“A rather small genre”: Arabic Works Against Non-Muslim State Officials

Abstract

Abstract:Muslim authors composed a number of polemics against the employment of non-Muslim state officials in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Egypt and Syria. This essay argues that the majority of these works drew directly or indirectly on a previously unremarked sixth/twelfth century common source. Although the common source cannot yet be securely identified, its existence and influence have significant implications for historians’ understanding of interreligious tensions in late medieval Egypt and Syria and for the