The Sword of Ambition. 'Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi
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al-Nābulusī thus had enemies among the converted Copts in the administration; it is not unreasonable to suppose that this factored in his decision to write The Sword of Ambition, a book against Coptic officials that contains strident, thinly veiled personal polemic against those of them who had converted outwardly to Islam (§§2.15.1–3, 4.2.2). The tone of the Luminous Rules, too, reflects Ibn al-Nābulusī’s zeal to denounce fellow administrators whom he judged to be incompetent, corrupt, impious, or dull. This might justly be called the central theme of the book, to the degree that in its introduction the author was at pains to distinguish between sincere advice (naṣīḥah) and self-serving slander of rivals (siʿāyah). His own book, naturally, was naṣīḥah, but he nevertheless confessed that he hesitated to write it, so much did he worry that he might be suspected of harboring ulterior personal motives (aghrāḍ) against his colleagues. Perhaps this hesitation arose from his intention to level a string of savage accusations at his fellow officials, several of whom he named in the work.20 As in The Sword of Ambition and indeed in his work on the Fayyūm (see below), he evinced marked antipathy not only to Copts but also to rural Muslims, undereducated Muslims, and even, in one passage of our work (§§4.2.32–36) ignorant Muslim judges. We may thus characterize our author as well-bred, educated, and professionally accomplished, yet at this point in his life also embittered and envious.
It is evident from Ibn al-Nābulusī’s third and final surviving work that he found his way for a time into the graces of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ, the last independent Ayyubid sultan in Egypt. The Luminous Rules and/or The Sword of Ambition, which were directed to al-Ṣāliḥ, may thus indirectly have had their desired effect. This third work, Iẓhār ṣanʿat al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm fī tartīb bilād al-Fayyūm (A Presentation of the Living, Eternal God’s Work in Regulating the Fayyūm), has recently been described as “the most detailed tax survey to have survived from any region of the medieval Islamic world, a Domesday Book for the medieval Egyptian countryside.”21 It is a detailed report on conditions in the fertile Fayyūm oasis of Egypt—whither Ibn al-Nābulusī was dispatched as an inspector in 642/1245—insofar as these are relevant to tax administration, touching for instance upon demography, land tenure, and sources of revenue. This work constitutes the last indication we have of the author’s life until he died, in relative obscurity, at Cairo on 25 Jumādā I 660 [April 17, 1262], a Monday evening. He was buried at the foot of the Muqaṭṭam heights to the east of the city.
Ibn al-Nābulusī composed at least three other works, none of which seems to have survived. One is known only from an allusion in The Sword of Ambition (§1.1.4), and had a theme similar to that of the present work. Its title—Taṣrīḥ al-Qurʾān bi-l-naṣr ʿalā man istaʿāna bi-kuffār al-ʿaṣr (The Qurʾan’s Assurance of Victory over Those Who Seek Aid from the Infidels of This Age)—indicates that it used scriptural exegesis to demonstrate that allying or cooperating with non-Muslims is forbidden and will lead to the downfall of the Muslim who indulges in it. The work might possibly have been a polemic against the Ayyubid rivals of al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn, namely al-Ṣāliḥ ʿImād al-Dīn and al-Ṣāliḥ Ismāʿīl, who at various times allied with the Franks against their kinsman.22 Another of his works, mentioned in the book on the Fayyūm, was probably a panegyric to the Ayyubid sultan; its title is Ḥusn al-sulūk fī faḍl malik Miṣr ʿalā sāʾir al-mulūk (A Seemly Demonstration of the Superiority of Egypt’s King over All Others).23 Ibn al-Nābulusī showed elsewhere that he was prepared to praise the sultan in effusive (not to say sycophantic) terms.24 The final composition attributed to Ibn al-Nābulusī—Ḥusn al-sarīrah fī ttikhādh al-ḥiṣn bi-l-Jazīrah (The Excellent Idea of Establishing the Island Fortress)—appears to have praised al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ’s decision to build a citadel on the Nile island of al-Rawḍah to serve as a base for his large corps of mamlūk (“owned”) Turkic military slaves.25 It was they, of course, who would soon supplant the Ayyubids as rulers of Egypt. For more than a century the Mamluk rulers would be known as the baḥrī or “river” dynasty because of their ties to this fortress.
