IFAO

From the end of the 4th century BCE, shortly after the foundation of Alexandria, to the dawn of the industrial era in the reign of Mohamed Ali, a canal served the town of Alexandria. Throughout 23 centuries, it allowed for the provision of drinking water as well as the development of the town’s agriculture and industries. Thus it was that Guiseppe Botti could exclaim “faire l’histoire de ce canal, c’est faire l’histoire d’Alexandrie”. To begin this history, the following study endeavours to establish an initial inventory of available sources that can unravel the major phases of the canal’s evolution. We have called it an “ historical geography ” of the canal since, on the ground, the ancient traces have disappeared. The texts of Roman historians and geographers, epigraphic documents, Arab chronicles on which we have depended are dated to between the 1st and 15th centuries of the common era. These documents tell of the work accomplished by the State. However, it is by diving into the body of travellers’ accounts, the largest documentary source, that we can enter into the life of the canal. We can follow the vagaries of its very name and watch its changing course over the centuries while, at the same time, discover the essential elements of which it was composed ; nilometers, quays, locks, bridges and iron grills. Thus, following the flow, we will attempt to present an account of its vitality throughout the eras by looking at the canal’s two principal functions : navigation and the provision of water to Alexandria.

Writing about prisons and prisoners during the time of the Mamluks is a little problematic. The first difficulty is lexicographic : what is the exact meaning of sijn and ḥabs ? The second is legal : nothing is written about prisons as a legal penalty in the Quran. However, Mamluk authors mention many incarcerations during the late period of the dynasty’s rule with numerous details about prisoners (gender, age, social activities, legal status, religion, nationalities and general reasons for imprisonment). Such descriptions create an image of the jails as a great melting-pot. All this information leads to the possible conclusion that everybody was vulnerable and could have been thrown in jail during this period. However, what circumstances might lead to incarceration? Reasons for imprisionment are various. Common examples were for actions punished by ḥudûd (burglary, murders, religious and sexual offences, etc.). Others are more “ subjective ” and are difficult to determine because they are in relation with the authorities, such as the incurring of disfavour without reason. Prison as penalty seems to have been corporal, coercive and used as precautionary measures. If the authors are prolix about the prisoners and their crimes, they are more secretive about the buildings, the imprisonment and the routines of the jail. This makes it difficult to get a real idea of prison life.

This paper examines the universal scope of a peculiar mystical trend, referred to as pietism, vividly seen in Egypt during the 13th-15th centuries and founded by Abraham Maïmonides, the son of the well-known medieval philosopher and physician. The aim of this analysis is to look into and beyond the specificities of this current, after briefly discussing its discovery thanks to the Judeo-Arabic literature left in the Cairo Genizah, its position within the history of Jewish mysticism and its emergence among the Jewish Cairene community at the time of the settlement of Sufi ṭarîqa-s. The specificity of Egyptian pietism is at the crossroads of two religions, Judaism and Islam, and of two languages, Hebrew and Arabic as well as its borrowing from philosophy, esoteric references, cosmology, and trends of thought at the time. The basis of pietism is in Jewish theology and Muslim mysticism, i.e., Sufism : on the one hand, the main Jewish precepts to which those believers remain faithful and on the other hand, Sufi concepts (retained in Arabic) and practices to which they turn to in order to proceed nearer to God. The intermingling of components, far from introducing any kind of antinomy, appears as a way of strengthening the quest for the Divine and as an opportunity to pull mysticism out of one religion and one language, to offer a path to the One for those eager to reach Him.

Whether the terms : ‘aql, nafs, rûḥ and qalb are real synonyms designating the same entity while considering each one in a specific aspect or do they refer to distinct entities? Concerning this question, al-Ghazâlî shows in different works a variety of theories about the definition of Man : his organism’s structure, his spiritual dimension, as well as the contours of the connecting link between these four terms.

Indeed, according to Iḥyâ ‘ulûm al-dîn, they can be considered as synonyms that may have different meanings because of the various contexts they have been found in. Mîzân al-‘amal does not distinguish the Quranic rûḥ from the nafs (the neoplatonic soul), which among others encompasses the different capacities that qualify the ‘aql in Mi‘yâr al-‘ilm, that in the Aristotelian context means nothing but “intellect”.

As for Mi‘râj al-sâlikîn, it has a tripartite anthropological sense, referring only to the animal spirit, the soul and the body form of the human being. We have too, a dichotomic conception that either divides man into body and soul ; the same way like in Kîmiyâ’ al-sa‘âda, or just into body and heart, like in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalâl.

The Al-Basra cadi ‘Ubayd Allâh b. al-Ḥasan al-‘Anbarî (d. 168/784-785) maintained relations with Al-Mahdî. His chronic disobedience, like his refusal to let the caliph intervene in the lawsuits of his district, find an echo in the letter that he addressed to him into 159/775. The following discussion proposes a possible translation. This epistle, the conceptual background of which confirms its seniority, diverts official Abbasid propaganda skillfully proposing another political model. By limiting the legal role of the sovereign, it rejects any absolutist vision of the caliphate and contributes to the emergence of an order where the ‘ulamâ’ seem the true heirs to prophecy.

