Julien Loiseau
Aix-Marseille Université, Département d'histoire, Faculty Member
The history of Cairo, one of the largest cities of Islam and the whole Ancient World, enjoyed two achievements during the Mamluk period. In the middle of the 14th century, the city reached its largest extension and enjoyed a... more
The history of Cairo, one of the largest cities of Islam and the whole Ancient World, enjoyed two achievements during the Mamluk period. In the middle of the 14th century, the city reached its largest extension and enjoyed a monumentalization of its landscape, from which Cairo owes today the main part of its architectural legacy. During the first half of the 15th century, an unparalleled historiography was worked out in Cairo, supporting for the first time in Islam with the works of al-Maqrīzī the ability to write a global history of the city. Meanwhile, Cairo and the Mamluk sultanate suffered the ruin and saw the disruption of their historical path. This century of political and urban trials is indeed the true object of the book, analyzing the two processes which deeply altered the equilibrium of the Mamluk sultanate: crisis and restoration of the State on the one hand; ruin and transformation of the city along with its rebuilding, on the other hand. By comparing texts, inscriptions, monuments still standing and, above all, waqf deeds, one can understand how the sultan and the men of his household had been both ruin-makers and the first architects in the reconstruction of Cairo. A more common destiny was thus established, owing to the crisis, between the sultanate and its capital. From then on, rebuilding the city from its ruins and restoring the State were only one thing. In both cases, one was rebuilding the sultan’s House.
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traduction arabe par Luṭfī Bū Shantūf de Histoire du monde au XVe siècle, sous la direction de P. Boucheron, ouvrage coordonné par Julien Loiseau, Pierre Monnet et Yann Potin (2009), Casablanca, Fondation du Roi Abdul-Aziz Al Saoud
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A history of Jerusalem from the very beginnings to the contemporary period, co-written by Katell Berthelot, Vincent Lemire, Julien Loiseau and Yann Potin, edited by Vincent Lemire.
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Sommaire Prologue I Afrique, les défis de l’histoire, par François-Xavier Fauvelle Partie I Introduction I Les continents de l’histoire africaine par François-Xavier Fauvelle 1. L’Egypte, oasis africaine par Damien Agut 2 Les Royaumes de... more
Sommaire
Prologue I Afrique, les défis de l’histoire, par François-Xavier Fauvelle
Partie I
Introduction I Les continents de l’histoire africaine par François-Xavier Fauvelle
1. L’Egypte, oasis africaine par Damien Agut
2 Les Royaumes de Kerma, Napata et Méroé par Matthieu Honegger
3 L’Afrique antique, de Carthage à Aksum par Pierre Schneider
4 L’Afrique, nouvelle terre d’Islam par Julien Loiseau
5 Le monde Swahili par Philippe Beaujard
6 Ghâna, Mâli, Songhay, royaumes courtiers du Sahel occidental par François-Xavier Fauvelle
7 Du Kanem-Bornou aux cités Haoussa, Empires, Islam et commerce au Sahel central par Detlef Gronenborn
8 La Nubie, des royaumes chrétiens à la domination islamique par Robin Seignobos
9 L’Éthiopie chrétienne et islamique par Marie-Laure Derat
10 Igbo-Ukwu, Ifé et les régions du Golfe de Guinée par Gérard L. Chouin
11 Les royaumes Kongo et Luban, cultures et sociétés dans le bassin du Congo par Pierre de Maret
12 L’ouverture atlantique de l’Afrique par Gérard L. Chouin
13 Ecritures de l’histoire en Afrique par Bertrand Hirsch
Partie II
Introduction I La fabrique de la diversité culturelle par François-Xavier Fauvelle
14 L'Afrique après le grand aride par François Bon et Clément Ménard
15 La Préhistoire récente du Sahara par Michel Barbaza
16 Les premières sociétés de production en Afrique par Jessie Cauliez, Tiphaine Dachy et Xavier Gutherz
17 Des pasteurs et des vaches par Joséphine Lesur
18 L’Afrique des métaux par Caroline Robion-Brunner
19 La longue histoire des chasseurs-cueilleurs d’Afrique par Serge Bahuchet
Partie III : L’atelier de l’histoire
Introduction I De la trace au document par François-Xavier Fauvelle
20 Linguistique et archéologie, comment reconstruire l’histoire depuis 12 000 ans par Roger Blench
