The Sword of Ambition. 'Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi
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the same string of Qurʾānic admonitions and cautionary anecdotes that we find in The Sword of Ambition, probably culled from the same (unidentified) source.46 The goal of these selections was to dissuade powerful Muslims from employing non-Muslims, not to dilate upon a law that non-Muslims themselves were meant to observe.
Second, modern scholars have used The Sword of Ambition in passing references that are of particular relevance to their own research. Thus, for example, Josef van Ess has used the work as evidence for chiliastic expectations surrounding the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim; Joseph Sadan has studied passages relevant to Jews; Brian Catlos has examined the extended anecdote involving the author’s grandfather, Ibn Nujayyah, and the Christian Ibn Dukhān; and Hassanein Rabie has used the work for evidence concerning the iqṭāʿ.47 The present publication of a full edition and translation will, it is hoped, make it easier for more scholars to use the work in similar ways.
The publication of The Sword of Ambition at the present moment poses certain challenges, however. There is, for instance, the current predicament of non-Muslim populations in many countries in the Middle East, Egypt among them.48 Inasmuch as The Sword of Ambition contains hostile denunciations of Christians and Jews, might it not lend support to those today who advocate the harsh subordination of non-Muslims? Conversely, virulent hostility toward Islam and Muslims is alive and well in Europe and North America. A work like this one could help to confirm the dark aspersions of intolerance that are regularly hurled at “Islam.” Indeed, I do not believe that either fear can be dispelled. The Sword of Ambition may really provide material for polemicists. It is in the nature of historical data to be available for a wide variety of narrative agendas.
However, there are also many reasons that favor bringing the work to light. These may even help to redeem its less appealing aspects. Most obviously, several historical works closely comparable to The Sword of Ambition in tone and subject matter are already available on bookstands in Arabic-speaking countries and online. At least one of these, which in fact drew on the present work, was translated into English long ago.49 Equally evident is the precept of modern scientific historiography according to which all evidence must be considered, no matter how marginal or unsavory it might appear. The precept is particularly important in the case of premodern history, where scarcity imbues all written sources with significance, particularly those that, like The Sword of Ambition, vividly represent aspects of contemporary life and abound with pungent anecdotes. Polemical literature has enriched our knowledge of other historical figures and their societies. How much the poorer would the study of early Christianity be if the polemics of Tertullian, Celsus, and Chrysostom were excised from it, much as these might still embolden Christian supremacists, militantly intolerant atheists, and anti-Semites?50 The history of medieval Islam deserves no less. Indeed, in the light of contemporary trends it may deserve more. The Sword of Ambition affords us an unusual opportunity to situate virulent religious polemic in the particular historical context that generated it, allowing us to see such antagonism as circumstantially conditioned. The author’s patent desperation and autobiographical candor make it clear that the project was not suggested to him by sacred texts or abstract reflection alone, but instead was inspired by historically specific, self-interested motives, however sincerely he meant it. For obvious reasons, polemicists tend not to reveal such contingent and personal aspects of their writings. It may be hoped that the present work’s manifest contingency will dull its edge among Islam’s militant supporters and its militant opponents alike. Both may in fact glimpse in it their own reflections.
A NOTE ON THE TEXT
The Arabic of The Sword of Ambition alternates among registers of formality and sophistication, from poetry of considerable complexity, to humorous and ribald tales, to occasional phrases that betray colloquial influence and apparently represent direct speech. These registers only intermittently intrude on a large middle ground that may be characterized, broadly, as classical literary Arabic. My translation represents an attempt to convey the fluctuating tenor of the original. Thus when the Arabic rings high and ancient, as in poetry and hoary aphorisms, I have not resisted the attraction of archaic English. In conversation and where the text implies a conspiratorial understanding between narrator and reader, I have searched for a vernacular English voice in which contractions and folk idioms are at home. For the predominant linguistic middle ground, I have aimed for what seemed to me an economical English equivalent to Ibn al-Nābulusī’s proficient but unadorned Arabic style. I have everywhere shrugged off any constraint of Arabic verb tense, mood, idiom, semantic range, and syntax that seemed, when construed strictly, to distort the sense of the original. My goal has been to translate concepts as faithfully as possible, with far less regard for literal forms.
Although The Sword of Ambition is not a particularly difficult work, it has presented the usual scattering of interpretive problems, not all of which I have succeeded in solving to my own satisfaction. This applies above all to poetry, which I have handled with considerable trepidation, particularly inasmuch as the manuscripts give numerous variants; published editions of other works that contain the same poems have been of only sporadic assistance in selecting among those variants. In general, I have adopted a minimally invasive approach that seeks to reproduce for modern readers of The Sword of Ambition something of their premodern forebears’ experience. I have not, for instance, attempted to efface genuine ambiguities when translating. Points of obscurity are part of the author’s work as it came down to all of its readers in the manuscript tradition. In the same spirit, I have tried to minimize clutter in the translation by making the Glossary, and not the notes, the repository of most information regarding the many proper names that appear in the text, including the Introduction. Thus readers in search of brief explanations for unfamiliar people, places, and other entities should refer first to the Glossary.
A point remains regarding my use of other English translations. For the Qurʾan, I have used A. J. Arberry’s The Koran Interpreted, with occasional adjustments. Short passages from The Sword of Ambition have been translated in two published articles, by Joseph Sadan and Brian Catlos.51 I have consulted these, but in no instance is my translation based on them. In the notes I have given prominence to translations of Arabic sources, when these exist, over Arabic editions of the same works.
In spite of the shortcomings that undoubtedly remain in this book, it is my hope that readers will look upon it with greater approval than may be reasonably expected from the shade of Ibn al-Nābulusī himself.
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
1 This title differs in minor respects from that given in the manuscripts of The Sword of Ambition.
2 Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 61.
3 Possibly the income-bearing property of the Nābulusiyyah Madrasah established by ʿUthmān’s father (al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 678). I owe this reference to Yossef Rapoport.
4 On hiding one’s poverty in medieval Egypt, see Cohen, Poverty and Charity, 43, 49–51.
5 Modern historians, notably Claude Cahen, have read this name as “Muslim,” but the manuscript of the work containing his earliest (and principal) prosopographical entry is quite clear at this point. This manuscript—the Muʿjam al-shuyūkh of ʿAbd al-Muʾmin ibn Khalaf al-Dimyāṭī—was copied during the lifetime of its author. Parts of it were read out loud to him (Dār al-Kutub al-Waṭaniyyah al-Tūnisiyyah, 12909: fol. 75r). For a summary in French, see Vajda, Le Dictionnaire des Autorités, 146. For Cahen’s use of this source, see Cahen and Becker, “Kitāb lumaʿ al-qawānīn,” 120ff. Brief notices on Ibn al-Nābulusī in later works confirm the name “al-Salm” or “Salm” (al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-Islām, 14:936; al-Ḥusaynī, Ṣilat al-takmilah, 1:470; al-Maqrīzī, al-Mawāʿiẓ, vol. 4, pt. 2, p. 678).
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