Islamic States

Court Cultures in the Muslim World: Seventh to Nineteenth Centuriesby Albrecht Fuess and Jan-Peter Hartung (SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East: Routledge) Courts and the complex phenomenon of the courtly society have received intensified interest in academic research over recent decades; however, the field of Islamic court culture has so far been overlooked. This book provides a comparative perspective on the history of courtly culture in Muslim societies from the earliest times to the nineteenth century, and presents an extensive collection of images of courtly life and architecture within the Muslim realm.

The thematic methodology employed by the contributors underlines their inter-disciplinary and comprehensive approach to issues of politics and patronage from across the Islamic world stretching from Cordoba to India. Themes range from the religious legitimacy of Muslim rulers, terminologies for court culture in Oriental languages, Muslim concepts of space for royal representation, accessibility of rulers, and the role of royal patronage for Muslim scholars and artists, to the growing influence of European courts as role models from the eighteenth century onwards. Discussing specific terminologies for courts in Oriental languages and explaining them to the non-specialist, chapters describe the specific features of Muslim courts and point towards future research areas. As such, it fills this important gap in the existing literature in the areas of Islamic history, religion, and Islam in general.

Albrecht Fuess is Professor of Islamic Studies at the Center for Near and Middle Eastern Studies (CNMS) at the Philipps-Universität Marburg. He specialises in the history of the Middle East (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries). Among his publications is Verbranntes Ufer: Auswirkungen mamlukischer Seepolitik auf Beirut und die syro-palästinensische Küste (1250-1517), Leiden: Brill 2001.

Jan-Peter Hartung has taught at the universities of Erfurt, Bonn and Bochum and is currently Senior Lecturer for the Study of Islam at SOAS, University of London. He specialises in Indo-Muslim intellectual history. Among his publica-tions is Viele Wege und ein Ziel: Leben und Wirken von Sayyid Abu l-Hasan al-Hasani Nadwi (1914-1999), Würzburg: Ergon 2004.

Excerpt: 'In the court I exist and of the court I speak, but what the court is, God knows, I know not',' wrote Walter Map (d. c. 1209 CE), writer and clergyman at the twelfth century court of Henry II of England, in his Courtiers ' Trifles. One might easily assume that this puzzle, posed by a member of a medieval European court society had long since been solved. Surprisingly, that is not the case. The above quotation also describes the difficulty of defining the phenomenon of the "court", which characterizes contem-porary research. Despite numerous historical studies of the "great men"' and their entourage, not much has changed since the times of Walter Map.

This grim outlook is, of course, exaggerated. Since the second half of the twentieth century academic research has repeatedly attempted to grasp the concept of the court, primarily by trying to understand its underlying structures rather than in a nanative manner. The phenomenon has been approached from multiple angles, which have produced a number of interesting insights. The study of the renowned sociologist Norbert Elias, first published in 1969, using the French absolutist court of Louis XIV as an illustration, can be classified in many respects as groundbreaking. One of Elias' main accomplishments lies in the fact that he perceived the court in a typological way, namely as 'specific figurations of people that are no less in need for elucidation than cities or factories'. This description has had a lasting impact on most of the studies on the matter since.'

Elias' decision to describe the phenomenon of the court typologically has led to certain methodical consequences. Neither the tools of the historian nor of the social scientist are sufficient on their own to ensure a structural and functional classifica-tion of court and "court society". Therefore, a transdisciplinary approach is needed that combines historical and sociological tools. The phenomenon, according to Elias, can only be understood by creating a transculturally applicable ideal type in a Weberian sense; something to help us understand the underlying structural commonalities and connections beyond the `unrepeatable and unique aspects' of single historical case studies. This, in turn, is significant, because it is exactly such a universalistic approach of unravelling the structures of the phenomenon of cowls that serves to deepen the understanding of specific historical cases in culturally different contexts, and, subsequently, leads to a greater analytical depth.

Departing from the work of Elias, numerous new questions related to the issue under investigation have been raised by the scientific community. Could, for instance, a court society perhaps be perceived as a catalyst for elite-building? What are the functions of a ruler's position for the constitution of a court? Moreover, the analysis of personal networks in and around court and the numer-ous patron–client relationships created at various levels have received increasing attention.' So has the examination of political functions of ritualized procedures during court ceremonials' and artistic representations of various provenances.' Finally, and perhaps most closely related to the ideas of Norbert Elias, are the constant attempts to define court that overarch all the previously asked questions. Such attempts range from an understanding of court based upon the palace and other architectural components and all their related actors,' to explanations that draw on Elias' research by defining court as a 'series of occasions' combined with a permanent court society that congregates around a regent. For contempo-rary European historians like Ronald G. Asch and Jeroen Duindam, who came forth with useful and refined ideas of what a court may be, the work of Elias still remains the main reference point.'

As can be seen from this struggle for a truly comprehensive definition of court and court society, and despite the numerous and detailed case studies ever since the publication of Elias' Court Society, many questions remain unanswered even regarding "European court culture" and demand the development of an analytical framework distinct from that of Elias." However, the situation regarding research on "Muslim court culture" is even more problematic.

Muslim court culture

Measured against the state of research on European court culture, the study of Muslim court culture falls far behind and has so far not moved beyond the—indisputably valuable—stage of case studies." As opposed to the European context, scholarship remains at the stage of basic research, that is, the localization and first scrutiny of manuscripts and edited, texts relevant to the respective cases. However desirable and productive a comparative approach of structural elements of court and court society, along the lines suggested by Norbert Elias, might be, it has to be acknowledged that the global community of Islamicists and scholars of the history of Muslim societies has so far not contributed significantly to this wider undertaking.'

However, before the disciplines of Islamic studies and Near and Middle Eastern history are able to contribute some of their expertise to this larger research project, comparative approaches within these disciplines have to be established, which recognize the specificity of the Muslim context. This would force a re-evaluation of the analytical categories in the light of indigenous terms and con-cepts before looking elsewhere and causing the danger of creating rather distorted images by forcing a terminology to fit even when inappropriate. Categories like "nobility" and "feudalism" are just two cases in point where terminology designed for European contexts is transplanted to the Muslim context without any critical reflection. This situation and the necessity for a revised attitude to the terms and concepts used has been summarized by Nadia El Cheilch:

Court studies are almost non-existent for various periods of Islamic history. [T]he terminology itself, namely the term "court" needs to be investigated and defined in the ways in which it may be used in connection to . . . Islamic societies.'

