In 1422, the Republic of Florence initiated direct trading relations with the “Mamluk” sultanate of Cairo, which at the time ruled over Egypt, Syria, and the Hijaz, and had control over much of the coastline of the south-eastern Mediterranean. This inaugurated a century of negotiations, in which the Florentines became one of the Christian polities that the Mamluks counted among their direct trading partners, with agents active in the coastal city of Alexandria and elsewhere. Mainly trading spices into Europe in exchange for textile products, this relationship was sustained until Mamluk power was eclipsed by the expanding Ottoman empire.

This is the historical framing for the book under review here which, as well as laying out this context, consists of a critical edition and translation into French of the documents preserved in the archives in Florence that attest to this diplomatic relationship. The documents are housed today in two depositories: the State Archive of Florence (Archivio di Stato di Firenze) and the Laurentian Medici Library (Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana). These documents include original decrees and letters drawn up in the Mamluk chancery but also translated copies of these genres preserved in the Florentine registers, alongside instructions issued to Florentine ambassadors and the final reports made by these men. Some of these documents have been edited and studied before, but in re-editing them in this volume, the author is bringing together the corpus in one place, as well as correcting errors made by previous editors.

This volume must be considered a model of what a critical edition should look like. The author presents the materials with utmost care, demonstrating most impressive linguistic skills while moving between documents in Arabic, Latin, and medieval Italian, and providing all the necessary editorial apparatus. The reader is provided with descriptions of the documents’ material form, including measurements of the sheets that made up lengthy scrolls, detail on the vocalization of Arabic text, and informative notes on the content. The notes are lighter for the materials written in Latin and Italian. The editions clearly make up the main part of the work presented in this volume. However, they are framed by an explanation of the theory that lay behind the composition of these kinds of text, drawing from chancery literature from the Cairo sultanate and instructions for the registration of diplomatic documentation in Florence. The author uses this material to great effect alongside the surviving documents; particularly impressive is the detective work done to show how paper manufacturers in the sultanate assembled scrolls of this particular format, cutting them from a larger sheet that conformed to measurements laid out in the chancery literature (pp. 21–8). The similarities and differences between the structure of diplomatic documents in Florence and the Cairo sultanate are also dealt with judiciously. The volume contains beautifully produced colour images of all the Arabic documents, which significantly enhances its utility, illustrating the extravagant use of writing materials involved in the production of such documents by the chancery (dīwān al-inshāʾ). The high-quality editorial work alongside these reproductions will make this an important volume for scholars and students interested in diplomatic relations in the late medieval Mediterranean, and in the histories of the Florentine Republic and Cairo sultanate at large.

This reviewer found herself craving a little more historical interpretation than appears in this book. However, the author makes clear from the first page that this is not the main objective of the present volume, which is revised from only one part of his doctoral dissertation. The interpretative volume will follow, and for this we must wait patiently. A careful reader can find fascinating aspects of historical detail buried in the notes that accompany the editions, and also within the glossary (pp. 517–33), which simply for the way it demystifies aspects of Mamluk-era titulature is in itself a major addition to the field. It might have been nice to see more of the historical detail in the introductions to each edited document, but the author elected to keep these brief. I was particularly interested, for instance, in the way several of the documents show the Mamluk–Florentine relationship being modelled on the Mamluk–Venetian one, which is only reflected on cursorily in the glossary (p. 518). Perhaps this is common knowledge to historians of Mamluk diplomacy, but it merits more prominent comment. Was this the model of trading privilege that European powers seeking relations with the sultanate aspired to? It is my hope that questions like this one will be addressed in the future volume.

Given the care that the author has put into preparing this volume, I have only minor quibbles about style and presentation. The repeated designation of Florence by its poetic moniker “the city of lilies” (la cité du Lys) was initially confusing for a Mamlukist out of touch with the history of this city, though an online search quickly put this right. It is my impression that Table 4 (pp. 35–8) is missing the page numbers for the editions of the documents. This table is the most useful tool available in the book for navigating the editions that follow. However, the columns labelled “Number; pages” (Numéro; Pages) do not contain page numbers for the documents, and for this one has to return to the general table of contents. The addition of page numbers here would have assisted in the usability of what is a hefty tome. I have spotted only very few minor typos (e.g. الشريقة for الشريفة on p. 89, line 82), which given that careful copyediting is not a reputed strength of this publisher, is testament to the author’s eye for detail.

This volume is a crucial contribution to the gradually expanding numbers of edited documentary materials from the period of the Cairo sultanate. The documents published here, alongside the author’s rigorous framing and commentary, provide important insights into trade and diplomacy in the late medieval Mediterranean, as well as into practices of document composition and production, and procedures of interpretation and translation. It should be considered an essential reference work.