The Ayyūbids were a dynasty founded by Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn b. Ayyūb (Saladin), which ruled Egypt, Muslim Syria-Palestine, the greater part of Upper Mesopotamia, and Yemen from the end of the sixth/twelfth to the middle of the seventh/thirteenth century. 1. The history of a dynasty The family’s eponym, Ayyūb b. Shādhī, whose ancestors are unknown, was born in a village near Dwin (Dvin), in Armenia. He belonged to the Rawwādī clan of the Kurdish Hadhbānī tribe and, at the beginning of the sixth/twelfth century, entered the service of the Kurdish S…

Architecture in the Muslim world exhibits a range of commonalities across time and space. Against this underpinning of recognisably Islamic motifs, significant variations have also emerged, reflecting the use of local materials, regional traditions, imperial imagery, and religious affiliations. 1. History, geography, and themes of Islamic architecture Islamic architecture generally refers to the religious and palatial architecture built under various Muslim dynasties between the first/seventh and early thirteenth/nineteenth centuries. Geogra…

Abū ʿAbdallāh Jamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sālim b. Naṣr Allāh b. Sālim Ibn Wāṣil (604–97/1208–98) was a Syrian scholar and historian most famous for his chronicle on the Ayyūbids Mufarrij al-kurūb fī akhbār Banī Ayyūb (“The Dissipater of Anxieties on the Reports of the Ayyūbids”). He was born into a family that played a prominent role in the civilian elite of Ḥamā throughout the seventh/thirteenth century, and which was in competition with other families in the town, especially the Banū l-Bārizī and the Banū l-Bahrānī. After comple…

Ḍayfa Khātūn (d. 640/1242) was an Ayyūbid queen and regent of Aleppo between 634/1236 and 640/1242 and the first Sunnī queen in Islamic history. Born in 581/1185 to al-ʿĀdil (r. 592–615/1196–1218), brother of the founder of the Ayyūbid sultanate, Salāḥ al-Dīn (Saladin, r. 567–89/1171–93), her ascent to the throne was a consequence of the ascent of her father in 597/1200 coupled with her own shrewdness. When al-ʿĀdil became sultan of the Ayyūbid realm (which spanned Egypt, Ḥijāz, Yemen, Syria, eas…

Aden (Ar. ʿAdan), a seaport on the Gulf of Aden, in the south of the Republic of Yemen, was known as a port as early as pre-Islamic times (Löfgren, ʿAdan, EI2; Shihāb, chaps. 2–5). During the first Islamic centuries it came under the de jure rule of the Umayyad and early ʿAbbāsid caliphates, through their governors, who ruled Yemen from Ṣanʿāʾ. The Ziyādids of Zabīd, nominally ʿAbbāsid vassals, took control of the town in the third/ninth century. After a phase of independent rule by the local Banū Maʿn dynasty, about whom li…

Fondaco is an Italian word that derives, through Arabic, from the classical Greek pandokheion, “inn” or “hostelry” (literally, accepting all comers). In Arabic texts the word funduq appeared by the third/ninth century and was also used as a synonym of khān, even as its meaning changed over time. In Mediterranean Islamic countries the fondaco evolved to match the needs of commercial travellers and was often associated with national groups (especially Europeans) or particular goods. It was a place where travellers lodged, kept their goods, and found…

Abyan is a region in Yemen northeast of Aden (Ar. ʿAdan) on the Gulf of Aden, with its centre in the delta of Wādī Banā and Wādī Ḥassān. During the Middle Ages, as the hinterland of Aden, Abyan came to be ruled de jure by the powers dominating the seaport, that is, the Ziyādids, Banū Maʿn, Ṣulayḥids, Zurayʿids, Ayyūbids, Rasūlids, and Ṭāhirids. During the first Ottoman occupation of Yemen, Abyan fell under Turkish sway for a time. In 1644 it became part of the expanding Zaydī imāmate until local…

