Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World

Maribel Fierro, Ph.F. (1985), Instituto de Lenguas y Culturas del Mediterráneo, is Research Professor at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC). She has published on the political and intellectual history of the Medieval Islamic West, including co-editing Ibn Hazm of Cordoba. The Life and Works of a Controversial Thinker (Brill, 2012). Sonja Brentjes, Ph.D. (1977), Visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), is a historian of science who has published on mathematical sciences at courts and in madrasas; cross-cultural exchange of knowledge, mapmaking and historiography. She is the author of Teaching and Learning the Sciences in Islamicate Societies (800–1700) (Brepols, 2018). Tilman Seidensticker, Ph.D. (1983), is Professor at Hamburg University, Cluster of Excellence 'Understanding Written Artefacts'. He has published on Ancient Arabic poetry and Arabic manuscripts and is author of Islamismus - Geschichte, Vordenker, Organisationen (Munich, 5th ed. 2023).

List of Figures

List of Tables

Notes on Contributors



Introduction

 Maribel Fierro, Sonja Brentjes and Tilman Seidensticker



Part 1 The Early Period



1 Rulers as Authors: ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib and the Other Twelver Imams

 Teresa Bernheimer



2 Eloquent Exchange: Asceticism and Shirāʾ in the Poetry of Qaṭarī b. al-Fujāʾa

 Adam Gaiser



3 A ‘Rediscovered’ Letter of the Umayyad Caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (r. 99–101/717–720)

Caliphal Authorship and Legal Authority in al-Risāla fī l-fayʾ

 Sean W. Anthony



4 Abbasid Rulers and Their Standing as Authors

 Letizia Osti



Part 2 Caliphs and Messianic Figures



5 Zaydī Rulers as Authors: A Quest for Legitimacy

 Maher Jarrar



6 The Caliph al-Qādir bi-llāh and the Qādirī Creed

 Livnat Holtzman



7 Do Caliphs Write? The View from the Islamic West

 María Luisa Ávila † and Maribel Fierro



8 Authority, ijāzāt and Politics: Caliph al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh’s Kitāb Rūḥ al-ʿārifīn (7Th/13th Century, Baghdad)

 Angelika Hartmann †



9 The Pen and the Sword: The Case of the Sudanese Mahdi (1844–1885)

 Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk and Robert S. Kramer



Part 3 Emirs and Sultans



10 Entre l’épée et le calame : Abū l-Fidāʾ, prince et savant ayyoubide

 Anne-Marie Eddé



11 The Quatrains of Toghrïl III. Some Reflections about the Literacy and Culture of the Saljuqs

 David Durand-Guédy



12 Royal Quatrains: Rulers of the Anūshteginid Line of Khwārazmshāhs as Poets

 Jürgen Paul



13 Rulers as Authors in 13th-Century Yemen: the Oeuvre of al-Ashraf ʿUmar

 Petra Schmidl



14 Non-caliphal Rulers and Their Writings in the Islamic West (2nd–9th/8th–15th Centuries)

 Maribel Fierro



15 Legitimating Sultanic Rule in Arabic, Turkish and Persian—Late Mamluk Rulers as Authors of Religious Poetry

 Christian Mauder



Part 4 The Great Empires: Timurids-Mughals, Ottomans, Safavids



16 The Ottoman Ruler Poet Sultan Süleyman I, His Third Divan, and His Reception beyond the Palace Walls

 Christiane Czygan



17 The Power of Poetry in the Ottoman Context

 Fatma Sinem Eryılmaz



18 Timurid-Mughal Philosopher-Kings as Sultan-Scientists

 Matthew Melvin-Koushki



19 Shah Ṭahmāsp and the Taẕkira: A Sixteenth-Century Ruler’s Justification of His Policies

 Philip Bockholt



Index