Письмо мамлюкского султана о торговле с Йеменом

Восток. Афро-азиатские общества: история и современность. 2022. № 4. С. 241–254.

Iliushina M.

Yemen, as a center of international maritime trade, was one of the most important strongholds of the Egypt in their commercial dealings with India and China during the Ayyubid and Mamluk eras. In the first third of the 15th century the relations between the Mamluk sultanate and the Rasulid state of Yemen began to tense. An attempt to resolve the conflict and to create favorable conditions for the trade on the Red Sea was made by the Mamluk Sultan al-Ẓāhir Ṭaṭar, who ruled for some month in 1421.

Al-Ẓāhir Ṭaṭar expressed his desire to improve the relations with Yemen and to ensure the safety of traders in the Red Sea in a letter to al-Nāṣir Aḥmad (1401-1424), the sultan of Yemen. The text of the letter was compiled by a mamluk bureaucrat and a prominent litterateur Ibn Ḥijjah al-Ḥamawī (1366–1434) and included in his “Qahwat al-inshā▒”, a collection of diplomatic correspondence, published by R.Veselẏ in 2005. Another version of this letter is preserved in an anonymous collection of Mamluk chancery documents (MS Arabe 4440 BnF, Paris), studied by F. Bauden and M. Dekkiche. The third version of the same letter was discovered in Ibn al-Damāmīnī’s (d. 1425) “Shams al-maghrib fī al-murqiṣ wa-l-muṭrib” (MS Sprenger 1223, Staatsbibliothek, Berlin).  

The article starts out with a short history of Ṭaṭar’s political career. Then the main part of the letter shall be translated and it’s three versions compared.  Finally, the study follows the traces of al-Ẓāhir Ṭaṭar’s policy towards Yemen and explores the significance of the letter.

Keywords: международная торговля, international trade, Египет, Йемен, Egypt, Yemen, Султанат мамлюков, дипломатическая переписка, Circassian Mamlūks, al-Ẓāhir Ṭaṭar