Acknowledgements
This volume has been finalized in the period 2018–20 and results from the themed day, devoted to the relationship between historiography and adab, of the Fifth Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies (Ghent University, July 5, 2018).
Many people and institutions deserve some words of gratitude. These include first and foremost the twelve contributors to this volume. We are grateful for their willingness to participate in this publication project and for making our life easier by appreciating our feedback and adhering to many of our deadlines. We would furthermore like to thank the organizing committee of the School of Mamluk Studies (Frédéric Bauden, Antonella Ghersetti, and Marlis J. Saleh) for giving us the opportunity to organize the Fifth Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies at Ghent University. The staff of Ghent University’s department of Languages and Cultures, especially Ayla Anckaert, Ann Wardenier, and Hilde De Paepe, also deserve to be mentioned and thanked for their immense help with the organization of the conference.
We are grateful to the postdocs of the Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate II project (Mustafa Banister, Rihab Ben Othmen, Kenneth Goudie, Daniel Mahoney, and Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont) for reading and commenting on the introduction to this volume. We also wish to express our appreciation for the constructive feedback we received from the anonymous readers who reviewed the volume’s manuscript for Brill. The responsibility for any remaining shortcomings is the authors’ and editors’, of course.
This conference and this volume were generously funded by the European Research Council (ERC Consolidator Grant “The Mamlukisation of the Mamluk Sultanate II: Historiography, Political Order and State Formation in Fifteenth-Century Egypt and Syria,” Ghent University, 2017–21). We are extremely grateful to the ERC for making this project and by consequence also this volume possible and also for financially supporting its publication in Open Access.
We finally also wish to thank this volume’s publisher, Brill, and to express our continuing appreciation for the professionalism and personal touch of its staff. We are furthermore very proud and grateful that the board of the series Islamic History and Civilizations accepted to welcome this volume in its ranks.
Maya Termonia
Jo Van Steenbergen
Antwerp, June 2020