A New Source on the Social Gatherings (majalis) of the Mamluk Sultan Qānṣawh al-Ghawrī

Abstract

S ince Mohammad Awad’s pioneering work in 1940, the learned social gatherings (majālis) of the penultimate Mamluk Sultan Qānṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 906-922/1501-1516) have helped produce a small, but lively scholarship on the courtly life of the late Mamluk period.1 Doubtless, such interest has been fueled largely by ʿAbd al-Wahhāb ʿAzzām’s 1941 edition of two Arabic sources that focus on the majālis: Nafāʾis majālis al-sulṭāniyya fī ḥaqāʾiq asrār al-Qurʾāniyya (sic) of the little known author al-Sharīf Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Ḥusaynī (f. early 10th/16th c.), and al-Kawkab al-durrī fī masāʾil al-Ghawrī of unknown authorship.