Besides sharpening awareness of the terminology used, a comparative approach to the complex of Muslim court culture within the field of Islamic studies is also needed to identify core analytical questions particular to the Muslim context.

Starting out from this rather bleak picture, as editors of the present volume, we felt the urge to ignite or fuel the debate on this issue among Islamicists and historians working on the region. We felt there was no better way to achieve this than by bringing together a selection of accomplished scholars from Islamic studies and Near and Middle Eastern history and thus to inaugurate a first com-parative approach to the issue of Muslim court culture within these academic disciplines. It was this idea that became the spark for organizing an international conference on the topic, that was held on 2-5 July 2007 in Gotha, Germany, and that led to the present publication of the proceedings.

Hardly any other venue in Germany seemed better suited to host a conference on "Court culture in the Muslim World" than the baroque Schloss Friedenstein at Gotha in the heart of the federal state of Thuringia. The research library situated in the castle hosts the third largest collection of oriental manuscripts in Germany and is frequently used by international scholars. Moreover, the impressive collection of Islamic manuscripts in Gotha might in itself be seen as an indicator of European court culture, as the manuscripts were collected by the German scholar Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (d. 1811) at the turn of the nineteenth century under a commission from Duke Ernest II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg (r. 1772-1804). Seetzen undertook a research expedition to the Middle East from where he dispatched, among other things, more than 2,500 oriental manuscripts to Gotha, which he had collected in Istanbul, Aleppo, Damascus, Jerusalem and Cairo, before finally disappearing under unclear circumstances in Yemen in 1811.1' It was therefore only natural to choose Gotha as the appropriate venue for our conference. Moreover, the wide and positive response we received to our invitation from leading scholars in the field worldwide testified to the importance of our aim, namely to provide the first structural overview of the state of the research on different aspects of courts and courtly life in the Muslim World from the earliest times to the nineteenth century.

Modifying leading questions

As the long-term objective of both the conference and the present volume was to contribute to a wider comparative research on courts and court societies in a transcultural perspective, it seemed appropriate to tackle some of the above-mentioned analytical core questions raised by researchers on European court cultures in the wake of Elias. The first core question is what should be understood by court? Does this term refer to some spatial entity, as the Latin word cohors—"enclosure", from which the English word is derived, or should it rather be under-stood as a structured conglomeration of people, a second definition of the Latin cohors meaning "entourage" of a Roman provincial governor?' Or is it, as Ronald G. Asch suggests, a series of periodical events?' If opting for one of the latter two definitions, what would be the relationship between court and "palace", especially in contexts where there is no exact term for court?' If one opts for the first definition of court as a spatial entity, would there be a hierarchy of spaces?

The fundamental problem of defining court raises a host of subordinate questions that have already been posed by scholars of European court culture, following the methodological suggestions made by Norbert Elias. These would now have to be utilized for the investigation of Muslim court culture.

However, even though the questions that dominated the comparative study of Muslim court culture during the Gotha conference were strongly influenced by those analytically very valuable ones developed by the research on European court culture, the focus was on a field that is culturally distinct. The question about whether something can be specifically termed "Islamic" in the context of Muslim court culture had to be placed at the core of the discussion. In this context the term Muslim court culture had to be thoroughly scrutinized. Does the term hint only at the religious creed of those who rule, or is this rule itself subject to religious legitimacy, drawing from the authoritative texts of Islam?

With this, the overall theme of the Gotha conference and, therefore, of the present volume, was identified as the tension between ideal and reality, or, in other words, between a normative expectation, that is of temporal and spatial invariance that is suggested by the text of the Qur'anic revelation itself, and of a variety of distinct historical situations in diverse local contexts. Into this larger framework the other three themes that shaped the discussions during the conference and the contributions to the present volume fit neatly: the legitimization of actual and potential political rule; the strategies of adaptation to prevailing political, social, and cultural contexts; and, finally, the strategies for the elaboration of splendid court culture. Most of the contributions touch upon more than one of these themes.

a) Legitimization of political rule

With the question of the legitimization of actual political rule we are already enter-ing a field that, although some inspiration from research on European court culture may be drawn, has a specific and distinct Islamic connotation. Although one might find indications in the authoritative texts of Islam that could be interpreted as Muslim rule being legitimized by God,' an Islamic equivalent to the concept of "Kingship by the Grace of God" in medieval and early modern Europe seems to be absent. After all, the God of the Qur'an appears to be far more transcendent and, therefore, unapproachable to man than the incarnated God of the Gospel. Therefore, legitimization of political rule must draw its inspirations from elsewhere. It is precisely a Qur' anic verse like 2:30, which refers to the deputyship of God on earth (khilafat allah fil-ard), which points to the direction in which we may have to look. God entrusted deputyship on earth to his prophets, those who stood as guarantors for the correct implementation of God's will on earth. Thus, although in a historical salvation context it has been used to try and legitimize a succession of mundane rule that proceeds from God's appointment of Adam as khalifat allah, from our perspective it seems more appropriate to start with the Prophet Muhammad as a benchmark.

After all, the question of the religious legitimacy of rulers gained special importance for Muslim societies after his death. With this, however, we are stepping onto the hotly debated field of determining the "nature" of the Prophet. Was Muhammad only the propagator of the conclusive version of the monotheistic revelation, or was he also a worldly ruler,' and as such keeping court around his house in Medina? Clearly, the person of the Prophet combines the ideal of political with spiritual leadership (imara wa-imama) and thus serves as the ultimate standard of Muslim governance. But is this sufficient to categorize the political practices of Muhammad as court culture? As Michael Cook points out in his con-tribution to this volume, from the standard biographies describing Muhammad's seventh-century rule in Medina it appears egalitarian and free from social hierar-chy and courtly protocol. Muhammad's rule, Cook concludes, could therefore perhaps be better described as "anti-court".

After all, there are numerous elements that seem significant at least for later Muslim court culture, which do not appear in the political and administrative practices of the Prophet. Muhammad, it seems, was easily accessible to those who wanted to speak to him, at least according to later hagiographical sources. Later Muslim rulers were much more distant from their subjects and, as is the case with the Mughals, their contact with commoners and officers of lower rank was highly ritualized, or they were, as with the Ottoman sultans, hardly ever seen in public. Another issue is the humbleness the Prophet displayed even as a statesman that clashes with the flaunting of a splendid court culture in later periods.

