Crime and Punishment in Mamluk Damascus

44602

This research is presented in the form of vignettes that include events (ħawādith) recorded by al-Jazarī in his Ta’rīkh, and which are grouped around one criminal incident or another. Often, such incidents occur in the obituaries (wafayāt) that tell of people interacting in a variety of real life situations. Al-Jazarī often lapsed into the ‘āmmiyya, Damascene popular Arabic, especially when he described these situations and other aspects of popular culture. In fact, the use of colloquial Arabic distinguishes this manuscript from its contemporaries or those of the same genre. Furthermore, al-Jazarī was never a court historian or one that relied on patronage and thus he included what he saw fit in his Ta’rīkh. Accordingly, in addition to reports about state events or obituaries of notables, the usual focus of most chroniclers, al-Jazarī mentions also the unusual, the bizarre, the mundane, and the noteworthy which could run the gamut from the funeral procession carrying the coffin of an obese man, to the recipe of a deodorant, to severe weather phenomena, or to a Sufi who sweeps the streets with his overcoat.

13

The Journal Of Ottoman Studies

33

The Journal Of Ottoman Studies