New Diplomatic History and Mamluk Studies: Challenges and Possibilities

Abstract

While Mamluk scholars have increasingly studied on the diplomatic relations established between the sultanate and its various correspondents in both the Christian, Mongol and Muslim worlds, they have followed first the traditional diplomatic approach devoted to the study of peace and commercial treaties. More recently they have started distancing themselves from this approach to concentrate on questions of rituals, symbolic and non-verbal communication and various agents involved in the diplomatic process. This was however done without relating to broader methodological framework such as the one proposed by the New Diplomatic History (NDH). In this paper, I therefore would like to link those developments to the NDH and analyze what is, in that historiographic trend, relevant for the source material available in our field. Furthermore, I would like to link the NDH to another methodological approach that I see essential for our field, that of the connected history.

Keywords

• Mamluks
• Islam
• Connected History
• Diplomacy