21 L’histoire de l’Afrique et ses matérialités par Scott MacEachern
22 Les sources orales et l’histoire de l’Afrique, par Théodore Nicoué Gayibor
23 Comment écrire l’histoire de l’Afrique ancienne avec de l’art ? par Claire Bosc-Tiessé
Prologue I Afrique, les défis de l’histoire, par François-Xavier Fauvelle
Partie I
Introduction I Les continents de l’histoire africaine par François-Xavier Fauvelle
1. L’Egypte, oasis africaine par Damien Agut
2 Les Royaumes de Kerma, Napata et Méroé par Matthieu Honegger
3 L’Afrique antique, de Carthage à Aksum par Pierre Schneider
4 L’Afrique, nouvelle terre d’Islam par Julien Loiseau
5 Le monde Swahili par Philippe Beaujard
6 Ghâna, Mâli, Songhay, royaumes courtiers du Sahel occidental par François-Xavier Fauvelle
7 Du Kanem-Bornou aux cités Haoussa, Empires, Islam et commerce au Sahel central par Detlef Gronenborn
8 La Nubie, des royaumes chrétiens à la domination islamique par Robin Seignobos
9 L’Éthiopie chrétienne et islamique par Marie-Laure Derat
10 Igbo-Ukwu, Ifé et les régions du Golfe de Guinée par Gérard L. Chouin
11 Les royaumes Kongo et Luban, cultures et sociétés dans le bassin du Congo par Pierre de Maret
12 L’ouverture atlantique de l’Afrique par Gérard L. Chouin
13 Ecritures de l’histoire en Afrique par Bertrand Hirsch
Partie II
Introduction I La fabrique de la diversité culturelle par François-Xavier Fauvelle
14 L'Afrique après le grand aride par François Bon et Clément Ménard
15 La Préhistoire récente du Sahara par Michel Barbaza
16 Les premières sociétés de production en Afrique par Jessie Cauliez, Tiphaine Dachy et Xavier Gutherz
17 Des pasteurs et des vaches par Joséphine Lesur
18 L’Afrique des métaux par Caroline Robion-Brunner
19 La longue histoire des chasseurs-cueilleurs d’Afrique par Serge Bahuchet
Partie III : L’atelier de l’histoire
Introduction I De la trace au document par François-Xavier Fauvelle
20 Linguistique et archéologie, comment reconstruire l’histoire depuis 12 000 ans par Roger Blench
21 L’histoire de l’Afrique et ses matérialités par Scott MacEachern
22 Les sources orales et l’histoire de l’Afrique, par Théodore Nicoué Gayibor
23 Comment écrire l’histoire de l’Afrique ancienne avec de l’art ? par Claire Bosc-Tiessé
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Ubi papa, ibi Roma: Rome may not always be in Rome, for Rome is wherever the Pope is in residence. This 13th Century adage underlines the identification between city and sovereign; the capital is defined by its function of political... more
Ubi papa, ibi Roma: Rome may not always be in Rome, for Rome is wherever the Pope is in residence. This 13th Century adage underlines the identification between city and sovereign; the capital is defined by its function of political command. The capital in question was a strange choice in the Middle Ages for, while seeing itself as the caput mundi, it had difficulty being recognized as a mere regional capital.
What, therefore, was a capital city in the Middle Ages? We must look beyond the false evidence that comes from a centralized Paris that goes back over a thousand years or to a lesser degree London: things are more complex than they appear at first. It is true that we find the Roman model of the imperial capital persisting under various forms with Constantinople, Baghdad and Cairo. Nevertheless, when the Carolingians re-established the Empire in 800, they did not go back to the model of the imperial capital. In fact, what characterized the institutional and territorial experience of the Medieval West was the dispersion rather than the concentration of the various functions of a capital.
The 36th Congress of the SHMESP took place in Istanbul, at the invitation of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies. Here we found a décor suited to our endeavor. It is a historical and monumental setting, at the heart of some of the political experiences compared and contrasted by our contributors over a long-time scale. For writing the history of capital cities leads one, inevitably, to focus on the diversity of the models of the emergence of the state. The relationship between the palace and the city, as well as the movement of the centers of gravity of territorial constructions, the abandon of and return to various capitals – all this shows a number of different configurations of power.
