Writing Egypt

Nasser Rabbat is Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.

This will be Rabbat’s magnum opus. The culmination of the author’s career-long devotion to al-Maqrizi’s work, Writing Egypt is a very human assessment of the life and scholarship of one of the most influential historians of the medieval Islamic world. This beautiful work, which has one foot in Mamluk Studies and the other in historical biography, carefully examines historical craft, vividly portrays daily life in medieval Cairo, and raises important questions about identity-making in modern Egypt.

• ForewordIntroductionPart 1: The Life of al-MaqriziChapter 1: The Formative YearsThe Sources on al-Maqrizi’s Life A Family of Scholars The Loving Presence of Women in al-Maqrizi's LifeA Solid Scholarly FormationIbn Khaldun: Teacher and InterlocutorA Glorious Lineage? Al-Maqrizi’s Representation of the FatimidsChapter 2: Career, Moral Crisis, and WithdrawalA Question of Madhhab? Building a CareerQuest for PatronsThe Hisba SagaRivalry with Badr al-Din al-‘AyniThe Damascus Interlude The Beginning of EstrangementLast Attempts at Finding Patronage?WithdrawalDeathPart 2: The Writing of al-MaqriziChapter 3: Harvest of a Lifetime A Tentative Inventory of al-Maqrizi’s WorksNotebooks and Abridgments: A Window into al-Maqrizi’s Sourcing MethodThe Beginnings: From Abridger to Author The Concept of Kharab: Looking Back as MethodThe History of Egypt: An Integrated Project Chapter 4: The Khitat: History and Belonging The Khitat: A Cumulative Book?Al-Mawa‘iz wa-l-I‘tibar: What’s in a TitleAl-Maqrizi’s Notion of History Khitat and Athar: The Totality of the Urban SpaceThe Patriotic ImpulseStructuring the Khitat on the Tempo of RuinationAl-Maqrizi and the Khaldunian Cyclical HistoryPart 3: The Afterlife of al-Maqrizi’s WritingChapter 5: Al-Maqrizi and the OrientalistsThe Khitat as Urban HistoryAl-Maqrizi and the OttomansAl-Maqrizi, Napoléon, and the Early OrientalistsArabic Editions of al-Maqrizi’s KhitatTranslating al-Maqrizi’s KhitatRe-Editing al-MaqriziChapter 6: Reading al-Maqrizi in Modern EgyptAl-Maqrizi’s Readers on the Eve of the Nahda: al-Jabarti and Hasan al-‘Attar Publishing al-Maqrizi’s Khitat Reviving the Khitat Genre: ‘Ali Mubarak and Muhammad Kurd‘aliArchitectural History Comes to Egypt: From Coste to CreswellNationalist Egyptian Architectural History: ‘Abdel-Wahab, Fikri, and Shafe‘iAl-Maqrizi in the Modern Narratives of Cairo: Mahfouz and al-Ghitani Al-Maqrizi in the Egyptian Consciousness: Shalabi and SururIn the Guise of a ConclusionBibliography