OUR DARK SIDE

For centuries, men believed that the universe was governed by a divine principle and that the gods made them suffer to teach them not to think of themselves as gods. The gods of Ancient Greece therefore punished men who were afflicted with

overweening pride (Hubris).1 And reading the great stories of the royal dynasties – the Atrides or the Labacides – is the best way to understand how the hero, who is a demi-god, alternates between being a despot who is drunk on power, and a victim who is subject to an implacable destiny.

In such a universe, all men were both themselves and their opposites – heroes and bastards – but neither the gods nor men were perverse. And yet, at the heart of this system of thought, which defined the contours of the Law and its transgression, norms and their inversion, any man who had reached the pinnacle of glory was in constant danger of being forced to discover that he was perverse, or in other words monstrous and abnormal, and to lead the parallel life of an abject humanity. Oedipus is the prototype. Having been the greatest king of his day, he was reduced to living in filth – his face bleeding and his body broken – because he had, without knowing it and through the fault of a ‘lame’ genealogy – committed the worst of all crimes: he had married his mother, killed his father, was both the father and the brother of his own children, and was condemned to have his descendants held up to public obloquy. Nothing could be more human than the sufferings of a man who, despite himself, is responsible for, and therefore guilty of, a destiny ordained by the gods.

In the medieval world, man belonged body and soul, not to the gods, but to God. Torn between his fall and his redemption and with a guilty conscience, he was destined to suffer as much for his intentions as his acts. For God was his only

June 03, 2024

Explores and analyses the Abbasid Caliphate as it was re-imagined in late medieval Cairo
Presents different types of source material – jurisprudential, historiographical and documentary – which speak about topics in turn, resulting in a highly nuanced image of the Abbasid Caliphate of CairoIncludes multiple passages of previously unpublished material in translation including biographical literature, investiture documents and epigraphical evidenceExplores a variety of textual dimensions of the Abbasid Caliphate of Cairo based on narrative, prescriptive and documentary sources

Mustafa Banister presents a thorough investigation of a forgotten dynasty: the Cairene descendants of the Abbasid family. He uncovers the public and private lives of the 18 men invested as caliphs during the period of ‘Mamluk’ rule in Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and reveals a nuanced understanding of the Abbasid Caliphate according to elite members of Syro-Egyptian society. In doing so, he addresses the function of the caliph and his office amidst the breakdown and recreation of each new socio-political order of the sultanate.

Banister examines the uniquely Cairene context of the idea and institution of the caliphate, including how it was socially and textually performed in the late medieval sultanate of Cairo.