In two centuries of rule over Egypt and North Africa (969-1171CE), the Isma'ili Fatimids threatened Sunni hegemony in the Arab heartlands, yet left few historiographical records. Instead, it fell to Ayyubid and Mamluk historians to represent the Fatimids to posterity. Did medieval Arab historians allow religious commitments and sectarian polemics to shape their accounts of the Islamic past? And did the succeeding Sunni political class destroy the records of its Fatimid predecessors? Via a new translation, contextualisation and analysis of Sunni Mamluk historian Ibn al-Furat's chronicle History of Dynasty and Kings, Fozia Bora maps the survival of historiographical narratives from late Fatimid Egypt after Salah al-Din's alleged destruction of the Fatimid literary corpus. In so doing, Bora demonstrates that Mamluk historical works offer historiographical documentation of past eras of Islamic history through textual witnesses that are not otherwise extant. She espouses a 'chronicle as archive' framework, arguing for a more objective use of chronicles as documents that go beyond sectarian polemics to act as 'archives' of now lost material. This book is essential for all scholars working on the written culture and history of the medieval Islamic world, and paves the way for a more nuanced and sensitive treatment of Arabic chronicles.
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