SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This article proposes a new approach to the question why so few Arabic documents have survived in their original archival context. Taking the Mamluk period as a case study it argues that the category ‘archive’ itself needs to be reconfigured away from the idea of fixed archival spaces, or even a Mamluk State Archive, towards archival practices. These archival practices were spread across the Mamluk realms and involved numerous actors including the central bureaucracy in Cairo, individual secretaries and most importantly the small-scale administrations of officers. These archival practices emerge not from the normative and narrative texts, but primarily from a consideration of archival traces on surviving documents.