Legal rulings may have been deployed to excuse Mamluk inaction toward Spain’s Muslims

Evidence

Could the quadripartite Cairo fatwas have been intended to point out to opinion in the Middle East, in Egypt above all, that there was no absolute obligation on Muslims to attempt to do something about the plight of Spain’s Muslims, because these people could still continue to worship? If the Muslims of Spain could fulfill their religious obligations at home, then the urgency with which fellow Muslims in other countries needed to come to their assistance was diminished, and in consequence the Mamluk state could the more easily excuse its expedient policy of concentrating on the more immediate problem of the Ottoman threat. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 349

Categorization

• QUESTION: Harvey’s speculation that the Cairo fatwas functioned as a public-relations tool to relieve the Mamluks of obligation is testable against further study of the manuscript — worth chasing as scholarship opens up.
• SEED: Angle: how documents that look like religious guidance can be geopolitical convenience — a comparative piece on fatwas, papal bulls, and senatus consulta as policy cover.