Whether Muhammad's rule can be seen as paradigmatic, Muslim court culture therefore remains a worthwhile issue for further research. At least for the moment, however, scholarship on Muslim court culture in general seems to be correct in assuming that, even though it cannot be denied that the Prophet served as a role model for "good governance", it is not really legitimate to speak of Muslim court culture prior to the mid-seventh century CE, when, with the dispute over leadership, the political centres of the young Muslim Empire shifted from Medina to Syrian Damascus and Iraqi Kufa. It was in this context that a dynastic principle became established in the Muslim context of governance. Both issues, the shift of the Muslim political centres to the Fertile Crescent and the establishment of the dynastic principle within the Muslim context, had far-reaching consequences.

As the new dynasties developed in areas with long established courtly traditions they needed to integrate into the prevalent practices while gradually developing a distinct Islamic pattern of governance and, following on from this, an unmistalcable Muslim court culture. If what has been said above about the Prophetic practice as a paradigm for Muslim rule holds true, then the deviation from his prac-tice, including Muhammad's reluctance to designate a successor for the leadership of the Muslim community, has to be reconciled. The new Muslim monarchs had to establish criteria to depict their rule as good governance. Here, terms like the "common good" (maslaha), "charity" sadaqa), and "justice" ('adala) played an important role in the constitution of what became "royal conduct" (adab al-muluk). The contributions of Jan-Peter Hartung, Lucian Reinfandt, Christian Mailer, and to some extent, of Albrecht Fuess, deal with one or more of the above categories in various historical contexts. Another important point that contributed strongly to the definition of royal conduct in the field of tension between normative expectations and actual realities is the role of a ruler's patronage of the arts and sciences. This is exem-plified by the articles of Sonja Brentjes on the patronage of physicians, mathemati-cians and philosophers at Ayyubid courts between the late twelfth and mid-thirteenth century CE; Abbas Amanat on the painter Sani` al-Mulk (d. 1283/1866-7) at the court of the nineteenth century Iranian Qajars, and, again, of Jan-Peter Hartung. All the above-mentioned points that contributed over time to various formulations of royal conduct have found their embodiment in the so-called "mirrors for princes" (nasihat al-muluk), a genre of courtly literature about the interface of philosophical ethics and the practice of rule. The mirrors for princes literature, prominently beginning with the works of Ibn al-Muqaffa` (executed c. 139/756), was meant to provide useful guidance for rulers. The virtues of patronage are frequently highlighted in this kind of text as evidenced by the chapter of Syrinx von Hees on Ibn Nubata (d. 742/1342), a panegyrist of the Ayyubid prince Abu 'l-Fida.' of Hamah (d. 732/1331) and his successor. Stefan Leder focuses in his contribution to this volume on the ways in which the descriptions of culinary taste were used in nasihat al-muluk to indicate the literary taste of a ruler that was frequently displayed in the patronage of poets and other literati.

With regard to the issue of the legitimization of political rule there is one additional point that inevitably needs to be addressed for a better understanding of the historical development of Muslim court culture within a wider temporal and spatial framework. A number of contributions to this volume shed light on the patterns of dynastic succession. Sunil Kumar, for instance elaborates on the shift in residential space with each new ruling lineage during the Sultanate of Delhi between 1206 and 1526 CE, while Felix Konrad focuses on alterations in courtly rituals made by the nineteenth century khedives, originally the Ottoman governors of Egypt but, at least after their recognition by the Ottoman sultan Abdül'aziz in 1867, a sovereign dynasty of their own. From these two papers it appears that the nucleus for a new dynasty is established in manifold dissociations from its predecessor. In this, they seem to follow the practice of earlier Muslim dynasties which, too, had, as stated earlier, to integrate into the existing non-Muslim courtly traditions while gradually developing a distinct Muslim court culture. This issue, although closely related to the question of legitimization of political power, is at the core of the second theme that pervades a number of papers in the present volume.

b) Strategies of adaptation and emancipation

In order to establish dynastic rule, based on a set of entirely new values, in an environment that possesses long traditions of governance, leaders must first develop means of adapting to the prevailing political, social and cultural context. After all, the administrative experience of the leaders of the young Muslim com-munity was no match at all for the Byzantine and the Sasanian empires that first bordered on the Muslim lands and were subsequently absorbed into the "House of Islam" (dar al-islam), that is the territory where Islamic jurisdiction applied. It was thus only natural that in the beginning hybrid forms of administration developed, which became gradually Islamized in the following periods.'

This process of transition is well illustrated by the contribution of Stefan Heidemann. He shows how the early adaptation of Byzantine and Sasanian coinage by the Umayyad caliphs was justified in Islamic terms, but, owing to the develop-ment of a distinct identity by the Muslim rulers, it increasingly gave way to the minting of new coins which corresponded to a new Islamic symbolism. The con-tribution of Hugh Kennedy falls into this theme, too. He shows convincingly how the early Muslim elites of the Fertile Crescent derived much of their income and prestige from the ownership of large landed estates, a situation that was, he argues, derived from the culture of the pre- and early Islamic Hijaz as well as from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Only over time, when Islamic principles permeated the administrative practices of the early Muslim empires, was the ownership of land replaced by the control of taxation as the main form of elite resources.

The shift towards a more discernible Islamic character in early Muslim dynas-tic rule during the process of the self-affirmation of the rulers is clearly visible on the architecture of this formative period of Muslim court culture. It is therefore little wonder that among the main achievements of the Umayyads were landmark buildings of the new religion including the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa. Mosque in Jerusalem built at the end of the seventh century CE and, the Umayyad mosque in Damascus built at the beginning of the eighth century CE, on the foundations of an earlier Jupiter temple' as two prominent cases in point. It is primarily these explicitly religious buildings that have survived from this period and thus provide some evidence for the fact that the architectural representation of a Muslim court culture proper was in the making in this formative period. However, all that remains are some minor castles in the Jordanian desert, which Hugh Kennedy has to rely upon for evidence of his theory, since traces of proper caliphal palaces such as the so-called "Green Palace" (al-khadra of the Umayyad caliphs in Damascus have disappeared.' It appears that the elaborate courtly architecture still visible in Cairo, Istanbul, Isfahan, Samarqand, Aga and Lahore, is thus a later development in the history of Muslim court cultures.

