Notes
Al‑Hamdānī, 1990, p. 320‑321.
al‑ʿAbbāsī, 1981, p. 66‑67.
Ibid, p. 223‑224. For an English translation of the entire poem, see Eagle, 1990, p. 9. For further analysis of this poem and the previous passage, see Heiss, 1990, p. 200‑202. In general, he interprets them to indicate that the imam needed to prove himself in these skills that were important to the values of the local population.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 616. He was among the al‑Ashāʿir who died in a conflict against other tribes in the Tihāma near the village of al‑Ghazālīn in 758/1357. The wider context of this conflict is discussed further below. The al‑Ashāʿir was a tribe genealogically extending from Kahlān b. Sabā, and located in the Tihāma along the Wādī Zabīd. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 78‑80.
Ibid, p. 645. He was among the members of the Qurayshiyya tribe who was killed in an attack by the Rasulid eunuch Ṣafī al‑Dīn Abū Malʿaq in 765/1364. Despite this vowelization of the name given in the text, this tribe probably was the Qurāshiyya, that al‑Ḥajrī describes as a tribe of the al‑ʿAshāʿir in the area of Zabīd in the Tihāma. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 648.
Ibid, p. 711.
Ibid, p. 589. Incidentally, in contrast to the other horsemen, this Rasulid amir did not die in battle, but rather after his house in Aden fell on him in 746/1345–1356. Yet, he is the only one of these four to receive a separate obituary report outside of the main narrative of the chronicle.
Ibid, p. 35‑36.
Ibid, p. 62‑63. This phrase can be translated literally, and perhaps poetically, as, “they were five men who rode from one house” (kānū khamsata rijālin yarkabūna min baytin wāḥidin).
Examples can be found in Al‑Khazrajī in various years over the course of the reigns of the Sultan al‑Mu’ayyad, Sultan al‑Afḍal, and Sultan al‑Ashraf Ismāʿīl, such as, p. 381 (700/1300), p. 465 (713/1313), p. 663 (773/1371), p. 665 (774/1372), p. 684 (781/1379), p. 708 (789/1387), p. 836 (792/1390), p. 892 (797/1394).
For further discussion of the stables, see Smith, 2005, p. 235‑6.
Smith, 2006, p. 24, folio 9a.
Nūr al‑Maʿārif, 2002, I, p. 390‑393.
Al‑Malik al‑Mujāhid, 1987. For further analysis of this book, see Shehada, 2013, p. 148‑155.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 609. This event must have been even more troubling for Qaḍi Jalāl al‑Dīn ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿUmar who was appointed wazir by the sultan on that same day.
Ibid, p. 622. The precise name for this disease is uncertain.
For an overview of the types of exercises involving a lance, see Al‑Sarraf, 2004, p. 172‑175.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 548. A second possible reference to a more informal joust or another type of horse game is potentially alluded to in a report from 761/1359–1360, but the phrase only contains the verb yalʿabū (they play) and consequently nothing more is revealed. Ibid, p. 233.
Ibid, p. 699.
Ibid, p. 762.
Ibid, p. 795‑796. The horses, in fact, were housed alongside other animals such as mules, asses, and elephants, which altogether seems to give the impression of some sort of zoo or military livestock arsenal at the Palace of Gold.
Ibid, p. 820.
For more detailed summaries of the networks and workings of the horse economy in Rasulid South Arabia, see Vallet, 2010, p. 223‑227 and 373‑378, as well as Saʿīd, 1998, p. 306‑308, and al‑Shamrookh, 1996, p. 200‑204.
For example, in the 7th/13th century Ibn al‑Mujāwir describes the Banū Majīd of the region of Taran in the Tihāma as horse breeders (1951, p. 101), and an old horse trade route between Baghdad and Ẓafār (Dhofar/al‑Baleed) and Mirbāṭ (Ibid, p. 263‑264). Newton & Zarins also provide a further description of the lucrative horse trade between al‑Baleed and India, among other Arabian ports on the coast of the Indian Ocean (2014, p. 269‑270), stating that it appears to have started as early as the 6th century (AD) and peaked during the Abbasid period despite medieval period evidence extending into the 6th/15th century.
The administrative documents containing information about the Rasulid horse economy include a collection of texts thought to be written during the reign of Sultan al‑Muẓaffar in the 7th/13th century and placed under the title Nūr al‑Maʿārif fī Nuẓum wa‑Qawānīn wa‑Aʿrāf al‑Yaman fī al‑ʿahd al‑Muẓaffarī al‑Wārif (Anonymous, 2002–2005), a group of land tax documents suspected to have been written during the reign of Sultan al‑Mu’ayyad and entitled by its modern editor Irtifāʿ al‑Dawla al‑Mu’ayyadiyya (Anonymous, 2006), the Royal Crop Register of Sultan al‑Afḍal from 773/1372 (Smith & Varisco, 2008; Varisco, 1991), and another collection of the tax revenues and expenditures of different regions of Yemen written during the reign of Sultan al‑Naṣir Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl in the early 9th/15th century by al‑Ḥasan b. ʿAlī al‑Ḥusaynī with the title Mulakhkhaṣ al‑Fiṭan (Smith, 2006).
Nūr al‑Maʿārif, 2002, I, p. 505.
Ibid, p. 504‑5; Irtifāʿ al‑Dawla al‑Mu’ayyadiyya, 2006, 113.
Nūr al‑Maʿārif, 2002, I, p. 506.
Nūr al‑Maʿārif, 2002, I, p. 504.
Smith, 2006, p. 59, folio 4b.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 715. Unfortunately, Ḥanika is the name of several villages in Yemen so it cannot be geographically pinpointed. Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 715, n. 6.
