One thing that has attracted many to the study of the Mamluk Sultanate, from its military-political elite to the large swathes of the society in Egypt and Syria over which it ruled, is the rich historiographical literature from the period. An excellent idea of the wealth, depth and detail of this corpus is provided by Sami Massoud's study of historical writing in the early Circassian period, which is generally taken to have begun with Barquq's first rise to power in 1282 ce. This particular study, however, commences a few years before, when the ground was being laid for the transformation of Mamluk politics. Dr Massoud's work is a reliable, yet preliminary, guide through a dense thicket of writers – some more famous than others – and works, including various ‘editions’ (i.e. variant manuscripts and summations of earlier works by later authors) for a twenty five year period. The fact that this is a “preliminary” study (as stressed by the author himself) does not detract from its potential usefulness and significance for students of Mamluk historiography, as well as for those interested in the intellectual, social, political, military and economic history of the period.

The author unabashedly has adopted the methodology of his teacher, D. P. Little, who in his 1968 study An Introduction to Mamlūk Historiography: An Analysis of Arabic Annalistic and Biographical Sources for the Reign of al-Malik an-Nāṣir Muḥammad ibn Qalā’ūn (Wiesbaden) contributed greatly to our understanding of Mamluk historical writing, albeit for the early Sultanate.Footnote ¹ This technique is basically to break down the annal of a given year's events (ḥawādith) into discreet stories or pieces of information (aḥbār, plural of ḥabar). Each author's rendition of stories was analysed, and they were compared – both by topic and contents – to other authors’ versions of the same year's events. The result of this investigation is several-fold: first, the lines of borrowing from one author to another can be suggested, and thus we learn about the most original sources for reconstructing the history of a period, series of events, or a phenomenon. Secondly, we can gain insight into the strategy of each author in building his work: what did he emphasise, denigrate or ignore; how did he integrate material from different sources and build his account; how (if possible) did he include his own eyewitness evidence and opinions, and how did he use the oral evidence from his contemporaries. Thirdly, grasping the originality, the value of the insight or other positive features of a particular source in a given period can facilitate the decision on which manuscripts are worthy first of publication, which already published works deserve a new and better scientific edition, or which works might even be translated. With regard to a new, proper edition, the present study shows yet again the desperate need for a proper critical edition of Ibn Khaldūn's Kitāb al-`Ibar; although Dr. Massoud emphasises here just one short period, this is of course a desideratum for the entire work.

The author succeeds well in his task, but I confess that this was not an easy read. It probably could not have been different: the present study is a meticulous and detailed survey of each source for the three annals that were picked (ah 778/1376-7, 793/1390-1, 804/1401-2), and since these authors are more-or-less going over the same events, there is obviously a certain amount of repetition. A detailed rendition of the events surveyed means that the prose is dense at times. Yet, on the whole, the presentation is clear and the arguments are measured and generally convincing. It is not, however, for a beginner in Mamluk studies. The decision was made to put much of the evidence, which is broken up into categories (“Political/Military/Administrative Affairs”; “Religious Life”; Social History/Miscellany”; and, “Foreign Affairs), into appendices at the end, to which reference is made in the main text by using numbered abbreviations (e.g., PMA96, RL26, etc.). This may make the chapters more concise, but has the reader flipping back and forth to follow the argument. This was an innovation of the present book vis-à-vis its predecessor and prototype, and I am not convinced that it was an improvement.

Dr Massoud's research shows us that the most seminal Egyptian writers for this period are Ibn al-Furāt and Ibn Duqmāq, although the former's chronicle does not run up to the last date surveyed in this study. Their Syrian counterpart is Ibn Ḥijjī, often through the mediation of his student, Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba. Without denying the great significance of such writers as al-Maqrīzī, al-`Aynī, Ibn Taghrī Birdī (‘Egyptians’), and Ibn Ṣaṣrā (a Syrian), it was this first group of historians who provide most of the information for this period that is cited and reworked by other historians, contemporary and later. The role of Ibn Duqmāq's Nuzhat al-Anām is especially interesting, as he is the most important basis for the great chronicle of Ibn al-Furāt, Ta'rīkh al-Duwal wa'l-Mulūk, which in turn provides most of the information in the Kitāb al-Sulūk by al-Maqrīzī for this period.

Herein lays one possible area that perhaps should have been highlighted: comparing the relationship between historical works in the period under discussion in this book, with that of same works in an earlier time. For instance, in my own work, I have found that Ibn Duqmāq is a major source (although not the main one) for Ibn al-Furāt in the early Mamluk period, not the least in the critical year of 658/1260. As several scholars have shown (cited by Massoud on p. 5), the last mentioned writer is clearly the almost exclusive source of al-Maqrīzī for the first decades of the Sultanate. The continuity of this relationship between three chronicles over a century and a half is a point that might have been emphasised in this present study.

The author is of course correct to draw our attention to the necessity of looking at the information in these chronicles as more than mere raw material for the reconstruction of the period's history, but also as “consciously shaped literary structures” (R. S. Humphreys, as cited on p. 196). Yet as already hinted at by this use of a citation from almost twenty years ago, historians of the Mamluks were certainly aware of the biases of their sources, and their deliberate and unconscious manipulation of the historical material [an outstanding example is D. Ayalon's analysis of al-Maqrīzī's treatment of the Yasa, reprinted in his Outsiders in the Lands of Islam: Mamluks, Mongols, and Eunuchs (London, 1988)]. However, I agree with Dr Massoud's suggestion that a “literary approach to [Mamluk] historical texts” would be a profitable approach for some scholars, assuming – as he does – that attempts to reconstruct the historical past would not be abandoned in the process.

Time invested in reading the book is well spent, not only for students of Mamluk historiography or the early Circassian period, but for those with wider interests in the whole Mamluk period and beyond. Certainly, we are now in a better position to continue the study of the middle stage of Mamluk history. Dr Massoud has helped to lay solid foundations for the investigation of this period, and his efforts should be appreciated by all historians of the Sultanate.