Introduction

The focus of this chapter is a letter in a manuscript of documents attributed to al-Qadi al-Fadil, the chief secretary of the Ayyubid sultan, Yusuf b. Ayyub ‘Salah al-Din’ (570–89/1174–93), who is best known for having unified Egypt and Syria, for conquering Jerusalem in 583/1187, and for campaigning against King Richard I during the Third Crusade. The thirty-twofolia manuscript containing the letter is housed in the Cambridge University Library under the classmark Qq. 232. The letter that is the focus of my study contains no explicit date and the Ottoman-era manuscript remains unedited.

In the following, I first discuss the importance of the chancery for the Ayyubid confederacy. I then examine the diplomatic and historical content of the letter, arguing for an earlier date for its composition than hitherto proposed by other historians. If my dating of the letter to the year 575/1179 is correct, then the information which it contains points to a shift in the political situation of the Levant, namely the decline of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, the ascendancy of the Ayyubid Sultanate, and the reconfiguration of regional alliances in that year. In addition, the letter contains some rare details on a partition agreement in effect. The Frankish–Muslim partitions were agreements whereby the revenues of a specified territory or town were shared between the two parties to the agreement. Other aspects of this letter also merit attention but will require separate studies.

Until new evidence surfaces, I proceed under the assumption that the letter in question indeed came from the pen of al-Qadi al-Fadil. The contents of the letter eliminate the possibility of a non-Ayyubid context. The only known contemporary of al-Qadi al-Fadil capable of such ornate style and aware of the politic scene in such depth was Saladin's other chief secretary, al-Katib al-Isfahani ‘Imad al-Din (519–97/1125–1201). At present I cannot prove definitively that all the documents in Qq. 232 originate with al-Qadi al-Fadil, and not ‘Imad al-Din, but I have no evidence to refute the claim of the manuscript's copyist, who labelled this manuscript Insha’at al-Qadi al- Fadil. Furthermore, several of the stylistic features and imagery that Ibrahim al-Hafsi observed while preparing his thesis on al-Qadi al-Fadil's letters appear in the letter under examination here.