Ibn al-Nābulusī earned very minor repute as a poet. The account by his student al-Dimyāṭī preserves five lines of his verse. It is fitting that they should express the author’s preoccupation with hierarchy, railing eloquently against the elevation of low-class people (al-asāfil) at the expense of the high-born (al-aʿālī).26
THE WORK
In The Sword of Ambition, Ibn al-Nābulusī explains the circumstances and motives of the work’s composition, announcing in its introductory section that he has been inspired by a recent edict that imposed traditional discriminatory restrictions on non-Muslims, notably the distinctive clothing they were required to wear (the ghiyār; see §0.2).27 He also expresses confidence that this measure is only a first step in the right direction, and hope that the present book will encourage the sultan to finish the job, as it were, by dismissing and cashiering his Coptic officials. In the conclusion, Ibn al-Nābulusī gives three reasons for having composed the work. The third and most important of these is his straitened financial condition, which contrasts to the opulence his Coptic colleagues allegedly enjoyed. The other two reasons he provides are his ardent zeal for the money of the Muslim community and his love for the sultan.
The Sword of Ambition resists precise dating. Other works by Ibn al-Nābulusī may have been composed and redacted in stages, so that no single date can be assigned to them.28 While there are no definite indications that this was the case for the work at hand, neither is it possible to accept the estimate of ca. 638/1240 given by Claude Cahen, on the basis of the dating of the edict concerning non-Muslim clothing.29 That edict should probably instead be dated to 640/1242 (see §0.2 of the Translation). A handful of passages found in some manuscripts, however, refer to events that occurred long after this date, but within the lifetime of the author (e.g., §4.2.7, which mentions the year 660/1261–62). Ibn al-Nābulusī might conceivably have produced multiple recensions of the work, or early copyists might have added to it.
The perspicuous “table of contents” (§§0.3–6) presents the work’s rather stiff structure, relieving us of the need to detail its contents and organization here. Taken together, its four chapters, each of which comprises either three or fifteen sections, give the impression that the author drew on all available arguments to make the point that Coptic Christians (and converts), as well as Jewish, rural, and otherwise disreputable individuals, were unfit for state service and should therefore be dismissed. Some (and only some) of the sources used to back up these arguments were: Qurʾanic exegesis; hadith of the Prophet; historical accounts of Muslim rulers’ dealings with non-Muslim officials; demonstration of the perfidy and sedition inherent in Copts and Jews; poetry mocking incompetent officials; jokes about bumbling and illiterate Copts and other despicable persons; and both poetry and prose demonstrating the excellence of real secretaries (kuttāb), whom the author contrasted to the loathsome pretenders who were laying claim to that sublime title. The work’s eclectic angles of attack must be read in their full variety to be appreciated.30 The character of its intended audience, namely the Sultan al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ himself, may have shaped the author’s decisions about its content. The sources depict al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ as proud, acquisitive, sober, taciturn, and aloof, an inspirer of reverence and dread. Although he did not impress his contemporaries as particularly bookish, he was known as a patron of scholars.31 These aspects of the sultan’s character might have simultaneously emboldened Ibn al-Nābulusī to beg for employment and led him to keep the sections of his work brief and vivid in order to hold the attention of his royal audience. There is some evidence that The Sword of Ambition was intended more to entertain than to bear learned scrutiny. For example, much of the poetry in the third chapter seems to have been borrowed without acknowledgment from the works of al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038), but carelessly attributed to the wrong poets in the course of the borrowing process. Similarly, a passage concerning Ibn Ṭūlūn’s rule in Egypt (§2.4.1) ascribes certain past misdeeds of the government to the Copts, where in other sources, the same misdeeds are ascribed to Muslim administrators. A learned reader would