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132 Nasser Rabbat
ably focuses on the Nile and its canalization and embankments over time as the
historical sources of prosperity of the country. The text then moves to Egypt’s pre-
Islamic history. Here, al-Maqr\z\ cites the usual sources from within the established
Islamic historiographic tradition which had subsumed many Jewish and
Christian Coptic accounts to explain those moments of intersection between the
sacred histories of the Patriarchs and the Prophets of the Peoples of the Books and
ancient Egyptian history. 55
The urban history section begins in earnest with a summary review of the
major Egyptian cities. Only two cities receive more than a compact treatment:
Alexandria, the classical capital, and Fayyum, which was traditionally associated
with the Patriarch Joseph. Al-Maqr\z\ then quickly moves to Cairo and reviews the
site’s ancient history, when the capital of Egypt was elsewhere along the Nile. He
then proceeds systematically from examining the first appearance of a city, al-
Fustat, on the site of the ancient Roman fort of Babylon and its growth and ruin, to
analyzing the founding of al-Qahira as the center of the self-consciously religious
Fatimid caliphate in the tenth-eleventh century. As I already stated, contrary to
the learned consensus in Sunni Mamluk Egypt, al-Maqr\z\’s elucidation of the Fatimid
Caliphate in his Khitat, and his description of the many structures and the
order and decorum it established in Cairo is outwardly commendatory, and often
nostalgic.
Most of the book’s second half is taken up by an extensive typological survey
of Cairo as the capital of the Mamluk state in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and early
fifteenth century, by which time al-Maqr\z\ was mainly recording his own observations
and impressions of the mostly negative changes in the city. 56 The city’s
55 Ibid., 108–109, raises the issue of the origin of the mummies by admitting that neither the
Copts nor the Jews claim them as their ancestors, and that the Muslims know nothing about
them. See the discussion of Michael Cook, “Pharaonic History in Medieval Egypt,” Studia
Islamica 57 (1983): 67–103.
56 In his ongoing codicological and historiographic chronicling of al-Maqr\z\’s researching and
writing method of the Khitat, Frédéric Bauden has uncovered many interesting details, some of
which conclusively condemn al-Maqr\z\ for plagiarizing whatever al-Aw1ad\’s Khitat was. But
Bauden’s research cannot be seen as having established that al-Maqr\z\’s structure of his Khitat,
or the tone of his criticism and nostalgia, or the large sections on pre-Islamic Egypt, on other
Egyptian cities, or on the Fatimids, which together constitute half the book, in addition to all the
data on the Ayyubid and Mamluk structures and individuals missing from al-Aw1ad\’s lists or
those structures and events that happened after his death, were lifted off of al-Aw1ad\’s work.
For Bauden’s massive and continuing work see “Maqriziana I: Discovery of an Autograph Manuscript
of al-Maqr\z\: Towards a Better Understanding of His Working Method: Description: Section
1,” MSR 7, 2 (2003), 21–68; “Maqriziana I: Discovery of an Autograph Manuscript of al-
Maqr\z\: Towards a Better Understanding of His Working Method Description: Section 2,” MSR