Le waqf de la mosquee des Omeyyades de Damas: Le manuscrit ottoman d'un inventaire mamelouk etabli en 816/1413.

• Author: Martel-Thoumian, Bernadette

Le waqf de la mosquee des Omeyyades de Damas: Le manuscrit ottoman d'un inventaire mamelouk etabli en 816/1413. Edited by MATHIEU EYCHENNE, ASTRID MEIER, and ELODIE VIGOUROUX. Beirut: PRESSES DE L'IFPO, 2018. Pp. 741. [euro]75.

Damascenes designate the great Umayyad mosque, the "lighthouse" of their city, simply as al-Jami'. The recent publication of "its waqf makes it now possible to appreciate its impressive patrimony, composed of 337 properties of a differing nature--forty-one properties built in Damascus intra and extra muros and in its district (pp. 60-81), 174 lands that submitted to property tax in Ghuta and Damascus districts (pp. 82-165). 105 properties in ruins (pp. 165-197), and seventeen independent waqfs (pp. 198-201). After the devastation caused by Tamerlane's invasion of Damascus and its hinterland in 803/1401, Sultan Shaykh ordered an inventory of the waqf property of the Mosque and asked the amir Sayf al-DIn Arghun Shah al- (c) AdilT, ndzir al-jami' (the mosque's administrator), to carry it out. The inventory (sarih) was completed and five grand qadis (qadi al-qudat) certified it in Jumada I 816/August 1413 (Table 2, p. 30; Table 1, p. 361; the two tables are the same). Shortly after the Ottomans captured Syria from the Mamluks, in 924/1518, Ottoman authorities made a certified copy of it on parchment, a daftar entitled al-Sahlh al-jamf li-sarlh al-Jamf (for the Ottoman qadis. Table 1, pp. 24-25; Table 2, pp. 362-63, same remark, supra). Since the original al-Sahih of 816/1413 is not extant, the editors of the volume under review used a photocopy.

According to Astrid Meier in 2007 ("Wakf," [pounds sterling]72, 12: 854-60 [not 823-28]), a first edition and a study of al-Sahlh were close to being published ("On peut estimer l'etendue de la destruction [due a Tamerlan] grace a un document qui enumere les biens-fonds de la mosquee des Omayyades et decrit l'etat dans lequel ils se trouvaient alors (a paraitre, edite par S. AtasT et B. al-GabT, Ifpo, Damas"); ibid., 857). Ten years later, Muhammad MutT (c) al-Hafiz published al-Sahih al-jami' U-sarTh al-Jami' ft waqfiyya al-Jamf al-umawT bi-Dimashq (Damascus: Dar Tayyiba, 2017). At that time, the three editors of the volume under review were working on the same document, which they have now edited, translated, analyzed, and published in 2018 with the very similar Arabic title (on the back cover) Awqaf' al-jamf al-umawifi Dimashq: al-Sahih al-jami' U-sarTh al-Jami (c) . The French title "Le waqf de la mosquee des Omayyades" is misleading, because, as they state on pp. 25-29...