Archival Practices and the Codex : A Mamlūk Protocol on Regulating Markets in Damascus and Its Ottoman Afterlife

Abstract This article explores the intersection of archival practices, material philology, and administrative documentation in late Mamlūk and early Ottoman Damascus through an in-depth analysis of the codex as a site for document preservation. Challenging earlier assumptions about the absence of archival institutions and documentation in pre-Ottoman West Asia and North Africa, the authors propose a tripartite framework – transmediation, translocation, and book-born documents – to conceptualize the integration of documentary texts and artefacts into codices as a strategy of preservation. Using the case of a 15th-century shurūṭ formulary housed in the Süleymaniye Library (Istanbul), the study focuses on transmediated text added as paracontent by the Damascene judge ʿAbd al-Qādir ibn Mufliḥ al-Ḥanbalī. Particular attention is given to a protocol regulating trade and gender separation in the Shaykhī and Dahsha markets of Damascus, offering new insights into local governance, endowment management, and the social logics of documentation. The analysis demonstrates the codex’s role in preserving, transforming, and transmitting legal and administrative memory across the Mamlūk-Ottoman transition, moving beyond institutional, Eurocentric paradigms of the archive. By situating documentary and archival practices within interdisciplinary approaches to manuscript cultures, the article reveals the codex as a dynamic locus for the social life of documents.