Books, Corruption, and an Emir’s Downfall: The Founding of the Maḥmūdīyah Library in Mamluk Cairo

In his topography of the city of Cairo, the historian al-Maqrīzī states that in the year 797 ah/1395 ad, the emir Jamāl al-Dīn Maḥmūd al-Ustādār (d. 799 /1397) constructed a school (madrasa) within which he added “a library unequalled in the lands of Egypt or Greater Syria. It remains to this day. No book is ever lent out to anyone unless the book remains in the madrasa. In this library there are all the books of Islam on every subject.”1 About a year after the founding of his school and library, Maḥmūd al-Ustādār ran afoul of the sultan Barqūq, who ordered his arrest and the confiscation of his possessions. Though Maḥmūd would die in prison in the year 799/ 1397, his library would remain an important fixture in the intellectual landscape of ninth/fifteenth century Cairo as evidenced by the frequency with which it was mentioned in the contemporaneous literary sources. From these traditional sources, a preliminary but admittedly incomplete picture of the history of the Maḥ­ mū dīyah Library can be constructed.2 For example, the