Staff profile

I’m a historian of the medieval Middle East, in particular Egypt between the tenth and sixteenth centuries. My research focuses on various aspects of documentary culture, especially histories of archiving. For this, I work with original Arabic documents kept in various collections worldwide. I have recently completed my first monograph, Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo. Archives, Waqf, and Society, in which I examine archival practices connected to religious endowments in the final century of Mamluk rule in Egypt (fifteenth to early-sixteenth century). I trace the lives of documents to show how different actors – notaries, judges, emirs, and sultans – had interests in ensuring that records were preserved, were usable, and were faithful records of the properties and endowments they concerned.

I have an ongoing project which focuses on legal documentary practices during the same period, this time through the particular lens of documents preserved by the Qaraite Jewish community of Cairo. Using these records, I am examining the interface between a small minority religious community and institutionalised legal, documentary, and property exchange practices. Through this I aim to draw non-Muslims into a wider picture of Mamluk-era documentary practices.

Before arriving at Durham in 2022, I spent time in various places across the UK and Europe. Growing up in Leeds, I went on to study History at the University of Edinburgh, followed by an MPhil in Islamic Studies and History at the University of Oxford. I received my PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. I spent the final year of my doctoral studies, and a further six months of post-doctoral work, as a fellow at the Annemarie Schimmel Kolleg ‘History and Society during the Mamluk Era (1250-1517)’ at the University of Bonn. I have since spent nearly three and a half years as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Hamburg where my work was funded by the German Research Council (DFG) within the framework of the Cluster of Excellence ‘Understanding Written Artefacts’.

• History of legal practice
• Medieval Documentary Culture
• Middle East and the Mediterranean c. 900-1500
• Religious endowments (waqf)
• The social history of archives

Book review

• Livingston, D. (2023). Review of al-Shishtāwī, Khayrāt al-sulṭān Qāytbāy wa-munshaʾātuhu al-mawqūfa ʿalā al-ḥaramayn al-sharīfayn min khilāl kitāb waqfihi al-maḥfūẓ bi-l-maktaba al-ahliyya bi-Bārīs (Cairo: Dār al-Āfāq al-ʿArabiyya, 2018). ISBN 9789773443832. 282pp. $12.50 paper. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, 31, 236-243. https://doi.org/10.52214/uw.v31i.11636
• Livingston, D. (2022). II. Traversing Archival Divides. A proposito di «Breaching the Bronze Wall» di Francisco Apellániz. https://doi.org/10.1408/106840
• Livingston, D. (2019). Review: Maaike van Berkel, Léon Buskens and Petra M. Sijpesteijn (eds.), Legal Documents as Sources for the History of Muslim Societies. Studies in Honour of Rudolph Peters (Studies in Islamic Law and Society 42), Leiden: Brill 2017, 303 pp. + Index, ISBN: 978-90-04-34372-6. Der Islam, 96(2), https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2019-0049
• Livingston, D. (2017). Review: Jean-Michel Mouton, Dominique Sourdel and Janine Sourdel-Thomine, Mariage et séparation à Damas au moyen âge. Un corpus de 62 documents juridiques inédits entre 337/948 et 698/1299 (Documents relatifs à l’histoire des Croisades XXI). Der Islam, 94(1), https://doi.org/10.1515/islam-2017-0016

Journal Article

• Livingston, D. (2020). Documentary Constellations in Late-Mamlūk Cairo: Property- and Waqf-Related Archiving on the Eve of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt. Itinerario: Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions, 44(3), https://doi.org/10.1017/s0165115320000315
• Livingston, D. (2020). The Paperwork of a Mamluk Muqṭaʿ: Documentary Life Cycles, Archival Spaces, and the Importance of Documents Lying Around. Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā, 28(1), https://doi.org/10.52214/uw.v28i1.8420
• Livingston, D. (2018). Life in the Egyptian Valley under Ikhshīdid and Fāṭimid Rule: Insights from Documentary Sources. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 61(3), https://doi.org/10.1163/15685209-12341455

Monograph

• Livingston, D. (in press). Managing Paperwork in Mamluk Cairo: Archives, Waqf and Society. Edinburgh University Press

Other (Digital/Visual Media)

• Colini, C., & Livingston, D. (2022). 'God will make them rich'...unless her father steals the marriage gift!