While the rule of the Umayyads seems to have been primarily characterized by processes of acculturation, the Abbasids, who superseded them in the middle of the eighth century CE, benefited from the fact that the religion of Islam had developed further and Islamic principles had begun to permeate society to a much higher degree. Although in the beginning the Abbasids, too, drew quite strongly from the imperial Byzantine and Sasanian heritage in the extent of their rule, they app much more able to reformulate in Islamic terms those elements that they had inte-grated into impressive courtly practices and rituals. In her important contribution to this volume, Nadia Maria El Cheikh focuses on the Abbasid courtly nomenclature and protocol. From what she argues in her paper, as well as from the fact that the new form of courtly representation—ritual and protocol as well as architecture—is said to have reached its almost mythically glorified heyday under the Caliph Harun al-Rashid (r. 786-809 CE), it is clear that from that time on the Abbasid court became the central reference point for the formulation of Muslim court culture.

Representation of Abbasid rule had come a long way from the Prophet's practice of government. While in theory still based on the Prophetic example of Medina,' the Muslim court culture of the Abbasids was actually closer to Byzantine and Persian practices—albeit still clothed in distinctly Islamic garb. This example was to a large extent copied by the courts of Muslim local rulers who either broke away from, or loosened the ties to, the Abbasid caliphate from the beginning of the ninth century onwards.

It is quite understandable that an investigation into the adaptation strategies to the respective prevailing political, social and cultural contexts clearly empha-sizes the formative period of Muslim court culture. However, at least one example in the present volume provides evidence for the fact that such acculturation processes did not cease after the establishment of the Abbasid benchmark for Muslim court culture, but continued, although under different circumstances. Hend Gilli-Elewy shows that, in order to legitimize their government, the newly converted Ilkhanid rulers of thirteenth century Baghdad tried to adapt to the courtly practices of the former Abbasid caliphate. To this end they employed local administrative elites and thus adjusted their non-Islamic Turco-Mongol visions of rule in the Muslim context to the medieval paradigm of an elaborated Muslim court culture, that is, the Abbasids.

Thus adaptation, as it is presented in the contributions to this volume, took place in two directions, both of which served the legitimization of rule. First, the adapta-tion of non-Islamic elements during the formative phase of Muslim court culture introduced means for the legitimizition of political rule prevalent and acknowledged in the Byzantine and Sasanian realm. Secondly, in later periods it was the adaptation to Islamic elements that helped originally non-Muslim rulers to legitimize their rule and elaborate their court culture within an Islamic framework.

c) Elaboration of splendid court culture

An investigation into the third theme that traversed the discussion on Muslim court culture, namely the development of an increasingly sumptuous court culture in the aftermath of the Abbasids, may be conducted in a twofold way. In fact, each approach can be traced to the different definitions of court that historians and other social scientists have developed by critically building upon the structuralist work that Norbert Elias began in the 1960s. If court is understood in spatial terms, then research should be directed towards localizing the place where court culture actually happens. This is significant because to follow this thread means to deter-mine the boundaries of court culture in dissociation from the mere administration of a realm. Only if we are able to localize court culture in spatial terms, can we test the second definition of a court as human figuration or a series of specific events in a Muslim context.

Various essays in this volume deal with the elaboration of a splendid court culture in spatial terms. First and foremost there is the issue of the palace. Is a stable architectural structure a precondition for the development of court culture? The earlier examples of the Umayyads and the Abbasids seem to affirm such an assumption. The mobility of a number of later courts, however, or the difficulty of confining the court to one or more buildings seriously challenges this image. Indeed, as clearly shown by the contributions of Albrecht Fuess on the court of the Mamluk sultans in thirteenth–fourteenth century Egypt, of Eva Orthmann on the Mughal ruler Humayan (d. 963/1556), and of Christoph Werner on the 'small, baroque-style, princely court' of Karim Khan Zand in eighteenth century Shiraz, Muslim court culture could well be located in tents.

The prominence of the tent, or the encampment, can be seen as reminiscent of the nomadic origins of the early Muslim community and of the constant tension between a nomadic and an urban Muslim culture, which was at the centre of the theoretical considerations of the late medieval Muslim thinker Ibn Khaldan (d. 808/1406). In the light of his early social theory one may, with regard to Muslim court culture, even risk the bold hypothesis that the tent served at times as a nomadic substitute for the palace, until "nomadic court culture" became increas-ingly "domesticated" in major urban places and, thus, became a sedentary urban phenomenon. However, the "travelling courts" of later Muslim dynasties can perhaps be seen as reminiscent of their mainly Central Asian nomadic legacy; hence the fact that the tent remains as a key element in the public display of an urbanized Muslim court culture.

After having more or less satisfactorily localized the court within the inherent tensions between palace and tent the elaboration of a splendid Muslim court culture can be developed from a social perspective. If the court is perceived as a human figuration, then investigation is needed into the question of its composi-tion, including an analysis of the various recruitment strategies that were utilized in the temporally and spatially varying contexts. It is again Christoph Werner who has investigated the composition of a regional court that is not confined to a solid architectural structure, but stretches in fact throughout the city of Shiraz, includ-ing the circles of poets and scholars as well as the red-light district. Andrew Newman, focusing on predecessors of the Zands, the Safavids of late seventeenth century Iran, shows how the shahs attempted to mediate between the popularity of Sufism within the wider society and the staunch anti-Sufi and anti-philosophical sentiments among the increasingly powerful 'ulama' by carefully balancing their recruitments. Thus, the composition of the court became an expression of an adjusting religio-political strategy in a period of economic hardship that could guarantee the rulers maximum support. Jan-Peter Hartung investigates the mutual dependence of ruler and 'ulama' by using various examples from pre- and early

modern times. He thus demonstrates the importance of Muslim religious scholars, be they jurists, philosophers, or poets, for the religious legitimization of rulers, while the `ulama' were often dependent on stipends they received from a ruler, and the diverse signs of prestige with the bestowal of which a ruler was able to ensure the compliance of the ulama. Usually, this relationship was kept balanced although under certain circumstances the scales tipped clearly in favour of the learned clients of a ruler. As Sonja Brentjes shows, medical doctors were highly sought after in Ayyubid times and thus enjoyed a certain degree of inde-pendence from the ruler as their services were indispensable for sick princes.

Public displays of Muslim court culture also took place to a considerable extent in arts and architecture. The contribution of Lorenz Korn on the Artuqids of twelfth century Northern Mesopotamia shows how their artistic and architectural production, a refined merger of various regional traditions, was not least used as a public representation of their rule in a relatively small dominion.

