A critical edition of 'Al-ta'rīkh al-islāmī al-mukhtasar' by Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm ibn 'Abdullāh ibn Alī ibn Abī al-Dam al-Hamawī (583/1187-642/1244)

Abstract

This thesis presents a critical edition of a medieval Arabic text, which is widely known under the insufficiently attested title "al-Ta'rikh al-Muzaffari'.. It is ascribed to a celebrated historian and scholar of the first half of the 7th/13th century, Shihab al-Din abu Ishaq Ibrahim b. abi al-Dam al-Hamawi al-Shafi'i (583/1187-642/1244), 40 a native and Qadi (judge) of Hamah. The thesis consists of two parts, the introductory study and then the text. The introductory study facilitates the understanding of the problems the text raises and clarifies the more important issues surrounding it. The first chapter is intended to serve as a historical background. A brief account, therefore, of the Ayyubid empire, together with a brief history of Hamah, Ibn abi al-Dam's native town, is presented to shed light on the author's time. The second chapter of the introduction is devoted to examining the author's life. The sources concerning this part of the study are few. Some of the author's own works are still missing, others are at present inaccessible. From the obtainable works either printed or in MSS, a reconstruction of the author's life and times has been made. Sections I and 2 of the third and final chapter of the introductory study discuss the reliability of the ascription of the work to Ibn abTal-Dam and the controversial question of whether the title is original, and if it is not, what other title it could have had. The rest of this chapter has been devoted to Investigating and examining the MSS. in which the text has been preserved and transcribed ever since the original was composed. In the absence of the original, I have chosen the oldest and in my opinion, the most complete of the only five surviving copies so far identified and located. This copy, which is referred to in this thesis by the abbreviation Bo, was written in (695/1295) by a native of Hamah, 53 years after the death of the author. All the other four are almost definitely of a more recent date. The second part of this thesis is the text, edited on the basis of the oldest MS. which is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. The text has been transcribed retaining the conventions, orthographic and grammatical of the copyist wherever possible. Additions and modifications have been avoided unless in their absence the sense of the passage is obscured to the point of incomprehensibility. In these cases other copies, A. of Alexandria Municipal Library, E. of Edinburgh University Library, and Rand P2. of Bankipore Public Library were consulted and all differenced between these MSS. , however minor, are shown and detailed in the footnotes. The text, then is supplemented by indices of towns, places, tribes, sects and nations, which are followed by a bibliography and maps.