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My thesis examines the intellectual legacy of the famous Fatimid jurist, Abū Ḥanīfa al-Nuʿmān b. Abī ʿAbdallāh Muḥammad b. Manṣūr b. Aḥmad b. Ḥayyūn al-Tamīmī al-Qayrawānī (d. 363/974), better known as Qāḍī Nuʿmān, with a focus on the sources he consulted to construct his hadith works. His works represent the emergence of a new genre of literature promulgated under the rubric of ʿulūm Āl al-Bayt (sciences of the progeny of the Prophet) soon after the Fatimids established their hegemony over North Africa. Qāḍī Nuʿmān, the most prolific and versatile Fatimid scholar, was tasked with the responsibility of compiling a work of law that would serve as an authoritative point of reference for jurists, judges and bureaucrats in the burgeoning Ismaili state. It is evident that Nuʿmān had to have recourse to earlier collections of hadith as he cites them consistently in his writings and incorporates them into his works. These early hadith collections, most of which no longer exist, equipped Nuʿmān with the raw material from which he formulated and systematised various aspects of Ismaili belief and practice. This endeavour resulted in a corpus of works which received the imprimatur of the Fatimid state. It is detailing these lost sources and examining their role in the emergence of hadith literature that this thesis is primarily concerned.

The fundamental aim of the thesis is to examine the historicity of Qāḍī Nuʿmān’s sources in his voluminous legal work, Kitāb al-īḍāḥ, by cross-examining its contents with other contemporary hadith collections of Zaydi and Imami provenance. Although the extant fragment of this work offers some valuable information on its sources, studying al-Īḍāḥ is beset by serious challenges to its authenticity, given that many of the original sources on which it was based are no longer extant. Furthermore, it is claimed that the alleged sources were collected in the first half of the second/eighth century in the East (Medina and Kūfa), whereas the text in question was composed in North Africa during the early fourth/tenth century. This thesis investigates the missing links between al-Īḍāḥ’s origins and its later dissemination throughout North Africa.

This thesis also analyses Nuʿmān’s ambitiously eclectic framework for the contextualisation of hadith, borne out of his access to an unusually broad range of literature, encompassing Zaydi, Ismaili and Imami hadith corpora. Furthermore, his writing style evinces clear similarities, both stylistic and structural, to North African Sunni writings of the period. By examining the materials in al-Īḍāh in this comparative manner and placing the work in a wider context, we gain a clearer notion of Nuʿmān’s sources, and therefore the spread and dissemination of these literary forms. This thesis serves as a useful point of departure for future work on cross-regional and inter-sectarian—namely, Zaydi, Imami and Ismaili—modes of transmission in Islamic literature more broadly.

Analyses are based on the codicological examination of sixteen illuminated Persian and Arabic manuscripts, none of which have been published in depth. Based on this evidence, this dissertation demonstrates that Rūm’s towns had active cultural scenes despite the frequent outbreak of hostilities and the absence of an effective imperial government. The lavishness of some manuscripts from this period also challenges the often-assumed connection between dynastic patronage and sophisticated artistic production. Furthermore, the identities and affiliations of those involved in the production and patronage of illuminated manuscripts reinforces the impression of an ethnically and religiously diverse environment and highlights the role that local amīrs and Sufi dervishes in particular had in the creation of such material.

This interdisciplinary PhD project at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Cambridge – under Professor Charles Melville’s supervision – lies at the intersections between the arts, political power, and Sufism between Iran and India. It branches out into literary as well as religious and political studies, and examines the social role of Sufism through their architectural heritage. I focused on four Sufi shrines in southern Iran (Mahan and Taft) and the Deccan Plateau (Bidar) that come together under their
association with a specific Sufi order – namely, the Ni’matullahiyya – founded in central Iran in the fourteenth century. I examined the forms, functions and meanings of these shrines and their evolution over time in their Indo-Persian artistic, cultural, social, and political milieus.

The project focused on a span of about fifty years during which the order changed drastically from a local order to a trans-local institutionalised one. I structured the dissertation around the relationship between buildings and people – i.e. patrons and the Sufi order. This allowed me to conduct an in-depth study of the issue of patronage, and to show how Sufi shrines extend beyond objects of popular piety and veneration, and turn into potentially crucial sites, whose foundation and development process are tied to both the institutionalization of Sufi communities, and to the construction of a dynastic ideology on the part of the rulers. The movements of the order within central and southern Iran, and between Iran and the Deccan, and how these relate to their architectural program, as well as the role of their mobility in shaping the cross-cultural connections between central-south parts of Iran and India were
other important aspect of this project.

