Abstract
In the establishment of Islamic teaching in pre-modern Arab society, the importance of the role played by the preaching has been widely acknowledged among social historians. However, very little is known about the preachers themselves. In this paper, we focus on Abū al-ʻAbbās al-Qudsī (d. 1466), a prominent popular preacher (wāʻiẓ) in the late Mamlūk period (1382-1517), and attempt to reconstruct his career and personality based on contemporary chronicles and biographical dictionaries. He was a very well-known wāʻiẓ in Mashriq cities, especially in Cairo, Jerusalem, and Mecca, and became quite popular among common people — including women — while at the same time winning the sponsorship of a number of notables and ruling elites. Despite his reputation, however, primary sources reveal that some contemporary historians harbored negative views toward him and his preaching. A series of lawsuits were moreover brought against him, and, as a consequence, he was occasionally prohibited from preaching. Such lawsuits were raised by the ʻulamāʼ of the cities in which he was most active. Previous studies have paid little attention to this kind of event, treating them as no more than isolated cases; however, this paper attempts to examine them in a broader social context. For these antagonistic local ʻulamāʼ, it was in their political interests to maintain power for themselves within their regions, and the fact that al-Qusdī had gained patronage from some ruling elites posed a serious threat to their control. Being a wāʻiẓ in that period was to walk on thin ice; the more he literally became “popular,” the more he was exposed to the challenges of antagonistic ʻulamāʼ.
