Consorts of the Caliphs. Ibn al-Sa'i
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and transmitters in the text, we occasionally shorten long genealogies to make them less unwieldy for English readers. Names of well-known figures that appear in the text in a form unfamiliar to modern readers (which is usually an indication of how familiar Ibn al-Sāʿī himself was with them) are identified in the glossary.
Other decisions we made about the translation include the following:
• With a few exceptions (typically in the case of well-known figures or long genealogies), we render names the way they appear in the Arabic on first occurrence and thereafter shorten them to a standard form, e.g. Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī, al-Ṭabarī, or Thābit ibn Sinān.
• We only translate a professional designation—e.g. “the trustee ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ibn ʿAlī”—when we are confident that it was the profession of the individual in question, rather than the equivalent of a modern surname.
• We follow the spelling conventions of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, Three.
• We render Saljūq names in Arabicized forms.
• In the longer isnāds—the succession or “chain” of transmitters of an anecdote or other item of information—we frequently use long dashes to separate the sources that intervene between Ibn al-Sāʿī’s own informant and the original source of the information, so as to make it easier for the reader to follow the transmission.
• We routinely substitute pronouns for proper names to make the meaning clearer. Occasionally we do the opposite, expanding a pronoun, to make attribution clearer to the reader; thus in §8.8.3, where the Arabic has simply “He said that,” we render it “Here our source, Abū l-ʿAynāʾ, notes …”
• Because we use “Isfahan” for the city, we use “al-Iṣfahānī” for the name (even though we have retained the predominating “Iṣbahān” and “al-Iṣbahānī” in the Arabic, as explained in the “Note on the Edition” above).
• We have striven to make the poetry rhyme when the context or verse itself required it and used devices such as half-rhyme or assonance when the meaning of the verse or anecdote depended on it. When forcing a poem to rhyme in English would have meant altering the original meaning, we have not done so.
• Translations from the Qurʾan are our own.
Note also:
• Though many anecdotes in Consorts of the Caliphs appear in other extant works, we do not provide cross-references (these are available in Jawād’s edition).
• We italicize the poetry to make it stand out from the rest of the text.
• The maps of Baghdad in some cases do not so much reflect precise locations as they do the topographical relationships between different locations.
• The first three glossaries—of characters; of authorities (authors and transmitters); and of places—contain all the names that occur in Consorts of the Caliphs. We also provide a fourth glossary, of realia.
In 2010, when we first told colleagues how LAL would work—numerous stages and levels of close editorial scrutiny, the assigning of in-house project editors to each and every volume, master classes in editing and translating, and collaborative, workshopped translations—most, if not all, were skeptical. We hope that this volume, which was produced according to these principles and norms, will help alleviate any doubts about the possibility, viability, and desirability of such an enterprise, and that it will come to be seen as one model for how things can be done and—such is our hope—done well.
Shawkat M. Toorawa, on behalf of the translators
NOTES TO THE FRONT MATTER
FOREWORD
1 Ardener, “Belief and the Problem of Women” and “The Problem Revisited.”
2 See Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs, §13.5 below. References to Consorts of the Caliphs are hereafter referred to by the paragraph number of the entry.
PREFACE
3 Details of how we workshopped and translated the book can be found in the “Note on the Translation” below.
INTRODUCTION
4 Jawād, “Introduction,” 18, 20, in Ibn al-Sāʿī, Nisāʾ al-khulafāʾ.
5 The “daughter of Ṭulūn the Turk” “who married one of her dalliances” (§35).
6 See §30.5 and §§31–39 below.
7 See §10.2 and §16.2, where impressive isnāds serve in each case to introduce a two-line occasional poem.
8 See §30.4.1.
9 See “Note on the Edition” in the hardcover edition of Consorts of the Caliphs.
10 See “Note on the Translation” below; for the text of the miscellany, see the “Online Material > Book Supplements” page of the website of the Library of Arabic Literature: www.libraryofarabicliterature.org.
11 Ibn al-Sāʿī, Mukhtaṣar, 142.
12 See Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh”; and Hillenbrand, “al-Mustanṣir (I).”
13 Ibn al-Sāʿī, Mukhtaṣar, 127.
14 Brief Lives adopts this inaccurate periodicity for dramatic effect. In Consorts of the Caliphs, the following are mentioned as having been killed: the sixth Abbasid caliph, al-Amīn (r. 193–98/809–13) (at §11); the tenth, al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) (at §15.6); and the eighteenth, al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32) (at §23.1).
15 Ibn al-Sāʿī, Mukhtaṣar, 129–41.
16 See §30.4.1.
17 See §26 (Khātūn), §27 (Banafshā), §29 (Saljūqī Khātūn). ʿIṣmah Khātūn (§24) founded a law college in Isfahan; Shāhān (§30) spent huge sums on Baghdadi tradesmen, and Khātūn al-Safariyyah (§37) provisioned the pilgrim route.
18 Jawād’s bibliography gives the titles of fifty-six items. Items 1–7, 9, 12, 15, 17–24, 26, 34–37, 39, 43–46, 51, 53 and 55 are listed by the Ottoman bibliographer Ḥājjī Khalīfah (1017–67/1609–57); see Jawād, “Introduction,” 23–32, for references.
19 Ibn al-Sāʿī, al-Jāmiʿ al-mukhtaṣar. It originally went up to 1258, but of the original thirty volumes, only volume 9 (years 595–606/1199–1209) is extant; see Jawād, “Introduction,” 26, no. 21.
20 Against the attribution are Jawād, “Introduction,” 24, n. 4 and, seemingly, Lindsay, “Ibn al-Sāʿī.” Rosenthal, “Ibn al-Sāʿī,” 925, thinks it a “brief and mediocre history … unlikely to go back to [Ibn al-Sāʿī].” The attribution is silently accepted by Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 4:265, and Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh.” Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 117, argues that it is an epitome composed by Ibn al-Sāʿī as part of “a large industry of popularizing history” that had been practiced for centuries.
21 Ibn al-Sāʿī wrote several histories of the caliphs, including one whose title