However, if court is alternatively perceived as a series of temporal events, that is, if court is synonymous with "keeping court", then the elaboration of splendid Muslim court culture should be investigated by focusing on its public display. This can take a variety of forms, often, however, clearly determined by spatial confines. Albrecht Fuess analyzes different but intermingled scenarios of public exposition of Mamluk court culture and shows that it was often security concerns that determined the highly standardized rituals of public accessibility of the sultans during the regular holding of a court of appeal (mazalim) and the processions (mawakib) from the citadel of Cairo to the public space where those sessions were held. Although not viewed from a security perspective and within a different context, Christian Müller, too, discusses the importance of presiding over mazalim sessions for the public recognition of a Muslim ruler as one who would rule in accordance with shari'a.

As these contributions show, court, if understood not exclusively as a more or less static entity tied to an architectural structure—the court society—but by emphasizing its basically dynamic character of holding court—be this understood as a social event or legal procedure—is an important expression of legitimate Muslim rule. As such, the court cannot be defined solely as one or the other. This fact is perhaps best illustrated by the essay of Paul E. Walker on the Fatimid court in Cairo between the tenth and late thirteenth centuries CE. Although here we are provided with a detailed picture of the highly standardized processions as an expression of the dynasty's religio-political claims, it cannot be confined to a description of public display only. From his descriptions of such ostentation, Walker moreover extracts valuable information regarding the composition of the courtly elite, and thus perceives the court not solely as a series of occasions, but as human figuration, too.

Based on the example of the rulers of eighteenth and nineteenth century North Indian Awadh, Hussein Keshani provides evidence that the public staging of Muslim rule gains special importance in situations of dissociation from either previous or from superordinate rule. The rulers of Awadh, although formally maintaining a nomenclature of subordination as deputies (nawwab-vazfr) of the Mughal padishah in Delhi, used their Twelver Shiite creed as a cornerstone for shaping their residential towns of Fayzabad and, later, Lucknow as large and complex spaces for the public display of piety and royal splendour, and thus established themselves as factual sovereigns in dissociation from their Sunnite Mughal overlord.

In his contribution on the court of the khedives in nineteenth century Egypt, Felix Konrad is the contributor to the current volume, who builds most significantly on the scholarship of Ronald G. Asch and his notion of the court as a series of occasions in which the princely household is opened for members who do not belong to this household. By elaborating on the khedival state ceremonies and what he terms "court spectacles", on occasions such as the ruler's birthday or the anniversary of his accession to the throne, Konrad shows how these were influenced by both Ottoman court culture of the tanzimat period under the sultans Abdülmecid I (d. 1277/1861) and Abdütaziz I (d. 1293/1876), and the court culture of the French Second Empire under Napoleon III (d. 1873). The result of these influences was the rise of hybrid forms of courtly representation, the conse-quences of which for the subject of Muslim court culture in general will have to be further investigated by future research. However, a brief overview indicates that the distance to locally grown Muslim institutions of court culture seems to have increased over time, meaning that by the nineteenth century a successful ruler would adopt the style of London, Paris or St Petersburg. When in 1878 the Egyptian Khedive Isma'il (d. 1312/1895) is reported to have depicted his country as part of contemporary Europe instead of Africa (`Mon pays n'est plus en Afrique, nous faisons partie de l'Europe actuellemene"), he appears to have captured a symbolic element in the development of the perception of Muslim court culture at that point in time. It also turned out that he was correct, although Egypt was brought to Europe in a different manner than he predicted. Only four years later Britain occupied Egypt and transformed it into a European colony. Based on the Egyptian example alone, one could thus hypothesize that the nineteenth century Muslim World's encounter with European forms of political representation led inevitably to an end of a distinct Muslim court culture.

The contribution of Abbas Amanat, however, shows that this is not necessarily the case. Although the Iranian Qajars did not shut themselves off from European influences, as the example of Nasir al-Din Shah (d. 1313/1896) alone provides vivid evidence, they managed to remain at least formally independent from the competing European imperialist powers." Amanat illustrates through the example of the court painter Sani` al-Mulk how, in his artistic works, he merged European artistic influences with narratives from Islamic heritage and Qajar courtly life. As impressively shown by Sani al-Mulk's commissioned illustrations of a then-contemporary Persian translation of One Thousand and One Nights, they are not. only examples of a process of hybridization from classical Islamic literary topics and Western, mainly Italian, artistic styles. In addition to the illustrations of the royal codex are fine examples of both an indigenization and contemporization that moved a masterpiece of classical Arabic literature into the world of the nineteenth century Qajar court of Tehran.

Those contributions that lay more stress on the court as events in analyzing the elaboration of sumptuous Muslim court culture also focus on yet another issue that emerged from the joint discussions during the 2007 Gotha conference: the question of the accessibility of the ruler. The question of who gains access to the ruler, and how such access is achieved, ultimately links the spatial to the social dimension in the investigation of Abbasid and post-Abbasid elaborations of Muslim court culture and leads to a number of subordinate issues. First, the accessibility of the ruler seems to depend on a hierarchy of spaces. Secondly, access to each space seems to depend on the personnel in charge of those respective spaces. In this regard, the contribution of Herming Sievert on the role of the chief eunuch as favourite of the Ottoman Sultans Ahmed III (d. 1149/1736) and Mahmud I (d. 1168/1754) is most enlightening. While the essays of Walker, Midler, Fuess, Konrad and Keshani focus on a variety of situations of public access to the ruler, Sievert shows the powerful position of the eunuch, at the threshold of the sultan's private chambers, the harem, for the mediation of access to the ruler. In his function as what Sievert calls 'the king's patronage manager', the eunuch 'used to serve the ruler and also served a demand from below by conferring his patronage upon the clients!' In this context again, the question arises as to what extent, if at all, the political and administrative practice of the Prophet served later Muslim courts as an example. Michael Cook in his preliminary inquiry into this matter seems to give a negative answer to this question. From the account of Ibn Hisham (d. 218/833) on the life of the Prophet it appears that Muhammad emphatically did not want to stand out in the early Muslim community of Medina, nor did he want access to him regulated or even restricted. In conclusion, Cook shows that styling Muhammad as a king with a court, sitting separate from others in an elevated place, is the product of later times, owing to the increasing impact of pre-Islamic Persian patterns of kingship.

What remains to be said

After having provided a structured overview of the contents of the present volume, one may ask whether and, if so, to what extent the current contributions enhance our understanding of Muslim court culture. While conclusive answers can neither be expected, nor provided, our aim is rather to indicate the rich potential that a comparative perspective contains for a possible advancement of our understand-ing of Muslim court culture in particular, and court culture in general. In open and fruitful discussions among the international participants of the conference at Schloss Friedenstein in Gotha in July 2007 questions were raised and issues identified which appeared relevant for the study of court cultures throughout time and space and, particularly, in the Muslim context.