In an attempt to identify a prevailing theme in the umayyad’s wall painting from Quṣayr ‘Amra (a bath house built in Jordan during the 8th century) depicting a prince seated on his throne above a nilotic landscape, scholars have devised elaborate and overly inventive interpretations. In this paper, we asked whether a set of material circumstances of production could be pertinent to our understanding of this painting. To answer this question, we used a new “ processual and formal approach ” by making a number of inferences drawn from the more obvious circumstances that suround the painting : the architectural context (function and shape), the framing devices, the craftmen’s method of work and the availibility of subjects in artistic traditions of the late antique period. We found that the architectural context defined as the curve of the alcove vault and a throne room determined the choice of subjects and their arrangement. The formal circumstances appear as decisive factors in the creative process in umayyad iconography. Our account also helps to clarify the painter’s way of handling an inherited form. By comparing the umayyad picture with its forerunners from Byzantine, Coptic, Sassanian and pre-islamic Arabian craft traditions, we have demonstrated that the formula used is no prescriptive model to which the artist must conform. Rather, it is an established formal scheme, open to variations in its combination of motifs. We conclude that this umayyad painting must be seen not as a copy of an ancient model, but as the outcome of particular circumstances of production and as a deliberate re-creation. At this point, one might suggest a close similarity between the crafmen’s method of work and the “formulaic technique” used in umayyad poetry.

This article deals with the situations in which verses of poetry occur and the functions that they fulfill within akhbâr texts in al-Tanûkhî’s (m. 384/994) Kitâb al-Faraj ba‘d al-shidda. In the first part, typical situations in which poetry is used are identified. As might be expected, poetic verses often occur when human interaction is taking place ; particularly when characters express their love and their anger. However, it not only occurs under such conditions but also when the writer seeks a pardon from the ruler. In some instances, poetry serves as solace and is even preferred to the Koran or to prayers in a mosque as the last refuge to which the protagonist resorts. Conversely, verses are rare in stories that have the Koran, the ḥadith, wild animals or illness as their main theme.

In the second part, this author identifies sixteen functions that poetry fulfills in Faraj (i.e. adab, inherent, personal, associative, structural, illustrative, analogical, summary, psychological, communicative, resumtive, poetic quiz function, explicative, nominative, corrective/ diversive and inter-/ intratextual). These sixteen functions comprise different levels of narrative/ literary analysis : surface level, plot level, intra- and intertextual level and generic level. A function may extend over several of these levels and a single poem may fulfill several functions at one time.

One of the most important functions for the Faraj in particular, is the structural function. It is divided into five subfunctions (on the plot level : conclusive or “de dénouement”, proleptic and analeptic ; on the surface level : initial and final). The conclusive subfunction is the most characteristic of the Faraj stories because the verses mark the point where the dramatic climax of the story is reached and the plot is brought to a conclusion.

Such ambivalence of Islam towards the status of poets and poetry engendered one of the themes continually treated within Arabic poetics during the medieval era, namely to show, on the basis of explicitly chosen traditions and anecdotes, that the Prophet and Islam were not hostile to poetry. To prove the legitimacy of this literary genre, the majority of authors selected ḥadîth-s which demonstrated that the Prophet was indeed, in favour of poetry, liked to listen it and rewarded poets who composed poetic verses in his glory.

The geographer Muqaddasî is reputed to have provided in his Aḥsan al-taqâsîm fî ma‘rifat al-aqâlîm a considerable amount of information on the linguistic situation of the Muslim world during the 4th/10th century. A meticulous analysis of the data concerning the Arabic language leads us to a double conclusion :

1. Muqaddasî distinguishes between two levels of Arabic, which can be assimilated to two main varieties : on the one hand, Arabic as a vehicular language, to which he gives the same name of ‘arabiyya ; and on the other hand, Arabic as a vernacular language, which he calls lisân al-qawm (“ language of the people ”) which he considers as being made up of lughât mukhtalifa (“ different ways of speech ”). As a vehicle of the learned culture, the ‘arabiyya is better mastered by those whose native language is not Arabic and for whom Arabic does not constitute a vernacular language. A remarkable example is represented by the educated men of letters of Nishapur, capital of the Iranian state of the Samanids. On the contrary Muqaddasî deplores the mistakes (especially as far as declension endings are concerned) of the Great Qadi of Baghdad in his majlis.

Abû Ḥâmid al-Tirmidhî is the author of a small treatise which might actually be the oldest critical Arabic source dealing with the earliest grammarians in Iraq. Unknown until recently, Abû Ḥâmid al-Tirmidhî must have lived during the 3rd/9th century. Among his masters were Abû ʿUbayda, al-Aṣma‘î and Ibn al-A‘râbî. He belonged to a group of scholars associated with the governor ‘Abd Allâh b. Ṭâhir in Khurasân.

This article includes a French translation from the Arabic, of Abû Ḥâmid’s treatise, based on Hâshim al-Ṭa‘‘ân’s edition (in al-Mawrid, Bagdad, 1974) from the Arabic manuscript. In addition, two indices or glossaries explain technical Arabic terminology and the proper names mentioned in the treatise.

As for our reading of Abû Ḥâmid’s treatise, it goes through a comparative analysis of several akhbâr depicting the foundation of the grammatical Arabic tradition, which are also to be found in most of the Arabic sources.