This volume contains 24 papers, presented at the ninth and tenth Colloquium on the History of Egypt and Syria in the Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mamluk Eras, organized at the University of Leuven in May 2000 and 2001. The main purpose of these annual colloquia is to bring together an international audience of scholars from different fields of research, around the central theme of Syro-Egypt's high and late medieval history. Resulting now in a fourth volume of this kind (volume I: OLA 73 - volume II: OLA 83 - volume III: OLA 102), these proceedings again cover areas of research in the fields of medieval sociology, economy, archaeology, codicology, theology and administrative and political history, ranging from the 10th to the late 15th centuries AD. The individual contributions deal with a great number of topics, including the evolution of Syro-Egyptian society, material culture, architecture and archaeological fieldwork, gender, the Crusades, military administration, pious endowments, form and function of Middle Eastern source material and Sufism.