From this point of view the question of symbolic markers is essential. A city is able to convince that it controls various functions of commandment through image and ritual, words and walls, by the mobilization of memory and the building of impressive monuments. It can continue enjoying the prestige of a defunct capital for very long. By concentrating on the simultaneously material and ideal aspects of administrative centralization in urban society our contributors have attempted to restore a richness of meaning to that seemingly anodyne term “capital city” in the Middle Ages.
What, therefore, was a capital city in the Middle Ages? We must look beyond the false evidence that comes from a centralized Paris that goes back over a thousand years or to a lesser degree London: things are more complex than they appear at first. It is true that we find the Roman model of the imperial capital persisting under various forms with Constantinople, Baghdad and Cairo. Nevertheless, when the Carolingians re-established the Empire in 800, they did not go back to the model of the imperial capital. In fact, what characterized the institutional and territorial experience of the Medieval West was the dispersion rather than the concentration of the various functions of a capital.
The 36th Congress of the SHMESP took place in Istanbul, at the invitation of the French Institute of Anatolian Studies. Here we found a décor suited to our endeavor. It is a historical and monumental setting, at the heart of some of the political experiences compared and contrasted by our contributors over a long-time scale. For writing the history of capital cities leads one, inevitably, to focus on the diversity of the models of the emergence of the state. The relationship between the palace and the city, as well as the movement of the centers of gravity of territorial constructions, the abandon of and return to various capitals – all this shows a number of different configurations of power.
From this point of view the question of symbolic markers is essential. A city is able to convince that it controls various functions of commandment through image and ritual, words and walls, by the mobilization of memory and the building of impressive monuments. It can continue enjoying the prestige of a defunct capital for very long. By concentrating on the simultaneously material and ideal aspects of administrative centralization in urban society our contributors have attempted to restore a richness of meaning to that seemingly anodyne term “capital city” in the Middle Ages.
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Bertrandon de la Broquière, a French nobleman, travelled to Palestine, Little Asia and Balkanic penninsula in 1432-1433 as a spy in service of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. His work provides an interesting document about the Near... more
Bertrandon de la Broquière, a French nobleman, travelled to Palestine, Little Asia and Balkanic penninsula in 1432-1433 as a spy in service of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. His work provides an interesting document about the Near East and Ottoman Empire but also testifies an unusual relationship between Christian traveller and the Muslim world. This volume contains the translation of Bertrandon's travelogue into Czech as well as three introductory studies which frame it into the historical, literary and cultural context.
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Islamic networks played a critical role in the regional integration of the Ethiopian highlands to the Red Sea basin, after the eighth-century collapse of the kingdom of Axum. However, the history of Ethiopia’s earliest Islamic settlements... more
Islamic networks played a critical role in the regional integration of the Ethiopian highlands to the Red Sea basin, after the eighth-century collapse of the kingdom of Axum. However, the history of Ethiopia’s earliest Islamic settlements is still poorly known. Knowledge has increased over the last two decades, with the identification of several Islamic sites with the help of the local Muslim communities’ memory. In 2018-2019, a cluster of several ancient Muslim cemeteries was surveyed by a French-Ethiopian team in the area of Arra (eastern Tigray). The preliminary results of the survey of Tsomar, a Muslim cemetery in use in the late 13th century, are presented here. Since no excavations have yet taken place, the study is based on surface observation, drone zenithal views and the analysis of nine Arabic inscriptions found on the Tsomar site.
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Recent archaeological investigations in eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, have revealed extensive evidence for medieval Muslim communities. Although the settlement of Muslims near modern Kwiha was previously attested by epigraphic evidence, its... more
Recent archaeological investigations in eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, have revealed extensive evidence for medieval Muslim communities. Although the settlement of Muslims near modern Kwiha was previously attested by epigraphic evidence, its exact location remained unknown. Fieldwork, with the support of the ERC project 'HornEast', has identified and excavated the cemetery at Bilet - the first excavation of a Muslim cemetery in the Ethiopian Highlands. The results reveal the existence of flourishing cosmopolitanism among Muslim communities in the very heart of the Zagwe Christian kingdom. These Muslim communities developed from both foreign and local populations and were well connected with the wider Islamicate world.
