Gleanings from Maqrizi VII: Editing Your Rough Draft

MS

Al-Aqmar is a beautiful name for a mosque. It means “moonlit.” The verbal construction is similar to the better known al-Azhar, which means “flourishing.” Al-Aqmar Mosque, built in 1125 A.D., is on the central road of Islamic Cairo, but it’s easy to walk past since by the time one reaches it, much bigger mosques and madrasas loom out ahead. For pure loveliness this mosque, with its balanced and carefully designed front, is hard to beat:

MS

Al-Maqrizi’s section on the al-Aqmar Mosque does not run too long, but it has two passages in which we hear al-Maqrizi himself speaking. One comes at the very end:

At this mosque is a lecture for the Shafi‘i legal school—I don’t know who established it. The lecture continues to be given until now and it was once in the hands of the chief judge Badr al-Din ibn Jama‘a the Shafi‘ite. Then it was later in the hands of his children after him, and this continues until now from long ago.

I read that and smiled to myself. How strange for a historian to write “I don’t know who established it.” A modern historian would find a way around having to admit he or she “didn’t know” something. But that is why it’s so refreshing to read a medieval historian..

That’s what I was thinking at least, until I noticed the footnote to this passage that I was reading in the newest edition to the Khitat edited by Ayman Fu’ad Sayyid. It turns out that most of the above passage is an addition from the musawwada or rough draft of al-Maqrizi. (Yes, believe it or not, al-Maqrizi’s rough draft edition for part of the Khitat survives.) Working from the new edition I often run into passages in which the editor has used this rough draft to fill in sections of the text that seem incomplete or unclear. In this case and a few others I find this problematic. It turns out that instead of the above passage al-Maqrizi edited himself to simply:

At this mosque is a lecture for the Shafi‘i legal school from long ago.

So there’s no admission that “I don’t know who established it”; he simply ignores that question and says the lecture is quite old. Here was a question he could not quite answer, and in the formal version he simply pares that away. Now he starts to look like a modern historian, finessing a question that isn’t clear.

This brings up a question about editing the Khitat. The principle should not be maximizing the information it contains, but arriving at the final text that al-Maqrizi wanted. In this instance and others I’ve come across, the intention seems reasonably clear: al-Maqrizi is editing himself for a formal version. These passages from the rough draft should certainly be in the footnotes, but don’t belong in the text itself.

In another passage from this section on al-Aqmar Mosque al-Maqrizi relates a personal anecdote. He mentions the thorough renovations made to this mosque by a mamluk named Yalbugha al-Salimi, and then takes exception to two aspects:

I said to al-Salimi: “I marvel at what you’ve accomplished with this mosque, except for the addition of the Friday sermon in it and the building of the pool for water.

So we learn that al-Maqrizi has two issues: the establishment of the Friday sermon and the addition of a water pool for ablutions.

The Friday sermon is hardly necessary here on account of the nearness of other Friday sermons to this mosque.

Al-Aqmar Mosque is in an area choked with large mosques, so why establish yet another sermon in this area? It’s needless.

The water pool makes quite narrow the courtyard and you could have constructed the place for ablutions next to the entrance on the side of the decorated corner.

The elaborate new pool makes the already small courtyard even smaller, says al-Maqrizi. Bad move. He continues by shifting back to the issue of the Friday sermon:

You need to think of the pulpit for the sermon along the lines of what ibn al-Tuwayr said in his book The Excursion of the Eyes in Reports on Two States at the mention of the sitting of the caliph in six festivals: “…the preacher of al-Azhar came forth and preached something similar, and then the preacher of al-Aqmar came forward and preached something similar…”

This is a bit more of al-Maqrizi’s humor. The scholarly jesting requires some book knowledge. Al-Maqrizi slides into a reference to an event where, evidently, the Fatimid Caliph had to sit through a series of sermons by preachers who came out and said basically the same thing. The point being that it is useless to add sermon to sermon in such close proximity.

Al-Salimi responded: “But this was the situation in the state of the Fatimids! What have I to do with what you report? And as for the pool of water, it is an aid for prayer because of its nearness to those who are praying.”

The mamluk al-Salimi strikes back vigorously at al-Maqrizi’s barbs. As for the example about the Fatimid Caliph (Fatimids were heretics to the Sunnis), al-Salimi points out that he has nothing to do with anything about the Fatimids. That’s hilarious, because he misses al-Maqrizi’s point. Al-Maqrizi is using a historical allusion to make the (general) point that sermons all start to sound the same if listened to one after another. But al-Salimi takes the comparison literally.

The second part of al-Salimi’s rejoinder is also funny. Al-Maqrizi criticized the pool for crowding the courtyard and suggested it would be better near the entrance. But al-Salimi absurdly claims that the physical nearness of the pool for ablutions to the prayer space would be an “aid for prayer.”

I know, al-Maqrizi should’ve done stand up work. But I’m tickled by these things. At the very least this should modify some of the general pessimism attributed to al-Maqrizi. Yes, he is pessimistic in a philosophical way, but his writing shows him as a warm and engaged individual.