Coptica v. 16 2017

74 Mark N. Swanson

grew in numbers and importance: they filled the Mamlūk financial bureaucracies, where they led lives that were often full of opportunity but also of danger. 11 They could amass great fortunes, but at the same time they were marginal figures at the mercy of the sultan and the great emirs, in constant danger of dismissal, of arrest and torture, of financial shakedown and the confiscation of property, and even of death. Fakhr al-Dawlah ibn al-Muʾtaman clearly came from a family of the Coptic secretarial class. We are not given his actual name, nor that of his father, but rather titles of the sort borne by Coptic bureaucrats: Fakhr al- Dawlah (“The Pride of the State”) and Muʾtaman al-Dawlah (“The Confidant of the State,” here abbreviated in the usual way as “al- Muʾtaman”). 12 Apparently, al-Muʾtaman had resisted any temptation or pressure to convert; one of our sources indicates that he was a priest, al-qiss al-Muʾtaman—and so we can assume that his son was given a good Christian upbringing. Nevertheless, Fakhr al-Dawlah did convert. He was attracted to a life in the company of the kibār , the “great ones” of Egypt— and conversion to Islam was essential to gain that access. Furthermore, he was attracted to the comforts that such a life had to offer. Taking our sources together, we hear of Fakhr al-Dawlah’s attachment to women and song, to drink and fine clothing, and to boats and horses. A somewhat parallel case, about which we know especially from the Muslim historian al-Maqrīzī, is that of a man named Saʿd al-Dīn Naṣrāllah ibn al-Baqarī, a Copt who converted to Islam and who was one of Sultan Barqūq’s chief financial administrators. 13 He took advantage of his position to amass enormous wealth. We know that he had a great house in Ḥārat al-Juwwāniyyah, a Christian area in the northeast corner of the Fatimid city of Cairo. 14 One day in November 1383, al-Maqrīzī tells us, there was a party at his house:

His womenfolk gathered in his house for a wedding celebration among them. They were wearing pearls, jewels, gold, and silk

11 An extraordinarily helpful list of these Muslim Copts and the positions they held is Carl F. Petrie, “Copts in Late Medieval Egypt,” in The Coptic Encyclopedia . 12 We note that Fakhr al-Dawlah was a common title among Christians; a corresponding title for Muslims would be Fakhr al-Dīn . 13 Saʿd al-Dīn makes an appearance in the Life of Marqus al-Anṭūnī. See Mark N. Swanson, “The Saint and the Muslim Copts: Episodes from the Life of Abba Mark of the Monastery of St. Antony (1296-1386),” in From Old Cairo to the New World: Coptic Studies Presented to Gawdat Gabra on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday (Leuven and Paris: Peeters, 2013), 157-71. 14 Al-Maqrīzī, Taqī l-Dīn Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī, al-Mawā‘iẓ wa-l-i‘tibār fī dhikr al-khiṭaṭ wa-l- āthār , 5 vols., ed. Ayman Fu’ād Sayyid (London: 2002-2004), 3:211-14 (p. 214 for the location of his house).