Page - 68 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 01/01

68 | Bärbel Beinhauer-Köhler www.jrfm.eu 2015, 1/1, 65–71 sometimes still can read such texts on city gates and the walls of mosques – written information and architecture are linked. But in most cases of women’s patronage of buildings, one element is lost. The buildings have long been destroyed; they can be reconstructed only from clues in historical texts. TexTs it is common knowledge that the written imperial history was the work of male au- thors. These historians, like the influential Mamluk authors al-Maqrizi (–1442) and al- Qalqashandi (–1418) as well as their predecessors, like al-Qudaci (–1062) mentioned below, dealt with the history of dynasties, had a background as state officials and wrote mainly about califs, sultans, viziers, Coptic patriarchs and Jewish representa- tives.10 here, women were rarely represented if they were not involved directly in state affairs. Even then, it is difficult to identify them, given that it was a matter of status for a woman’s identity to be hidden. Even the most influential woman in Fa- timid history, the sister and successor of al-hakim (–1021), who reigned in the 1020s, is known only by her official title sitt al-mulk (–1023), “mistress regent”. The note on the founder of an important building in Cairo’s topography, the afore mentioned al- Qarafa-mosque, is similar: This is the mosque known today as the Jamic al-Uliya [the Congregational Mosque of the Friends of God]. It is in the Qarafa al-Kubra […] Al-Qudaci said: Qur’an recitators (qurrā) used to gather there. Then the new congregational mosque (al-masjid al-jāmic) was built there. al-sayyida al-Mucizziya built it in the year 366 [976]. She was the mother of al-caziz bi- llah Nizar, the son of Mucizz li-Din Allah. She was an Arab slave called “Warbling” (taghrīd), but named Darzan.11 The patron’s name is sayyida al-al-Mucizziya, i.e. the “lady al-Mucizz”, named after her husband, who reigned at the end of the 10th century. in this function, she has no name of her own. But apart from her name, the historians al-Qudaci and al-Maqrizi gave as much information about her family relations as they could. she began her rise to power as a slave girl with different proper names. Sayyida al-al-Mucizziya herself thus represents a life in the in-between space both inside and outside the inner circle of power. 10 Taqī d-Dīn Abū l-cAbbās Aḥmad ibn cAlī al-Maqrīzī, Kitāb al-Mawāciẓ wa-l-ictibār fi-l-h iṭaṭ wa-l-āt ¯ ār, 2 vol. (Beirut: Dār Sādir, new edition around 1992). Taqī d-Dīn Abū l-cAbbās Aḥmad ibn cAlī al-Maqrīzī, al-Itticāẓ al-ḥunafā’ bi-ah bār al-a’imma al-Fāṭimiyīn al-h ulafā’, ed. Ğamāl ad-Dīn aš-Šayyāl, 3 vol. (Cairo: al-Mağlis al- aclā li-š-šu’ūn al-Islāmīya, 1967–1973). Al-Qalqašandī, Kitāb Ṣubḥ al-acšā fi-ṣ-ṣināc at al-inšā’, 14 vol. (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīya 1913–1919). Both Mamluk authors use important Fatimid or Ayyubid sources, like al-Qudaci (–1062) or ibn at-Tuwair (1220), whose works can be reconstructed via these Mamluk texts. 11 Maqrizi quoted in Bloom 1987, 7.