Sports as performance

Drawing on narrative sources, literature, and art, this essay purviews sports and sporting events in Mamluk Cairo through a case study of one particular game, the qabaq horseback archery. It then discusses the use of sporting events in Mamluk celebratory rites from the perspective of power, performance, and production of pleasure. Li Guo (PhD, 1994, Yale University) is Professor and Director of The Program in Arabic Language and Culture, The Department of Classics, University of Notre Dame (Indiana, 46556, USA; lguo@nd. edu). He is the author of Early Mamluk Syrian Historiography: al-Yunini’s Dhayl Mir’at al-zaman (Brill, 1998), Commerce, Culture, and Community in a Red Sea Port in the Thirteenth Century: The Arabic documents from Quseir (Brill, 2004), and The Performing Arts in Medieval Islam: Shadow play and popular poetry in Ibn Daniyal’s Mamluk Cairo (Brill, 2012).