Gleanings from Maqrizi VIII: The Boat at the Top of the Dome

MS

The Mausoleum of the Imam Shafi’i (1211 A.D.) is a structure with great utility for talking about the history of Cairo. The Fatimids were a Shi’a dynasty and during their roughly 200 year period they gave official support to the veneration of a number of relatives of the prophet who had been buried in the area of Cairo. The head of Husayn was also brought to Cairo during Fatimid rule. When the staunchly Sunni Salah al-Din took over in 1171 A.D., he was faced with a choice that’s easy enough to imagine: stamp out all traces of heretical Fatimid spiritual practices or modify them in some way. Salah al-Din and the Ayyubid rulers who followed made the latter choice, which had lasting consequences for the layout of Cairo.

If you think about it, it’s bizarre to be walking around in Cairo, whose Muslim population is pretty much entirely Sunni, and yet be confronted with a series of shrines that would have more significance to Shi’as. The shrine for Husayn in the middle of traditional Cairo is the case in point. But this was the choice made by the Ayyubids. They did not need to erase Fatimid devotional practices, just fold them into Sunni orthodoxy. They accepted Shi’a shrines but then added their own. The Mausoleum of Imam Shafi’i is the flagship example of this Sunni-ization of the cityscape of Cairo.

Salah al-Din had built a madrasa (a key institution in this Sunni-ization process) as well as a wooden cenotaph which still survives inside the mausoleum:

MS

Within this cenotaph is the usual silk covered tomb, basking in fluorescent green light:

MS

Unlike the tombs of Mamluk rulers, this tomb is still a site of popular devotion. In fact it has “somehow” become a place where women who want children come to pray. I mean, I can’t imagine how would anyone get the idea of fertility here?

MS

An Ayyubid successor to Salah al-Din, Sultan al-Kamil, built the massive dome (wooden with lead covering). On top of this dome is a curious copper boat, most likely original. Walking into the mausoleum I found this schematic representation:

MS

Popular images of famous mosques tend to settle on a single feature. For the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina it’s a green roof; for the Haram in Mecca it’s the square black Ka’ba. The Mausoleum of Imam Shafi’i (which is now extended into a mosque as well) seems to be identified by the boat perched atop its dome—here enlarged as if a caricature.

What’s a boat doing up there? It may have been put there originally to provide grain for birds, but its presence led to much discussion in medieval Cairo. Al-Maqrizi cites a string of poetry on the topic of this boat. A contention of mine about these sections on mosques is that poetry functions as an indicator of the place of a mosque in the religious imagination. In other words, there are some mosques that are just there, and which because of placement or whatever, did not manage to win a place in the hearts of medieval Cairenes. Others became the places that attracted stories and poetry. They were alive in the imagination.

Here are some of the lines of poetry cited by al-Maqrizi (my translation subject to revision). I begin with some lines that show the general respect in which Imam Shafi’i was held:

God’s is the abundance of the earth, harvested out of generosity.
At the shrine of al-Sahfi‘i is an ally of knowledge and tradition.
Oh jewel, the concealed jewel from Mudar
concealed from the Quraysh and other noble men.
When you died knowledge turned away downcast;
your death injured both nomads and civilized.

Imam Shafi’i is an “ally of knowledge and tradition.” This reputation as a legal scholar par excellence colored the way medieval Cairenes would interpret the boat.

Al-Shafi‘i has become the imam;
among us his school of law is gold.
Even if there was no sea of knowledge
when he left us, atop his grave now sits a ship.

The first two lines set out truthfully the dominant place of Imam Shafi’i in Egypt, where his legal school became the dominant one. Then recalling that Imam Shafi’i died in 820 A.D., less than two centuries after the death of Muhammad, the poet reminds us that at his death the great infrastructure of knowledge had not yet been built up (“there was no sea of knowledge”). But you could see Imam Shafi’i as opening the floodgates for that sea as well as providing a ship for succeeding on that sea of knowledge. We can think of his scholarship as something like a boat for navigating infinite data.

Some other lines of poetry work along a similar vein:

I came to the tomb of al-Shafi‘i to make visitation
but a ship opposed us even when there was no sea.
So I said, God be exalted, this is a sign
indicating that his grave encompassed the sea.

Again we are given two successive couplets (abyat), the first providing a literal view of the situation and the second moving in a metaphorical direction. “Visitation” is the technical term in Islam for making pilgrimage to a saint’s shrine. There at a tomb close to the dry Muqattam Hills the poet spies a ship where there is nothing like a sea. The absurdity of the placement of the ship should impress us, and then the poet explains the significance: this grave encompasses (“masters”?) the sea (of knowledge).

One more poetic passage:

At the dome of the grave of al-Shafi‘i is a ship
that came to anchor in the sturdy construction above the rock.
Ever since the flood of science inundated, at his grave
this ark sits firmly from that burial upon excellence.

In this last case the allusion is to the great flood, which strikes me as a much more fearful portrayal of knowledge. And the Mausoleum of Imam Shafi’i, near to the Muqattam Hills and therefore presumably on bedrock, allows for the notion that the great scholar should be thought of as an anchor amidst the flood. The wisdom and judgment of Imam Shafi’i gives rest to the ship that would otherwise be tossed about by the flood.

We see a general agreement about the nature of the metaphors.. and the basic task is to make sense of the boat in a way that affirms the central narrative about Imam Shafi’i. But within that constraint there is a fair bit of variety. I am especially fascinated by these alternative ways of configuring knowledge.. is it an unruly flood or something that’s been mastered?