However, not all issues that were touched upon in this introduction could be dealt with extensively in the present volume and therefore require further investigation. Moreover, we have to acknowledge that, although we have attempted to cover as many periods and regions as possible, there are large chunks of the map that are missing including Transoxiana, Muslim South East Asia, and Muslim North and sub-Saharan Africa. Further research needs to take these areas into consideration.

Apart from the acknowledgement of these obvious shortcomings in the present volume, we hope nonetheless that it will contribute to an intensified discussion within our disciplines across particular regions and times, as well as with experts from outside Islamic studies and Near and Middle Eastern history. Therefore, we hope that the description of thematically and temporally comprehensive subjects is either a first step towards defining typologies that will help us to understand the peculiarities of an ideal-type Muslim court culture, along the lines that Norbert Elias and those following him have proposed, or towards finally acknowledging that there is no such thing as a distinct Muslim court culture at all, which might still be considered a worthwhile achievement. Hopefully more is to come. This is just a beginning, there shall be no end.

The History of the Seljuq State: A Translation with Commentary of the Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya by Sadr al-Din 'Ali ibn Nasir Husayni, translated by Clifford Edmond Bosworth (Routledge Studies in the History of Iran and Turkey: Routledge)

The Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya is one of the key primary documents on the history of Western Persia and Iraq in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. This book provides an accessible English translation and commentary on the text, making available to a new readership this significant work on the pre-modern history of the Middle East and the Turkish peoples.

The text is a chronicle of the Seljuq dynasty as it emerged within the Iranian lands in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, dominating the Middle Eastern lands, from Turkey and Syria to Iran and eastern Afghanistan. During this formative period in the central and eastern Islamic lands, they inaugurated a pattern of Turkish political and military dominance of the Middle East and beyond, from Egypt to India, in some cases well into the twentieth century.

Shedding light on many otherwise obscure aspects of the political history of the region, the book provides a more detailed context for the political history of the wider area. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Middle Eastern history and is an important addition to the existing literature on the Seljuq dynasty.

Clifford Edmund Bosworth is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Arabic and Islamic Studies at Exeter University. His research interests include the pre-modern history of the Central and Eastern Islamic lands, especially Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia, on which he has published several books.

The Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya is a chronicle of the Seljuq dynasty, and more particularly, of the Great Seljuq sultanate as it emerged within the Iranian lands in the mid-fifth/eleventh century. Under the leadership of two steppe chieftains, the brothers Toghril Beg and Chaghri Beg, the Seljuqs had humbled the mighty empire of the Ghaznavids built up by the Sultan Mahmud and had deprived it of its territories in Khurasan. The Seljuq empire was now in the later decades of the century to reach its apogee under Sultans Alp Arslan and his son Malik Shah. The sultans directed a great empire stretching from Syria in the west to the Oxus river (and, at times, beyond it) and Afghanistan in the east: the heartland being under direct rule but with vassal states and principalities, some ruled by local petty dynasts and others ruled by members of the Seljuq family or their Turkish commanders. This zenith was, however, succeeded in 485/1092 by a 'time of troubles', at the outset involving a succession struggle between Malik Shah's sons Berk-yaruq and Muhammad Tapar which was in the end resolved by the former's death, leaving Muhammad to be the last sultan exercising undisputed control over western Persia and Iraq. Since he left several sons who competed for authority in various parts of the realm, the years after 511/1118 saw the Great Seljuq sultanate reduced to being essentially a power within what are the borders of modern Iran and, more falteringly, of modern Iraq, with other branches of the Seljuq family, like those ruling over Kirman and over Anatolia or Rum, existing as substantially independent of the Great Seljuq sultans in Hamadan and Merv. Moreover, in the middle years of the sixth/twelfth century, the capture of Sultan Sanjar by Oghuz bands roaming through Khurasan and his death soon afterwards in 552/1157, meant the loss of Khurasan to the Great Seljuqs, leaving them in the last four decades or so of their existence a power in northwestern Persia only, the Jibal or `Iraq-i 'Ajam of the Muslim geographers. Kirman passed from Seljuq hands into those of further Oghuz bands; Fars and Khuzistan were controlled by local Turkish Atabeg lines; Azerbaijan and Arran were likewise dominated by the Ildegizid Atabegs. Then, pour cornble de malheur, the residual authority of the Seljuqs in Iraq proper, 'Iraq-i 'Arab, was challenged by a renaissance in the secular and military power of the 'Abbasid caliphs, a trend which was only short-lived, being slowed down by pressure from the Khwarazm Shahs and then halted by the onslaught of the Mongols at the beginning of the next century, but which was significant enough to contribute to the ending of Seljuq influence in Iraq.

The last three-and-a-half decades of the Great Seljuq sultans were in any case years in which they had to share a diminishing power with the over-mighty Ildegizids, what Kenneth A. Luther called a dyarchy: the Seljuqs retained an aura of moral authority amongst their Turkish troops and followers but actual military power and initiatives were substantially in the hands of the Atabegs.' The Akhbar becomes particularly detailed for this last period, nearer to the author's own time and for which he may have had first-hand information from contemporaries (see below, p. 6). When there came about a rapprochement between the Ildegizids and the increasingly aggressive and expansionist Khwarazm Shahs of Anushtegin Gharcha'i's line, allowing these last to invade Khurasan and penetrate as far westwards as Ray in northern Persia, the end came for the last Great Seljuq, Toghril b. Arslan Shah, who was killed in battle with the Shah Tekish in 590/1194.2

The pattern of the Arabic Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya thus follows roughly that of the Persian histories of the Seljuqs like Zahir al-Din Nishapuri's Saljuq-nama (previously known to us only from adaptations or works drawing upon it from Il-Khanid times but now to a considerable extent known through the work of Mr A.H. Morton on a unique manuscript now in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society, London, he having supplemented and elucidated this text by an examination of parallel and supplementary source information') and Rawandi's Rabat al-sudur. Events are treated chronologically, with sections on the reign of each sultan and special ones devoted to outstanding events like Alp Arslan's campaigns into Byzantium and the death of Nizam al-Mulk, and the character and achievements of the sultans and their servants, sc. viziers and secretaries, are noted.' Especially valuable, with unique details, is the author's account of Alp Arslan's campaigns into Anatolia against the Byzantines, culminating in the battle of Mantzikert/Malazgird in 463/1071, and information from various times on relations with the Transcaucasian Christian power of Georgia, which under its Bagratid monarchs in the later sixth/twelfth century enjoyed a resurgence of military strength which bore hard on the Muslim populations of Arran and northern Azerbaijan.