Al-Malik al-Manṣūr Ibrāhīm b. Shīrkūh b. Nāṣir al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Shīrkūh, descendant of Asad al-Dīn Shīrkūh (uncle of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, known as Saladin, r. 564–89/1169–93), was an Ayyūbid prince of Homs (r. 637–44/1240–6) who distinguished himself in fighting the Khwārizmīs, Turkic warriors from Central Asia who, fleeing the Mongolian advance, had sought to spread westwards in northern Syria and the region of Homs. Designated heir apparent by his father, al-Mujāhid Shīrkūh (r. 581–637/1186–1240), he intervened after his father’s reign in the disputes amongst …

Hasankeyf (Ar. Ḥiṣn Kayfā, Ḥiṣn; Ott. Ḥıṣn-ı Keyf) is a town on the upper Tigris east of Āmid/Diyarbakır, in present-day southeastern Turkey. The bulk of the early settlement lay on easy ground south of the Tigris, and in the fourth/tenth century, it appears to have spread to the north bank. The fortress stood on cliffs above the main settlement, with which it was connected by a paved road descending past decorated gateways. An impressive bridge, probably built in 510/1116–7 (though this date do…

The amīr al-ʿarab (“Bedouin representative”) is the highest Bedouin rank within the framework of imrat al-ʿarab (“Bedouin representation”). This institution was inaugurated by the Ayyūbids around 600/ 1204 to gain control over the Bedouin population in Syria and Egypt. The Mamlūks, when they gained power in Egypt and in Syria in 648/1250–1, adopted the institution, which then partly continued into the Ottoman era (cf. Winter, Holt). As the term “amīr” (pl., umarāʾ, “commander”) implies, the amīr al-ʿarab was a member of the military elite and, as such, he had to fulfil …

Abū l-Nadā Bilāl b. Jarīr al-Muḥammadī al-Awḥadī (d. 546/1151–2 or 547/1152–3) was the military leader and governor of the port city of Aden during its heyday as the chief city of the realm governed by Zurayʿid dynasty. He contributed decisively to the consolidation of Zurayʿid power in South Arabia and participated in Aden’s emergence as the major commercial hub of the western Indian Ocean. According to the biographical work of al-Janadī (d. 732/1332), Bilāl was the mawlā (client) of Sabā b. Abī Suʿūd (d. 533/1138–9), while Abū Makhrama (d. 947/1540) mentions him as a mawlā of Sabā’s so…

Abū Bakr b. ʿAbdallāh b. Aybak al-Dawādārī, called Ibn al-Dawādārī (fl. eighth/fourteenth century), was an Egyptian historian. Of Qïpchaq Turkic origin, his grandfather ʿIzz al-Dīn once held the position of dawādār (keeper of the royal inkwell, i.e., head of the chancery) at the Ayyūbid court (r. 564–650/1169–1252). His father, Jamāl al-Dīn (d. 713/1311), was a grand amīr serving the Mamlūk Qalāwūnid sultans (r. 678–709/1279–1310). Virtually nothing is known about his life. From his writings, it appears that he lived in Cairo in 709/1309–10, when he …

ʿAlī b. Ḥanẓala b. Abī Sālim al-Maḥfūẓī al-Wādiʿī al-Hamdānī (d. 626/1229) succeeded ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-Walīd as the sixth dāʿī muṭlaq of the Mustaʿlī-Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlīs in Yemen in 612/1215. The dāʿī muṭlaq held the highest rank in the Ismāʿīlī religio-political organisation called daʿwa, after the assassination of the Fāṭimid caliph-imām al-Āmir in Cairo in 524/1130 and the going into hiding of his son, al-Ṭayyib. Before Alī b. Ḥanẓala’s designation as the chief dāʿī, he had played an active role in the affairs of the daʿwa, from the time of Ḥātim b. Ibrāhīm al-Ḥāmidī, the third dāʿī …