Ibid, p. 615‑616. Vallet also emphasizes that this report is the first time the Tihāma is mentioned in relation to a convoy of horses headed for the Aden market, perhaps due to the loss of political control over the other horse breeding regions by the mid‑8th/14th century (2010, p. 376).
Fishāl is a town in the Tihāma north of Zabīd along the Wādī Rimaʿ. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 634‑635.
See Vallet, 2010, p. 400‑616; Vallet, 2011; al‑Shamrookh, 1996, 164‑166.
Nūr al‑Maʿārif, 2002, I, p. 504.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 418‑419.
Ibid, p. 822.
Ibid, p. 716. For further background of the role of Karimi merchants in Egyptian‑Yemeni political relations at this time, see Vallet, 2010, p. 518‑527. Burhān al‑Dīn al‑Maḥallī was serving under the titles “Head Merchant” (kabīr al‑tujjār) or “Merchant of the Sultan” (al‑tājir al‑sulṭānī) for the Mamluk court, and returned in 797/1395 as an official ambassador for the Mamluk Sultan al‑Ẓāhir Barqūq.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, 819. Vallet provides further reports from Egyptian sources of horses being given to Rasulids in Egypt from the Mamluk court (2010, p. 296‑297).
Smith, 2006, p. 40, folio 17a. There is a footnote (No. 314) to this passage in the Smith translation indicating that Serjeant suggested these terms to be interpreted as camels (Ibid, p. 81). Nonetheless, Lane Part 8 states a hajīn to be a half‑blooded horse of mixed parents – a father with pure Arabian descent and a mother that is not (1893, p. 3041‑3042). Lisān al‑ʿArab part 15 quotes al‑Azharī as stating a hajīn to be a horse who was born from a female draft horse but with an Arabian father, while a hijān is a white camel (Ibn Manẓūr, 1999, p.43). Lisān al‑ʿArab part 1 states a baḥr (singular of biḥār) to be a horse who runs a lot or very quickly (kathīr al‑ʿadw) (Ibid, p. 325).
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 331.
Ibid, p. 801. The Sultan may have been especially pleased because attached to the bird was a silk cloth with a gold plate that stated the bird belonged to the lord of Egypt or one of his amirs. Ḥays is a town in the Tihāma located south of Zabīd. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 301.
Ibid, p. 819. Similar to the Egyptian gift from the same year, this one also included ten slave girls and ten slave boys, further possibly giving an indication a type of equivalency between animals and slaves.
Ibid, p. 160. Amir Shams al‑Dīn was the son of Imam ʿAbd Allāh b. Ḥamza – Zaydi, but earlier that year he fought alongside Rasulid Amir Asad al‑Dīn to successfully besiege and take over Ṣaʿda, prompting Imam Aḥmad b. Ḥusayn to flee.
Ibid, p. 802.
Ibid, p. 794.
Ibid, p. 800‑801.
Ibid, p. 557.
Ibid, p. 760.
Ibid, p. 828.
Smith, 2006, p. 32‑33, folio 31a. It is important to recognize, however, that at the time the Mulakhkhaṣ al‑Fiṭan was written (beginning of the 9th/15th century) the highlands were no longer under the Rasulid control. This document, therefore, may be better understood as a type of idealized or nostalgic vision of taxation of South Arabia, perhaps reflecting a political reality closer to the turn of the 7th/13th century, rather than a precise record of its then current state. This contextualized interpretation of the information found in the Mulakhkhaṣ al‑Fiṭan is also discussed in Smith, 2006, p. 8, and Vallet, 2010, p. 101‑102.
Smith, 2006, p. 40, folio 17a. In Smith’s translation, in the previous passage al‑khayl is translated as horsemen, while in this passage it is translated as horses. Due to the content of this latter passage involving armor and being sent for service, it seems as though horsemen may be a more appropriate translation.
Al‑Khazrajī, 2009, p. 153.
Ibid, p. 445‑446.
Ibid, p. 781.
Ibid, p. 578.
Ibid, p. 382. In this case the people of Minqadha were among the tribes that were in the Sayd pass located in the central highlands that presumably confronted Malik Ẓāfir upon his return to Sanaa from Zabīd. Minqadha is an area in the environs of Dhamar. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 822.
Ibid, p. 646.
Ibid, p. 646.
Ibid, p. 645.
Ibid, p. 695.
Ibid, p. 697.
Ibid, p. 766.
Ibid, p. 795.
Ibid, p. 798. In this case, the report does not mention his delivery of the horses, but does state that he captured five horses, in addition to four prisoners, from Jaḥāfil tribesmen who had made a raid on Juwwa.
Ibid, p. 702‑3.
Ibid, p. 753.
Ibid, p. 732.
Ibid, p. 821.
Ibid, p. 779‑788.
The sultan wrote the decree for tax alleviation later that year (Ibid, p. 782). This place name refers to a town al‑Ḍiḥi in the northern Tihāma on the Wādī Surdud. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 552.
This group is presumably referring to Arabs who lived along the Wādī Surdud in the northern Tihāma.
Al‑Ḥajrī situates the Banī Ḥafīs in the region of Jaʿfur in Wuṣāb al‑ʿAlī, located in the mountainous area to the east of Zabid. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 278.
Al‑Ḥajrī describes this group as a confederation of tribes with geographical associations from Ma’rib in the east to Ṣaʿda in the north to as far south as Yarīm in the central highlands. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 575.
Al Ghunaym is among the tribes of Radāʿ. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 626.
Ibid, p. 780.
Ibid, p. 788.
Jāzān is a town on the northern Red Sea coast. Al‑Ḥajrī, 1984, p. 171.
Ibid, p. 782.
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