A01=Daisy Livingston
archives
Author_Daisy Livingston
Cairo
Category=NHG
documents
Egypt
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
legal history
Mamluk
medieval history
Middle Eastern history
waqf
Product details
- ISBN 9781474492263
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 31 May 2025
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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Archives are not only sources for history but have their own histories too, which shape how historians can tell stories of the past. This book explores the archival history of one of the most powerful polities of the late-medieval Middle East: the 'Mamluk' sultanate of Cairo. Relying on surviving original documents, it focuses on archival practices connected to waqf, the pious endowments that became one of the characteristic features of late-medieval Islamic societies. By centring a close exploration of documents connected to processes of endowment and property exchange, this book sheds light on a startling culture of document accumulation that was shared by the diverse social groups involved in founding and managing endowments: sultans and emirs, qadis, legal notaries, and scribes. Emphasising the documents' life cycles from production, to preservation, to disposal and loss, it argues for the use of surviving documents to tell their own archival histories.
Daisy Livingston is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Durham University. She received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.