The grant helped to defray expenses incurred during the write-up of my dissertation. I examined the mystical community at Turbat-i Jam in Iran that venerated Shaykh al-Islam Ahmad-i Jam (d. 1141). The period of inquiry is from the Mongol irruptions (ca. 1220-21), to the collapse of the Timurid dynasty in Persia (ca. 1506). The saint, his many descendants, and the winsome shrine-complex at Jam, are examined. Explicated is the patronage that the shrine-complex received as mosques, portals (iwan), domes (gunbad), hospices (khanaqah), and madrasas; and pious endowments (waqf) and royal land grants (soyurghals) as described in Islamic legal instruments, and in Mongol and Timurid chancery documents.

In the 9th /15th century, certain Shaykhs of Jam affiliated with the inchoate Khwajagan-Naqshbandiyya. A select history of these Khwajagan mystical currents, from their hazy Transoxianan origins, to their spiritual endeavors in Cisoxiana; and explications of their evolving doctrines and hybrid practices, are proffered in the dissertation.

I am honored to be the recipient of an academic grant from a memorial endowment being devised in A.H. ‘Sandy’ Morton’s name. I regret that I never had the privilege of knowing Mr. Morton, who became terminally ill sometime after I matriculated at Cambridge. Scholars in Persian Studies, notably my supervisor and my external examiner, independently stated that Sandy Morton would have enjoyed reading my dissertation. Moreover, one scholar commented when I was battling a particularly stubborn medieval Persian manuscript, that ‘Sandy Morton would have been the best person’ to assist me with de-ciphering barely legible Perso-Arabic orthography, and in interpreting abstruse Persian prose. I have, however, made profitable use of Mr. Morton’s scholarship on Sarbadar numismatics. Nevertheless, I regret that Mr. Morton did not have the opportunity to critique my scholarship – for better or for worse – nor have the opportunity to read with me tracts from my eclectic collection of Persian manuscripts.

The study comprises two Parts (I-II), in two volumes respectively. Part I contains an Introduction, three Chapters (1-3) and a Conclusion. The Introduction presents the aims, scope and methodology adopted, followed by a survey of previous scholarship conducted on the subject, and a brief historical examination of the late Byzantine Peloponnese and its conquest by the Ottomans. It concludes with a brief codicological and palaeographical description of the cadastre. Chapter 1 is devoted to the historical geography of the Peloponnese. All place-names mentioned in the cadastre are listed in the sequence they appear therein, accompanied by topographic and linguistic notes. This is followed by a set of digital maps of the Early Ottoman Peloponnese using GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Chapter 2 is a demographical investigation of the cadastre, including the settlement patterns, the density of population and its categorisation into urban/rural, sedentary/nomadic, concentrating in particular on the influx and settlement of the second largest ethnic group in the peninsula after the Greeks, namely the Albanians. Chapter 3 explores the economy and administration of the province concentrating on the Ottoman t?m?r system and the economic mechanisms. A detailed presentation of the level of agricultural production, types of crops, livestock, fishing, commerce, industrial development, etc. is illustrated with tables and charts. The Conclusion summarises the findings of the research and suggests areas for further investigation. Part II comprises a diplomatic edition of the transliterated Ottoman text, preceded by a note on the principles and conventions adopted in the edition. The thesis closes with a full bibliography followed by selected samples of facsimiles of the cadastre.

Urban protest took a variety of forms including complaints and petitions, rioting, direct physical attacks on officials, and market strikes. Different motives spurred these protests, including fluctuations in the grain market or recurrent debasing of the currency or perceived injustice by government officials. However, all reported protests had a legitimizing justification. Reports of protest bring to light the different roles played by various social groups in medieval Egypt and Syria. Rather than paint a picture of pre-modern Arab- Muslim societies as neatly divided between autocratic exploitative governments and disempowered exploited subjects, an analysis of protest offers a more dynamic portrayal that brings out the roles of merchants, craftsmen, tradesmen, scholars of various standing, pious men, Bedouin, government officials and military officers. During a time of economic crises and recurring plagues, this portrayal shows that far from silently and stoically enduring the hardships of the times, the common people of Egypt and Syria were actively protesting, voicing their demands and manipulating the political, social and economic system to better their living conditions. This further complicates modern historiographical paradigms such as Oriental Despotism and the political quietism of Sunni Muslim political thought.

During the second half of the century, Ottoman historiography was marked by a debate that took shape in the hands of the literary elite who discussed the content of all types of Ottoman histories with which they were familiar. In this debate, the anonymous Ottoman histories became quintessential texts. These texts neither represented the Ottoman palace nor its elite servants. They were texts meant for the general Turkish- speaking community written by unknown and less educated scribes. They had an inclusive discourse, a populist style, a genuine concern about the well-being of the common people and advocated the disgruntled subjects of the empire who considered themselves alienated by a centralized state. Also, a number of historians who came from educated backgrounds and wrote in Turkish integrated the content of these anonymous texts into their own work, thus initiating a transition to a new period of historiography. A transformation occurred in Ottoman historiography during the late 15th century, not as a result of an ideological shift in the palace as is argued by modern scholarship, but from an internal debate which took place among the historians themselves.