Décrire et analyser les archives du sultanat rasûlide

Description and Analysis of the Archives in the Rasulid Sultanate. The Case of Nûr al-Ma‘ârifFinalized in 2005 by Muhammed Jâzim (CEFAS), the publication of Nûr al-Ma‘ârif has marked a milestone in our knowledge of Yemen’s history, and specially at the time of the rasulid Sultans (626-858 / 1229-1454). This thick book includes of 224 folios containing a lot of unpublished informations, is however difficult to analyze because of the wide diversity of the texts which it is composed of, all coming from the rasulid diwân (administration), and because of the absence of logical organization, either chronological or thematic. Relying on a typological approach, this article tries to understand the reasons and the logic which prevailed while gathering this various documents within one manuscript. Obviously, the primary datas were written down since an older time, probably since the 12th century for some custom tarifs. Nûr al-Ma‘ârif was gathered as a real archives books only at the end of the 13th century, under the reign of Sultân al-Ashraf ‘Umar. A detailed chart of the composition figures as an Annex