Al-Malik al-Muʿizz ʿIzz al-Dīn Aybak al-Turkmānī al-Ṣāliḥī (r. 648–55/1250–7), the second Mamlūk sultan in Egypt, was one of the many Turkish mamlūks bought, trained, and manumitted by the Ayyūbid ruler of Egypt al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb (r. 637–47/1240–9). Aybak was one of his master's long-serving and trusted mamlūks, remaining faithful to him during the latter's imprisonment in Karak, and returning with him to Egypt in 637/1239 when he ascended to the sultanate. Al-Ṣāliḥ granted Aybak the rank of amīr and appointed him as his çāshingīr (the sultan's food-taster), demonstrat…

The title atābak (atabeg), also spelled aṭābak, is a compound of two Turkish words: ata, “father,” and beg, which is a courtesy title. The term atabeg first appears in Muslim history during the Saljūq period (fifth/eleventh to sixth/twelfth century), when it was used as an honorific given to guardian-tutors of young Turkish princes. It was first conferred upon Niẓām al-Mulk (d. 485/1092), the Persian wazīr who was the éminence grise behind the very young Saljūq sultan Malikshāh (r. 465–85/1073–92). After the latter's death, atabegs usually came from the ranks of Turkish milita…

Awlād al-Shaykh (Banū Ḥamawayh, also spelled Ḥamawiya) refers to an Iranian family of Ṣūfīs and Shāfiʿī fuqahāʾ, of whom one branch emigrated to Syria and came to play an important role in the religious and political life of Egypt and Syria under the later Ayyūbid sultans, al-Malik al-Kāmil (615–35/1218–38) and his sons. The eldest known clan member, Abū Muḥammad b. Ḥamawayh al-Juwaynī (d. 530/1135–6) was a renowned Ṣūfī, faqīh, and author of several works on mysticism. His grandson ʿImād al-Dīn Abū l-Fatḥ ʿUmar b. ʿAlī (d. 577/1181) went to Damascus, where in 5…

Dār al-ʿadl means “house of justice” in Arabic. In about 558/1163, Nūr al-Dīn Maḥmūd b. Zankī (r. 541–69/1147–74) ordered the construction in his capital, Damascus, of a special building for public hearings of grievances ( qaḍāʾ al-maẓālim, or al-naẓar fī l-maẓālim) and named it the Dār al-ʿAdl or Dār Kashf al-Maẓālim (House for the Review of Grievances). This was the first use of the term dār al-ʿadl. In total, seven Houses of Justice were constructed in Damascus, Aleppo, and Cairo between the sixth/twelfth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. They have all disap…

Ibn Farḥūn, whose full name was Burhān al-Dīn Ibrāhīm b. ʿAlī b. Farḥūn al-Yaʿmarī al-Mālikī (d. 799/1397), was an influential Mālikī jurist of the eighth/fourteenth century. He was of a well-regarded Arab family that traced its descent to the Quraysh, the Prophet Muḥammad’s tribe, settled in Andalusia but subsequently migrated to Tunisia and from there returned to Medina, where Ibn Farḥūn was born c. 729/1328 and spent the majority of his life and career teaching and writing. Both Ibn Farḥūn’s f…

Homs (Ḥimṣ) is a city in central Syria, linked to the Mediterranean Sea via the ʿAkkār Plain to the west, to the Syrian steppe and desert via Tadmur (Palmyra) to the east, and to Syria’s other major cities of Aleppo in the north, via Hama, and Damascus in the south, via Nabk. It is located near the north-flowing Orontes River and the river-fed Qaṭṭīna Lake. Its abundance of fresh water and the winter rains blown inland from the Mediterranean have made Homs a major agricultural centre for millennia. The first settlements in the area of Homs go back to the middle of the third millenn…

Qiwām al-Dīn al-Fatḥ b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad al-Bundārī al-Iṣfahānī (d. after 639/1241–2) was an Iranian littérateur, the translator of the Shāh-nāma into Arabic. Nothing is known of his life but for the information contained in his works. He was born and raised in Isfahan, probably in a well established family (in fifth-sixth/eleventh-twelfth century Iran, the bundār was an important official in the fiscal administration; see Nājī, and Anwārī, 177–8). As al-Bundārī was in Damascus in 620/1223, he may have left Isfahan after the internal strife of 618/1…