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Islamic authorities in Cairo were closely linked to the rule of appointment of the head of the Ethiopian church by the patriarch of Alexandria. These relations enjoyed an unprecedented regularity under the reign of the Solomonic kings and... more
Islamic authorities in Cairo were closely linked to the rule of appointment of the head of the Ethiopian church by the patriarch of Alexandria. These relations enjoyed an unprecedented regularity under the reign of the Solomonic kings and the Mamluk sultans. At least thirteen Ethiopian embassies arrived in Cairo between 1274 and 1516, while four letters were sent by the sultan to Ethiopia, in addition to the patriarch’s correspondence with the Christian king, part of which was dictated by the sultan himself. The study of these interactions, and especially of the Ethiopian diplomatic letters copied in Arabic by Egyptian chroniclers, highlights an important aspect of their diplomatic relations: the multifaceted issue of the protection of Egypt’s Christians by the king of Ethiopia and of Ethiopia’s Muslims by the sultan of Egypt and Syria. The Solomonic diplomacy first formulated this mirroring of Egyptian and Ethiopian communities. It was updated however in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries by several episodes of violence against the Christian subjects of the sultan and by the king’s wars against Muslim people in Ethiopia. Moreover, the Mamluk diplomacy endorsed it in the fifteenth century in its relations with the Christian king as well as with his Muslim challenger in eastern Ethiopia.
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The existence of an isolated Muslim community established in the 10th-12th centuries in Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, has been well known for half a century, thanks to Madeleine Schneider (1925-2018) and her pioneering work on funerary stelae... more
The existence of an isolated Muslim community established in the 10th-12th centuries in Eastern Tigray, Ethiopia, has been well known for half a century, thanks to Madeleine Schneider (1925-2018) and her pioneering work on funerary stelae found in a place called Bilet. Recent discoveries by an Ethiopian-French archaeological mission, including the identification of the exact location of Bilet’s cemetery, have provided new evidence on its history, while increasing fourfold the corpus of Arabic inscriptions from Tigray. This documentation highlights the rootedness of Bilet’s Muslim community, which succeeded in surviving among the Christian communities of Tigray until at least the second half of the 13th century. Epitaphs adorning dozen of stelae in its cemetery evince Bilet community’s command of the main Islamic cultural codes, including the use of Arabic, knowledge of the Quran, reference to the Hijra calendar and the adoption of (mainly) Arabic onomastics. These epitaphs also highlight connections between Bilet and other areas neighbouring the Red Sea basin and beyond. Eight funerary inscriptions of Bilet’s corpus, most of them previously unknown, are published in this paper.
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At the end of the fijifteenth century, Muslim students from the Horn of Africa would come to Cairo in their search for knowledge and to dwell in the venerable mosque of al-Azhar. They formed a signifijicant community of foreign students in... more
At the end of the fijifteenth century, Muslim students from the Horn of Africa would come to Cairo in their search for knowledge and to dwell in the venerable mosque of al-Azhar. They formed a signifijicant community of foreign students in the Egyptian metropolis, to the extent that they enjoyed their own fraternity where they gathered along their fellow countrymen. The article investigates the gradual development in Cairo of a Muslim community originating from the Horn of Africa. It puts their sudden visibility in the context of the establishment of the fijirst student fraternities in al-Azhar's history. Finally, it questions their role in the growing connections between Egypt and the Horn of Africa in the later Middle Ages.
