ABSTRACT

As an outbreak of plague was abating in Cairo in June 1419, Sultan al-Muʾayyad summoned the Coptic pope, Gabriel V. Before an assembly of Muslim judges and other scholars, Gabriel was beaten, threatened with death and upbraided because the Christian ruler of Abyssinia was mistreating his Muslim subjects. Then the muḥtasib of Cairo (the market inspector or more accurately ‘inspector of public spaces’; Stilt 2011: 1), Ṣadr al-Dīn ibn al-ʿAjamī, reproved the patriarch harshly because the Christians of Egypt were violating the sumptuary regulations (ghiyār) and failing to show proper deference towards Muslims. After deliberating with the ʿulamāʾ, the sultan decreed that henceforth Christians must no longer be allowed to work in any state administrative bureau. The vizier’s Christian secretary, al-Akram Faḍāʾil, already imprisoned, was then cudgelled and paraded semi-naked in the streets as an example of what awaited any Christian serving in the sultan’s administration. Since some Christian scribes dared to assume the prerogatives of Muslims and rode horses or donkeys, all Christians in Cairo and neighbouring Fusṭāṭ would now have to walk.