The story unfolds in a comparatively dispassionate way. Admiration is expressed for the Seljuq sultans and their achievements, their just rule and their defence of the Dar al-Islam against outside pressures like those of the Georgians and internal threats like those of the Batiniyya or Isma`ilis; but the Abbasid caliphs are mentioned with expressions of esteem for their charisma and moral and spiritual authority, with terms like al-Ataba al-sharifa, al-Dar al-' aziza, al-Diwan al-` aziz, etc., used in regard to them.

There thus emerges from what has been said above that the Akhbar's narrative is purely concerned with dynastic, political and military history. First, the efforts of the Great Seljuqs to maintain the integrity of their lands against centrifugal forces, the ambitions of provincial governor and Atabegs, a struggle which they eventually lost. Second, their efforts to maintain the Islamic frontiers in northwestern Iran and Armenia, which in the fifth/eleventh century had some success against the Christians, although the victory at Mantzikert/Malazgird was not immediately followed up, at least by the Great Seljuqs themselves; and in northeastern Iran and the Oxus lands, where Seljuq efforts to extend a measure of control over the Qarakhanids of Transoxania were negated by Sanjar's defeat at the hands of the infidel Qara Khitay and his consequent loss of prestige. Virtually absent from the Akhbar is anything which contributes to our wider knowledge of the economic and social history of the Iranian lands at this time, although momentous changes were afoot in such spheres as land utilisation and demography, brought about by incoming Turkmen followers of the first Seljuqs and further waves subsequently, certainly for the northern tier of the Iranian lands. Work was begun over sixty years ago by Claude Cahen and has been continued to our own time by e.g. Richard Bulliet, Jurgen Paul, David Durand-Guddy and Deborah Tor, on urban structures, the role of local notables and the phenomenon, mainly but not exclusively urban, of the ayyars and fityan; neither of these last two groups is at all mentioned in the Akhbar. We know both from theological and philosophical texts and from other historical ones that there was at this time much religious strife between Sunnis and Shi` ites, with political Shi` ism fighting a losing battle in the central Islamic lands against a resurgent and confident Sunni orthodoxy, but with many disputes and tensions also within the bosom of this last. There is e.g. some reference in the Akhbar to religious strife in Nishapur between Hanafis and Shafi'is (see below, p. 83), and the radical Shiite Ismallis are inevitably mentioned with obloquy, but not a great deal can be inferred from its pages about the religious movements and intellectual life of the Seljuq period in Iran and Iraq; fortunately, we have rich information here from several other sources.

However, although negative information can at times have significance, it is in the end futile to lament what this source does not tell us; the value of the Akhbar in reconstructing the political and military events of these lively and significant two centuries, when combined with the material from parallel sources, is surely evident.

The Arabic style of the Akhbar is varied. It is often simple and straightforward narrative, as one finds e.g. in Ibn al-Athir, but on occasion it slips into a more ornate style, involving rhymed prose and balanced, assonantal phrases; it may well be that these expressions were lifted from elsewhere. They slow down rather than smooth the flow of the narrative, but are typical of the insha' style of the time, beloved by contemporary writers such as 'Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahai. There is included in the Akhbar the text of the prayer (du` a) composed by the caliph al-Qa'im's celebrated secretary Ibn al-Mawsilaya for reading out from the pulpits as Alp Arslan set off for his campaign against the Emperor Romanus Diogenes, which is a particularly elaborate piece of chancery. In general, within the present translation it is the sense of a flowery phrase or piece of rhymed prose which is given, but often with a literal rendering of the Arabic indicated after it in parentheses; the reader unfamiliar with the high styles of Arabic at this time will, it is hoped, be thereby able to taste something at second-hand of the flavour of these styles. Occasionally, proverbial sayings and hikam are quoted: thus an aged man, questioned by Nizam al-Mulk in Arran during a campaign of Alp Arslan against the Georgians, is described as 'more veracious than a sand grouse and Alma Dharr' (below, p. 36), and the rebel Malik Qawurd repented of his actions 'the repentance of al-Kusa'i (below, p. 42).5 A fair amount of Arabic poetry is cited when the author apparently thought it apposite (such quotations being, of course, typical of exalted prose style), though on nothing like the scale of the Persian poetry in Rawandi's history. A good proportion of those verses that are identifiable is by Seljuq period authors, mostly of the second rank, including Toghril Beg's vizier al-Kunduri, the poet and anthologist al-Bakharzi, the caliph al-Qa'im himself, Mas`ud al-Bayadi, 'Imad al-Din al-Isfahai, al-Husayn b. al-Khazin, Hibat Allah al-Baghdadi, etc., but earlier authors of 'Abbasid times like Abu Tammam and the Buyid period writer Qadi 'Ali b. Muhammad al-Tanukhi (father of al-Muhassin) are also quoted.

The authorship of the Akhbar is problematic. Towards the end of the nineteenth century it was discussed by scholars like M.T. Houtsma and W. Barthold, and the German scholar working in Istanbul, Karl Süssheim, considered the topic in detail,' but the translations promised by both himself and by Houtsma never materialised. The work is known only from a single manuscript, B.L. Suppl. 550, first catalogued by Rieu, and has on its title page the name Akhbar al-dawla al-saliqiyya and an attribution to Sadr al-Din Abu 'l-Hasan 'Ali b. Nasir b. 'Ali al-Husayni, so that the history has tended to be referred to as being Sadr al-Din al-Husayi's exclusive work. However, as Süssheim already realised, things are clearly more complicated than that. In the work's proem, this supposed author is referred to dispassionately in the third person (where, if the author were genuinely addressing the reader thus, one might have expected the usual self-deprecating reference to al-' abd al-haqir or such-like) and as the author of a book called the Zubdat al-tawarikh or 'Cream of Histories' (below, p. 9). Since Süssheim's time, various scholars have pondered over this question of authorship, including Houtsma; Muhammad Iqbal in the Preface to his edition of the Akhbar (1933, see below, p. 7); Viqar Ahmad Hamdani in his doctoral thesis on the sources for the history of the Seljuqs in Iraq and Syria (1938); Claude Callen"; Angelika Hartmann in her exhaustive study of the caliph al-Nasir (1975); and Muhammad Nur al-Din in the Muqaddima to his edition of the Akhbar.