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The paper aims at reappraising the position of women in wealth holding and transmission among the elite families of Mamluk Egypt. It is based on sample surveys of legal documents , both sale and endowment deeds, mainly dating from the... more
The paper aims at reappraising the position of women in wealth holding and transmission among the elite families of Mamluk Egypt. It is based on sample surveys of legal documents , both sale and endowment deeds, mainly dating from the ninth/fifteenth century, that are nowadays preserved in Cairo. It argues that at times of high mortality rates, frequent widowhood and remarriage, the Islamic law of inheritance proved to be particularly protective toward the female relatives of a deceased male. In such contexts, pious endowment (waqf) was not only an option for management of estates but also used as an alternative, albeit legal, channel of wealth transmission in order to escape the law of inheritance and its adverse effects. In this respect, elite families of Mamluk Egypt, whether they were of local or foreign background, used to share the same concerns and values about family, as evident in the extensive use of the same type of endowment deeds while dealing with their waqf surplus income. This standard form, which is not found in contemporary notarial handbooks such as al-Asyūṭī's Jawāhir al-ʿUqūd, sheds some light on the effective asset strategies of the ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian elites. Their "chosen family," which was outlined in the descriptions of endowment deeds, show several differences from the legal norms of inheritance ; for instance, the exclusion from wealth transmission of the deceased's widow(s) and of the children she/they might have after remarriage and, moreover, the equal treatment of boys and girls in the attribution to the founder's descendants of his/her waqf's surplus income. The Cairene legal documents also reveal the extent of women's contribution in dealing with the holding and transmission of wealth in Mamluk society.
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Impossible de passer à côté des textes arabes touchant à l’art de l’amour : poètes, médecins, juristes et autres lettrés ne cessent de débattre de la question et, souvent, de chanter le plaisir du corps. Y compris celui des femmes.
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Ville la plus peuplée du bassin méditerranéen comme du continent africain, Le Caire est indissociable de l’histoire impériale de l’Islam. Née avec les conquêtes arabes au VIIe siècle, elle devient la capitale de plusieurs empires... more
Ville la plus peuplée du bassin méditerranéen comme du continent africain, Le Caire est indissociable de l’histoire impériale de l’Islam. Née avec les conquêtes arabes au VIIe siècle, elle devient la capitale de plusieurs empires successifs et la métropole la plus brillante du monde islamique, éclipsant jusqu'à Cordoue et Bagdad. C’est cette histoire que l’on racontera en images : celle d’une métropole attirant marchands, savants et étudiants de tous les horizons ; celle d’une capitale que ses souverains ont paré de monuments innombrables ; celle d’une ville qui n’a cessé de bruire de Mille et Un récits, depuis les conteurs du Moyen Âge jusqu’aux romanciers du XXe siècle ; celle d’une cité que ses habitants appellent depuis toujours Umm al-Dunya, la « Mère du monde ».
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Military slavery has long been a privileged way to ensure strength and to build loyalty in Islamic polities. Beginning in the 870s, the wealthiest princes used to surround themselves with Praetorian guards of former slaves (“mamluks”)... more
Military slavery has long been a privileged way to ensure strength and to build loyalty in Islamic polities. Beginning in the 870s, the wealthiest princes used to surround themselves with Praetorian guards of former slaves (“mamluks”) selected for their military skills within “martial races” living at the fringes of the Islamicate world. In 1250, one of the largest regiments of mamluks of Turkic background ousted the heir of their former master and seized power in Egypt and Syria. Their history is that of an allochtonous Turkic-like military élite, recruited through slavery and manumission. During its almost three-century-long rule (1250–1517), the Mamluk military had to face dynamics of ethnicity that either buttressed or challenged its collective identity. These “ethnic trends” were linked to the patterns of slave trade that supplied the sultanate with young boys and girls, and to global migration phenomena. They also might have been brought about by political decision and by the rulers’ propensity to favour their own people. This chapter therefore aims to identify military diasporic groups with para- (or imagined) ethnic background and respective ethnic self-awareness, that acted as distinct forces within the Mamluk military in late medieval Egypt and Syria.
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Cairo has seldom experienced the war during its thousand-year-old history. The assault launched in the spring of 1389 by rebel amirs assembled in Syria is among the scarce military events that directly affected the Egyptian capital. It... more
Cairo has seldom experienced the war during its thousand-year-old history. The assault launched in the spring of 1389 by rebel amirs assembled in Syria is among the scarce military events that directly affected the Egyptian capital. It compelled Sultan al-Ẓāhir Barqūq to abandon the throne but caused only sporadic fightings and limited destruction. However, imminence of war in the spring of 1389 critically reveals Cairo’s spatial structures, institutions and daily life at the very moment the power tried to organize the city’s defense and to secure the support of its inhabitants. As a direct witness to the events, the notary Ibn al-Furāt (1335-1405) provides a narrative that sheds new light on the city’s space and society at the time when Cairo feverishly prepared itself for the war.