Book 12

Early Mamluk Diplomacy is based on treaties between the Mamluk sultans of Egypt, Baybars (1260-77) and Qalawun (1279-90), and Christian rulers.
The General Introduction describes the Arabic literary sources in which these treaties have been transmitted. Their status under Islamic law is examined, followed by a description of negotiation procedures, and an account of diplomatic relations with the Christian powers. Three treaties are with the military orders, four with Beirut, Tripoli, the Latin kingdom and Tyre, and four others with Lesser Armenia, Aragon, the Byzantine Empire and Genoa. Each section has an introduction giving its historical background.
The work offers Islamic historians and European medievalists documentary evidence of a kind rare in pre-modern Middle Eastern history, casting light on commercial and social as well as diplomatic relations.

Book 26

The Sudan of the Three Niles

by P. M. Holt

Published 24 March 1999
This work is an annotated translation of the Funj Chronicle, the only full-length Arabic account of the Nilotic Sudan from 910/1504-5 to 1288/1871, produced by a succession of nineteenth-century Sudanese writers. The earlier part is based on a king-list of the Funj dynasty of Sinnar. From the mid-twelfth/eighteenth century an increasingly detailed narrative describes the rule of Hamaj regents, the conquest by Muh ammad 'Ali Pasha's forces and the first half-century of Turco-Egyptian government.
The translator's Introduction discusses the textual history, structure and authorship of the Chronicle, while four Appendixes provide supplementary materials. This is a major source for Sudanese history, to which non-readers of Arabic have previously had access only through the summary translation in Harold MacMichael's History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge, 1992).