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Was al-Maqrizi’s Khitat Khaldunian History? 135
decay and urban contraction of the city under its successive dynasties: the Tulunids,
Ikhsh\dids, Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Qalawunid and Circassian Mamluks.
The political fortune of each of these dynasties is plotted against the fluctuations
of the urban and architectural prosperity of Cairo. Thus, the building of al-
Qata#i^, Ibn Tulun’s lavish capital north of al-Fustat, marks the ascendance of his
short-lived dynasty as does its destruction at the hands of the Abbasid army in
905 date the dynasty’s dissolution. 61 Al-Fustat underwent two cycles of rise and
fall, one in the middle of the Fatimid period during the extended struggle under
Caliph al-Mustansir known as al-shidda al-‘uzma (Great Calamity, 1065–72), and
one towards the end of the caliphate when the Fatimid vizier burned the city in
anticipation of a Crusaders’ attack (1168). 62 More elaborate is the cyclical history
of Fatimid al-Qahira, possibly because of the availability of more source material,
or because of nostalgia to the Fatimids enhanced by al-Maqr\z\’s belief of belonging
to their lineage. But here too al-Maqr\z\ arranges his material in a clear cyclical
pattern that traces the ups and downs of the caliphate until its expiration in
1171. 63 The pattern is less noticeable in the section on the Ayyubids and the early
or Ba1r\ Mamluks probably because the Mamluks were first seen as a continuation
of the Ayyubids and because the Mamluk system cannot be seen as a true
dynastic one except for the case of the Qalawunids, of whom fifteen sultans from
four generations succeeded one another. 64 Another reason for the lack of cyclicality
in al-Maqr\z\’s story of Cairo under the early Mamluks may have been the nostalgia-induced
bias he evinced towards them, which was noted by both his contemporaries
and his modern critiques. 65
All perhaps was meant to culminate in the depiction of the most irreversibly
devastating – according to the angry and cynical al-Maqr\z\ – ruin of the city and
the country under the early Burj\ sultans, especially the ill-fated Faraj b. Barquq,
al-Mu#ayyad Shaykh, and especially al-Ashraf Barsbay whom al-Maqr\z\ specifically
and repeatedly blames for the sorry state of the city’s and sultanate’s affairs.
66 To al-Maqr\z\, the Mamluks of his age were no longer the deserving leaders
their Ba1r\ predecessors had once been, skillfully and thoughtfully managing a
great empire and fighting for the cause of Islam. His deep disappointment trans-
61 Ibid., 2: 80–114.
62 Ibid., 2: 122–46.
63 Ibid., 1: 360–65.
64 Ibid., 3: 750–88, offers a brief chronology of the sultans from Sala1 al-D\n to Barsbay.
65 Ibn Taghr\-Bird\, Nujum, 11: 290–291, chastises his master for being blind to the excesses of
al-Nasir Mu1ammad, which far exceeded the excesses of al-Zahir Barquq, whom al-Maqr\z\
severely censures. Irwin, “Al-Maqr\z\ and Ibn Khaldun,” 228, picks on the same point.
66 Examples in al-Maqr\z\, Khitat, 1: 256, 4, 2: 456, see also idem, Suluk, 4, 2: 1414.