 82v–83r. The John Work Garrett Library, The
Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University.
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LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2020012928
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ISSN 2211-4610
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures, Tables and Maps ix
List of Contributors x
Introduction: State Formation in the Fifteenth Century and the Western
Eurasian Canvas: Problems and Opportunities 1
Jo Van Steenbergen
Maps 21
Part 1
Whither the Fifteenth Century?
1 From Temür to Selim: Trajectories of Turko-Mongol State Formation in
Islamic West-Asia’s Long Fifteenth Century 27
Jo Van Steenbergen
2 Studying Rulers and States across Fifteenth-Century Western
Eurasia 88
Jan Dumolyn and Jo Van Steenbergen
Part 2
From Cairo to Constantinople: The Construction of West-Asian
Centers of Power
3 The Road to the Citadel as a Chain of Opportunity: Mamluks’ Careers
between Contingency and Institutionalization 159
Kristof D’hulster
4 The Syro-Egyptian Sultanate in Transformation, 1496–1498: Sultan al-Nasir
Muhammad b. Qaytbay and the Reformation of mamlūk Institutions and
Symbols of State Power 201
Albrecht Fuess
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vi Contents
5 Tales of Viziers and Wine: Interpreting Early Ottoman Narratives of State
Centralization 224
Dimitri Kastritsis
Part 3
From Khwaf to Alexandria: The Accommodation of West-Asian
Peripheries of Power
6 Iranian Elites under the Timurids 257
Beatrice F. Manz
7 The Judges of Mecca and Mamluk Hegemony 283
John L. Meloy
8 The Syrian Commercial Elite and Mamluk State-Building in the Fifteenth
Century 306
Patrick Wing
9 Settling Accounts with the Sultan: Cortesia, Zemechia and Venetian
Fiscality in Fifteenth-Century Alexandria 319
Georg Christ
Index 353
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Acknowledgements
This volume on state formation in fifteenth-century West-Asian history was
first conceptualized in 2014, and it has been in the making much longer than
originally anticipated. Many people and institutions therefore deserve some
words of gratitude, not just for their cooperation along this volume’s winding
trajectory, but also for their patience in seeing it come to publication. These
include first and foremost the eight contributors, whose work, endurance and
tolerance of my multiple attempts to maximize the volume’s coherence de-
serve not just to be mentioned, but also commended and repaid with deep
gratitude. I am also grateful to various friends and colleagues who read and
commented on one or more opening chapters and showed remarkably con-
structive kindness for these chapters’ ambitious scopes in both substance and
interpretation. Their names are mentioned in the individual chapters below
wherever and whenever relevant. I also wish to express my appreciation for the
constructive feedback we received from the two anonymous readers who re-
viewed the volume’s manuscript for Brill. The responsibility for any remaining
shortcomings is ours, of course.
This volume and its contributions originate from a collaborative research
project on fifteenth-century state formation in the so-called Mamluk Sultanate
of Cairo. They have emerged in particular from this project’s concluding inter-
national conference, which promoted a transcultural and comparative ap-
proach to the question of fifteenth-century state formation (“Whither the
Early Modern State? Fifteenth-Century State Formation across Eurasia. Con-
nections, Divergences and Comparisons”, Ghent, 10–12 September 2014). I am
grateful to my co-organizers, Malika Dekkiche and Kristof D’hulster, and to the
conference’s many invited participants for laying the very fertile and inspiring
groundwork for the current volume. This conference and the collaborative re-
search project that it concluded had been made possible by a generous grant
from the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant project MMS: ‘The
Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate—Political Traditions and State For-
mation in 15th century Egypt and Syria’, Ghent University, 2009–2014). This vol-
ume has furthermore been finalized in the period 2017–19 within the context
of another collaborative research project that was also generously funded by
the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant ‘The Mamlukisation
of the Mamluk Sultanate II: Historiography, Political Order and State Forma-
tion in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria’, Ghent University, 2017–2021). I am
extremely grateful to the ERC for making these projects and by consequence
also this volume possible, and also for financially supporting its publication in
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viii Acknowledgements
Open Access. At my home institution Ghent University, I wish to thank my col-
leagues, especially those in the history department and in the interdisciplinary
Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies, for enabling an open collegial
working environment that has stimulated my critical engagements with vari-
ous historiographies of state formation that informed the making of this vol-
ume. I also wish to thank this volume’s publishers, Brill, and to express my
continuing appreciation for the professionalism and personal touch of its staff.
I am furthermore very proud and grateful that the board of the series Rulers
and Elites accepted to welcome this volume in its ranks. I thank the series’ edi-
tor Jeroen Duindam in particular for offering this opportunity, so that this vol-
ume on state formation in fifteenth-century West-Asian history may pursue its
comparative purposes by reaching not just the audiences that are traditionally
associated with Islamic history publications, but also many others. I hope they
may all find here one possible trajectory to familiarize themselves more with a
central Eurasian political landscape that is otherwise all too easily marginal-
ized in standard narratives of Eurasia’s late medieval endings and early mod-
ern beginnings.
Jo Van Steenbergen
Antwerp, 30 October 2019
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