The information and conclusions of the above authors (with the exception of Hartmann, following a surmise of Hamdani; her view was that the author of the Akhbar was an official in the chancery of the 'Abbasid caliph al-Nasir) were clearly set forth and discussed at length by Qibla Ayaz in his 1985 Ph.D. thesis (see below),' and his detailed arguments can be read there. In brief, he suggested as a likely scenario here that Sadr al-Din al-Husayni was a native of Nishapur and the official in charge of the mustawfi's accounting department (i.e. the diwan al-istifa) in the administration of the penultimate Anushteginid Khwarazm Shah, `Ala' al-Din Muhammad b. Tekish (r. 596-617/1200-20). Al-Husayni certainly had some connection with Khwarazm, as he mentions in the course of the Akhbar's narrative that he visited it (see below, p. 39). In the Akhbar as we now possess it, there is mention of the fate of the last Ildegizid, Ozbeg b. Jahan Pahlawan Muhammad, deposed by the last Khwarazm Shah Jalal al-Din Mingburnu in 622/1225 (see below, p. 129), implying that al-Husayni composed his history at some point after this date, calling it the Zubdat al-tawarikh. The literary biographer and collector of historical anecdotes Muhammad `Awfi (d. ca. 640/1242-43) apparently knew al-Husayni in Nishapur and states that he also wrote a Tarikh-i Khwarazm-Shahi in a style finer than that of al-'Utbi's al-Kitab al-yamini (hence presumably in a highly florid Arabic) which has not, however, survived, and also fine poetry in both Arabic and Persian. The final stage in the evolution of the Akhbar would be that a colleague or connection of al-Husayni's then, in the middle decades of the seventh/thirteenth century, abridged his work, giving us the history as we now know it (a terminus ad quern for this work would appear to be 660/1262, since Ibn al-`Adim, who died in this year, mentions in his biographical dictionary of the notables and scholars of his home city Aleppo, the Bughyat al-talab fi ta'rikh &lab, that he had himself seen an epitome, a muntakhab, of al-Husayni's Zubdat al-tawarikh). Ayaz's arguments seem cogent, and it does not seem that it is possible at present to go much further with the problem.

One inevitably wonders about the Akhbar's sources. For the origins of the Seljuqs in the western Asian steppes, and their entry into the Islamic lands, culminating in the victory of Dandanqan which ended Ghaznavid rule in Khurasan, it seems that al-Husayni utilised the account of Seljuq origins in a work called the Malik-nama. A later source which uses it, the universal history by the Arab-Syriac scholar Ibn al-lbri/Barhebraeus (d. 1286), states that its anonymous author wrote in Persian and derived material on the genealogy of the Seljuqs from an aged amir, Yinanch/ blanch Yabghu; and the Syrian writer Ibn al-`Adim (see above) specifies that it was composed for Alp Arslan, hence at a time when memories of Seljuq origins and rise to power were still comparatively fresh. But both al-Husayni, and also Ibn al-Athir, another historian using the information of the Malik-nama, must have utilised it through an intermediate source since both state — what no-one familiar with Turkish or in direct contact with Turkish speakers could have said — that the name of the founder of the Seljuq line, Duqaq/Tuqaq, means 'iron bow'.

For the sources of the Akhbar's narrative of events after the Seljuq triumph of 431/1040, we have only one author who is clearly acknowledged, sc. 'Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani (d. 597/1201), who based his Nusrat al-fatra wa-' usrat al-fitra on the no longer extant administrative memoirs of the vizier for Seljuq sultans and for an 'Abbasid caliph, Anushirwan b. Khalid (d. 532 or 533/1137-39),' entitled Futur zaman al-sudur wa-sudur zaman al-futur; al-Isfahani's work is likewise lost and now known to us only in the simplified abridgement by the rather obscure figure al-Fat b. Ali al-Bundari, the Zubdat al-nusra wa-nukhbat al-` ugra, written in 623/1226. Al-Husayni refers to 'Imad al-Din in three places (below, p. 50), this last place being a lengthy verbatim quotation from him). He seems particularly to have relied on him for events from the last year or so of Malik Shah's reign to the death of Masud b. Muhammad Tapar, i.e. 484-547/1091-1152)

It also seems possible that al-Husayni derived material, especially on the early relations of the Seljuqs with the Ghaznavids and then on the first Seljuq sultans themselves, from the chronicle which the local historian of his native Bayhaq, Zayd b. 'All, called Ibn Funduq, wrote in Arabic, apparently (as the title Masharib al-tajarib would seem to indicate) as a continuation of Miskawayh's Tajarib al-umam; its loss is, as Cahen observed, much to be lamented. There is indirect evidence that al-Husayni had access to this work; thus his account of Toghril Beg's vizier, the 'Amid al-Mulk al-Kunduri (below, pp. 22-24) resembles that of Yaqut on al-Kunduri and his relations with the poet and literary anthologist al-Bakharzi (see below, p. 22 and p. 137 n. 101) in his Irshad al-arib, who explicitly acknowledges Ibn Funduq's Masharib as the source for this specific section.

There are no obvious sources for al-Husayni's account of the very confused decade or so 547-56/1152-61, the last years in which, under Muhammad b. Mahmud, the Great Seljuq sultanate was an effective force in the western Persian lands before the sultans fell under the domination of the Ildegizid Atabegs. But at the accession of Arslan Shah b. Toghril in 556/1161, the Akhbar becomes palpably more detailed than previously, if still somewhat uncertain about the order of events. There is a considerable amount of original material here, such as on the wars with the Georgians, the entente between the Ildegizdids and the 'Abbasid caliphs, and the influence of and then appearance in the affairs of Persia of the Khwarazm Shah II Arslan and his son Tekish, making the Akhbar an important source for these last decades of the Great Seljuqs. If al-Husayni was indeed an official of the Khwarazm Shahs (see above, p. 5), he must have been a contemporary of these events, and must have obtained his historical material from persons directly involved in them. He specifically mentions getting a first-hand account of Tekish's westwards advance towards Ray in 590/1194, the discussions between Toghril and his commanders and advisers over the wisdom or otherwise of giving immediate battle, and the battle itself in which the sultan was killed, from an official of Ray, Amin al-Din Muhammad al-Zanjani. Cahen thought that this probably meant that the Akhbar was substantially composed at the end of the sixth/ twelfth century, when the narrative proper ends, the two closing sections on the chronologies of the sultans and of their Atabegs being added subsequently by a later copyist or editor21 (but see above on this question of composition and dating).