The Mamluk sultan al-Manṣūr Ḥajjī had two brief reigns, 1381-1382 and 1389-1390. Both times he was deposed by al-Ẓāhir Barqūq, famous as the first Mamluk sultan of Circassian origin. Nevertheless, Sultan Barqūq allowed Ḥajjī to continue living with his household in the Cairo citadel long after he had been deposed. In effect, the reigning sultan and the former sultan were neighbors.

The chronicler who wrote this account, Yūsuf ibn Taghrī Birdī, came from a prominent political family himself and was able to talk with many of Ḥajjī’s former slave women since his father eventually purchased them. Ibn Taghrī Birdī used the occasion of Ḥajjī’s death to write a brief obituary within his chronicle summing up and commenting on Ḥajjī’s life. The striking thing about Ibn Taghrī Birdī’s account is that he does not criticize the slave women who successfully paralyzed Ḥajjī by tampering with his food. Instead, he criticizes Ḥajjī. It is Ḥajjī, not the slave women, who comes off as malicious, violent, vengeful, and unpredictable. Without saying so directly, Ibn Taghrī Birdī, a slave owner himself, implies that Ḥajjī deserved to be resisted by his slaves.

Translated from the Arabic by William Popper. Egypt and Syria under the Circassian Sultans, 1382-1468 A.D. In University of California Publications in Semitic Philology 13 (1954): 103-104. This translation CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

At his death[1] he was forty-odd years old; for a number of years before his death he was unable to move, having lost the use of both hands and feet. His weakened condition, it was said, had resulted from some food which his slave girls, because of his bad temper and his tyranny, had given him to eat and which brought on this paralytic condition. More than one of the entourage of al-Malik az-Zahir[2] who attended to the affairs of al-Mansur has narrated to me the following: “It was his habit, in subjecting any of his slave girls to physical punishment, to beat them with more than five hundred strokes. Al-Malik az-Zahir as often as he heard their cries would send to intercede for them, and al-Mansur, unable to oppose him, would release the girl who was being whipped; but he would still retain a feeling of secret animosity toward her because he had not fully vented his anger upon her. As was the custom of rulers and amirs in those days, he had a whole troupe of singing girls, numbering about fifteen (they were known later as Mansur’s singers and after his death were in my father’s home); and when al-Malik az-Zahir began to intercede on hearing the cries of the slave girls who were being punished, al-Mansur ordered that his singers should beat on their tambourines and that flutes should be played so that neither az-Zahir nor anyone else could hear the cries. The women of az-Zahir’s household, however, learned of this practice, and said to az-Zahir, ‘When the Sultan hears the singing girls beating their tambourines at a time when they are not singing, he may know that al-Mansur is flogging his girls and servants.’ As a result, when az-Zahir heard the singers playing the tambourines he would send immediately to al-Mansur in order to intercede.” [al-Mansur was also guilty of drunken boorishness to az-Zahir, who tolerated it at first but then distanced himself] When al-Mansur lost the ability to move, az-Zahir cut himself off from him entirely.

[1] 19 Shawwāl, 814 H, equivalent to February 3, 1412 CE.

[2] The subsequent sultan, al-Ẓāhir Barqūq.

Discussion Questions

  1. It is not clear from the wording of this account whether Ḥajjī’s paralysis was an intended or unintended consequence of the slave women’s tampering with his food. If it was an intended consequence, what benefit do you think the slave women expected to gain through this form of resistance? If it was an unintended consequence, what do you think the slave women had intended to do?
  2. Compare this situation with the Execution of a Mamluk Slave Woman and Criminal Trials of Slaves in Venice. Do you think the slave women who paralyzed Ḥajjī escaped punishment? If not, why does Ibn Taghrī Birdī not describe it?
  3. The reigning sultan Barqūq owned numerous slaves himself. Why then did he intervene to stop Ḥajjī from beating his slaves?
  4. Ibn Taghrī Birdī knew some of the women involved in this story personally. Why does he write about them collectively and anonymously?

Related Primary Sources

Themes

Agency, Elite Slaves, Labor, Medicine, Music, Violence, Women