Award-winning author Reem Bassiouney deftly explores Egyptian identity and the country’s historical and cultural ties with its ancient neighbours in this novel, an epic multigenerational tale of power, love and revenge.
The focus here is on the Tulunid dynasty of 9th to 10th century Egypt. Unlike two of Bassiouney’s previous works of historical fiction, Sons of the People (2021) and Fountain of the Drowning (2021), Al Qata’i is rife with conflicts on both a local and a broader regional level.
Award-winning author Reem Bassiouney deftly explores Egyptian identity and the country’s historical and cultural ties with its ancient neighbours in this novel, an epic multigenerational tale of power, love and revenge.
The focus here is on the Tulunid dynasty of 9th to 10th century Egypt. Unlike two of Bassiouney’s previous works of historical fiction, Sons of the People (2021) and Fountain of the Drowning (2021), Al Qata’i is rife with conflicts on both a local and a broader regional level.
In the novel’s three stories, caliphs, governors, army commanders, tax administrators, judges and religious scholars hold centre stage as tensions between the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad and the government of Egypt and its people escalate.
The narrative opens with the unearthing of the Ibn Tulun Mosque in 1918, and then goes on to document the life and legacy of the visionary Egyptian leader Ahmad Ibn Tulun over the ninth and tenth centuries. The reader is immediately made aware of both the mosque’s significance in Egyptian history and the eventual fate of the city of Al-Qata’i. Tulun transformed Al-Qata’i, now Cairo, into the heart of a thriving multicultural empire.
According to Roger Allen, the translator, the Arabic title of the 624-page novel, Al-Qata’i, is derived from the verb meaning “to cut”. There is intrigue, adventure, and romance on every page.
Egypt’s new, ambitious ruler wants to understand the past, and has ordered the reopening of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, in which the last prayers were offered during the Mamluk era (1250-1517 AD). Dwellings around the mosque are being cleared to make way for Sultan Ahmad Fuad, a kind man, who has offered to compensate the displaced.
The locals resist the demolition of their houses and wonder why the Sultan cannot find another mosque to pray in. A woman complains to Adil, an archaeologist from the Arab Monuments Department, that this mosque is not a place for prayers, but a home of the sick and indignant. When he pays no heed, she slaps her own face, and mutters that the mosque was built with stolen money, and now people will be praying at the unholy site.
As the workers start clearing the settlement, Adil’s heart misses a beat and he instructs them to go easy on the historical treasure trove. In attendance is a British scholar, who notices a still pristine white wall and exclaims: “Al Qata’i” (Cairo)!
“This must be the house of Saeed ibn Katib al-Farghani,” he informs Adil. Saeed, son of Katib al-Farghani, was the mosque’s Christian architect. In between the scattered stones, the two notice heaps of papers flying around. Adil picks them up and reads a note by al-Farghani in which he mourns the erasing of Al-Qata’i – the city “where the foe and the beloved met”. Looking at the ancient notes from Saeed, Adil knows they will keep him busy for a lifetime. Saeed’s detailed accounts of the circumstances of Ibn Tulun’s life and the enormous building project that he undertook form the novel’s three stories.
The first story is titled Maisoon. She is the beautiful daughter of Judge Yahya ibn Isa. Anas, the bookseller, and the head fisherman’s son, who has fled Alexandria to live in Cairo, and Maisoon are in love. Ahmad ibn Mudabbir, the country’s dreaded tax administrator, who rules with an iron fist, falls in love with Maisoon too. Though already married three times, he is determined to make her his wife. But Judge Yahya would rather have his daughter marry a nobody like Anas than give her away to a tyrant. While Anas and Maisoon are in hiding following their hush-hush wedding, Anas meets Ibn Tulun, the deputy governor. Of Turkic descent and born in Baghdad, he has been sent to Egypt as an Abbasid administrator. Almost immediately, he finds himself confronting the powerful and corrupt Mudabbir.
This is also the period when the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad is striving to regain control of its Muslim territories. Ibn Tulun aspires to raise an army and end Mudabbir’s reign of terror. Anas’ father, Hamza, was whipped publicly on Mudabbir’s orders – and by his own slave Zayid to double his humiliation – when he refused to pay taxes. When Anas points out that Egyptians are not warriors, Ibn Tulun reminds him that they were the finest warriors a thousand years ago. “Tyranny will not find a haven in this country. Tyranny is like a plant with large, flowering branches that can deceive the eye, but has no roots,” he Tulun says.
Ibn Tulun succeeds in toppling the Caliph’s deputies, and then founds the Tulunid dynasty. However, he gets so caught up in his mission that he loses sight of the micro-picture. He ignores the internal power struggles in the Caliphate, which leads to the demolition of his dreams.
The second story titled Ahmad’s Dream consists of accounts of Ibn Tulun’s period as Amir of Egypt and is told by Ja’far, his personal secretary, Asma, his Egyptian wife, and Muhammad ibn Sulaiman, a former retainer who has defected to the Abbsid cause, and returns as a commander of the Abbasid Caliphate. Eventually,Tulun succeeds. The Egyptian people thrive during his regime, the economy prospers, and the grand mosque is completed.
READ MORE: Interview: Reem Bassiouney, author, Al Halwani; The Fatimid Trilogy
In the third story, The Pledge, Sulaiman, returns to Egypt as the head of an Abbasid army determined to erase every trace of Ibn Tulun’s legacy. Bassiouney quotes Sulaiman, who has been recorded by historians, as saying, “I want Al-Qata’i to remain a city with no trace. I wanted every stone to be pulverised into grains of sand, neither covered nor heated, but rather scattered to the winds with no goal or purpose. This city is intended to be forgotten, to be nothing. Should any part of it remain, then we have lost. Should the smallest stone be restored to its former self then there is no hope of eradicating sedition or acknowledging fate.”
As the systematic destruction of the buildings in Al-Qata’i begins, the architect Saeed al-Farghani finds himself in need of a strategy to save the mosque he has designed. Aisha, Ibn Tulun’s daughter by his Egyptian wife, Asma falls in love with a tribal chieftain who fights to salvage what he can of Ibn Tulun’s legacy.
An interesting character in this historical drama is Bahnas, the Pyramid Witch, who is sought out by everyone for advice. She can read people’s hearts, trace lost people, and only accepts cakes as remuneration!
Bassiouney, who teaches sociolinguistics at the American University in Cairo, is the author of The Pistachio Seller, The Ibn Tulun Trilogy, and The Mumluk Trilogy, for which she won the prestigious Naguib Mahfouz Award. She also won the Sheikh Zayed Book Award for Literature for her book, Al Halwani: The Fatimid Trilogy.
Published in Arabic in 2021, Al-Qata’I is a vivid depiction of the struggle to create a more cohesive society in medieval Egypt and the influence of that on the contemporary nation. Allen’s translation appears flawless as it successfully conveys the flavour of the original.
Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.
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