The Intellectual Self between the Mamluks and the Timurids: Ibn al-Jazari and His Autobiographical Writings

Almost twenty-five years ago, Stephen Dale hailed Zahir al-Din Muhammad Babur’s Baburnama as a singular example of the rise of humanism in the early modern Islamic world. In his autobiography, Dale observed, Babur not only provided an intimate account of his own life, achievements, and in some cases failures, he also gave life, individuality, and character to his contemporaries. In this paper, I will discuss the autobiographical writings of a much earlier figure, Ibn al-Jazari, whose eminence and fame as a scholar of the Qur’an recitation continued until today. A native of Damascus, Ibn al-Jazari achieved prominence and attained high office in the Mamluk sultanate, but eventually, sometime in 1396, he escaped to the Ottoman lands after he was accused of embezzling the revenues of a waqf that he was involved in administering. After serving the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I for some six years, he entered Timurid service after the Battle of Ankara in 1402 and went to Transoxiana. After Timur’s death, he moved to Shiraz and continued his life there as the qadi of the city until his death in 1429. Ibn al-Jazari’s autobiography allows us to observe how an intellectual with a tainted reputation sailed so easily through three Muslim empires of the fifteenth century. While the intimate, yet often self-absorbed style that Ibn al-Jazari uses in describing himself highlights his own self-perception, his depictions in the three empires populate the fifteenth century intellectual life by giving them life beyond chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and hagiographies. Ibn al-Jazari’s use of historical references in his autobiography gives historical depth to his self-perception, and identity to his intellectual network.