John, Caitlin Lowri; (2024) Cities of the living and the dead: cemeteries in late medieval Cairo and Paris compared. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis is a comparative and microhistorical study of burial spaces in late medieval Cairo and Paris. Far from being disconnected spaces of the dead, cemeteries were in fact integral parts of the city. As such, more than just illuminating the understudied space of the cemetery in the late medieval urban context, the thesis offers a study of the city through the lens of the cemetery. As integral urban spaces, cemeteries reflect much about the city. However, I argue that they were also in many ways exceptional urban places, where operations of social hierarchy and control as well as gender boundaries often differed. This dual approach: (1) what the cemetery reflects of the wider city and (2) how it differs from it, frames the entire thesis. My comparative methodology highlights overlooked similarities across Christian and Islamic cities, while also paying attention to the particularities of individual cities. In doing so, it offers a distinct methodological challenge to lingering notions of an ‘Islamic city’ or a ‘Christian city’. The thesis is divided into six chapters. Chapter 1 provides a macroscopic overview of the cemeteries’ topographies in relation to the wider cities, foregrounding their integral nature. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the burial spaces of kings and sultans and elite women respectively, demonstrating the performative role that tombs played on the urban stage. Chapter 4 stresses the connection between cemetery and city from a different angle, focusing on funerary processions. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the wider uses of cemeteries in Cairo and Paris, arguing that in both they were: (1) difficult spaces for authorities to control and (2) multivalent spaces, offering opportunities for city-dwellers from different walks of life to gather and even at times to challenge the prevailing social order.

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