1If we want to improve our knowledge of Islamic history, obviously one of our main tasks is to publish the sources1. Chronicles are by no means the only sources to be considered2, but they are of course one of the first ones, and as they need some special treatment, of which sufficient care has not always been taken, it will be convenient to speak more particularly of them in the present article.

2Naturally the first chronicles which have been published are those which were most easily found in libraries. As European scholars had closer contacts with Christians than with the Muslims, the first chronicle to be published, among those written in the Arabic language, was that of the Copt al-Makīn ibn al-‘Amīd3; the first chronicle by a Muslim author followed only a century later. It was the general history of the Muslim World down to the beginning of the VIIIth/XIVth century by Abū 1-Fidā4, the prince of Ḥamā. (Syria). There is nothing to blame our forefathers having proceeded that way. Knowing almost nothing of Muslim literature, they had to bring to public knowledge first what chance offered them. What is, however, to blame is the frequent continuation of kindred methods — if that may be called method — down to our own times. What could easily be forgiven in centuries lacking an international postal system, improved means of travel and photography cannot be forgiven nowadays. In order to be able to undertake successful editing of Mss. one should be able to understand the task of publishing — what to publish and why; one should have practically complete knowledge of what exists in the libraries of the East and the West, and decide what should be published and published first, and the manuscripts to be used. Much precious work, of course, has been done in this field in the past century and the present. This cannot be underrated. Unfortunately much work has, on the other hand, been wasted in preparing unsatisfactory editions. Perhaps it will be useful to say something more on this point.

3It is nothing new to say that, when one intends to publish an old literary work, one must inquire about the manuscripts, compare and collate them, decide which appears to be the best, and, while making his edition from it, note the significant variations. A few years ago, there was an edition of the Mir’āt al-Zamān of Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī5 prepared in Hyderabad (India) with the collaboration of a Western scholar: of course I must hasten to assure our colleagues in Hyderabad, not to speak of the Western scholar, who is dead, that I have no desire to specially single them out, as I know that they have done much useful work in the field of editing. I only happen to choose the example of the Mir’āt al-Zamān because, as will be seen, much can be learned from it. The Mir’āt al-Zamān is an important chronicle, and the idea of providing an edition of it was a good one. Half a century ago, an American scholar, Jewett, had made a facsimile edition of that part of the Mir’āt which comprises its last one-and-a-half century. This edition is now difficult to find, and the facsimile edition is by no means equivalent to a printed one, unless the manuscript is an extremely good one. The manuscript used by Jewett was a very bad one, not because of the writing but because some pages are disorderly and disarranged and above all it lacks a lot of things which are to be found in other manuscripts6. Thus it was advisable to consider Jewett’s edition only as yet another manuscript still leaving room for the study of other. Unfortunately that was not done. The Hyderabad edition of the Mir’āt improves on Jewett’s only in that it is easier to read, but is a misleading one in that it suggests to the reader that this text is the genuine text of Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī, which is by no means the case.

4Now coming to something less self-evident, chroniclers can be divided into two kinds, or rather in their works there are two kinds of parts. Sometimes the author writes about events and matters on which he is the first to write, whether he was himself a witness or whether he heard the story from others; and sometimes he only copies, paraphrases or abbreviates the narration of a predecessor. It needs no explanation to say that in the first case his work is of primary importance to us, while in the second case what we must do is to look for the predecessor’s work, even if it is more difficult to find or less agreeable to read. Now it may be that this predecessor’s work no more exists, or at least is no more to be found in the known libraries; in that case the later author, though not the original one, is as important for us as the original one7. Thus the first thing to be done, when one happens to study a chronicle, is to see whether he is, or at least whether he is for us the equivalent of, an original author. In most chronicles, some parts are, or are to us, original, and others not. Our first care must be to make the distinction clearly. Now, coming back to Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī’s Mir’āt al-Zamān, an easy comparison shows that, for the first half of the VIth/XIIth century, he almost only reproduces Ibn al-Qalānisī’s History of Damascus and Ibn al-Djawzī’s al-Muntaẓam, while for the period of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s reign he draws almost exclusively on ‘Imād al-Dīn’s al-Barq al-Shāmī8. Ibn al-Qalānisī was unknown in Jewett’s time, but was published a few years later by Amedroz, and has been translated into English and French9; Ibn al-Djawzī was known, but not published (he has now been published in Hyderabad)10; of ‘Imād al-Dīn’s only three fragments are known to exist, but the main part of the al-Barq al-Shāmī is reproduced, though slightly shortened, in Abū Shāma’s Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn11; so that it may be said that for the whole of the VIth/XIIth century the value of the Mir’āt is very meagre. On the contrary, the part dealing with the author’s time (d. 653/1255) is of course original, and the part dealing with the Vth/XIth century, which draws on the History of Hilāl al-Ṣābī, which is lost, and the Continuation of it by his son Ghars al-Ni’ma Muhammad, which is also lost, is of primary importance, the more so because no other author seems to have ever made use of the very detailed narratives of Ghars al-Ni’ma. Thus, the Mir’āt being of such a length that a complete edition would take much time, and three-fourths of it being practically useless, what was urgent was to edit the Vth and the VIIth centuries. The VIIth forms part of Jewett’s and Hyderabad editions; the Vth remains unedited and unhead of12.

5The Mir’āt in its turn was one of the chronicles on which later historians drew most heavily. It was continued by al-Yūnīnī. Of al-Yūnīnī’s chronicle two very different redactions exist: the Western scholar already mentioned managed to have a separate edition of the first years of both the redactions made after that of the Mir’āt in the Hyderabad series, without any comparison of the useful manuscripts, and without nothing being said which could suggest that the editor knew the work to be going down to the year 711 A.H.; unfortunately, the last part, as could be supposed, is the most original and the most important one, the first one drawing on predecessors whose works have only been partially preserved13.

6A sound historical method and even the simple care, I dare say, of not wasting time would have eliminated such defects. Frankly speaking, it is true to say that to make such a choice and comparison of sources, as is suggested, is not always an easy task. It might be, if there existed good repertoriums of sources, such as we have for some European countries, and if there had been made, for each section of Muslim history, previous studies in the above-indicated spirit. Indeed there is no such repertorium and there are very few such studies. In my book La Syrie du Nord à l’époque des Croisades, Paris 1940, I tried to show that such a study should be made in the field of Syrian history for the VIth/XIIth and the VIIth/XIIIth centuries, and this study, although too short, has value, with the exception of a few corrections and additions which should be made. Although in some other works critical bibliographies are now given14, it is difficult to say that in so doing the exact desired method is observed, that is the constant endeavour of discovering the sources of each work, thus determining what are the original and important works to be consulted first. As for the repertories, it is well known that C. Brockelmann’s History of Arabic Literature15 is a repertory of all existing works, their manuscripts, editions, translations etc., or at least in so far as it was intended to be such a repertory. But the task was too heavy for a single man, and historiography was not a field in which Brockelmann could claim to have specialised. His method in classifying the historical works is purely literary, or rather arbitrary, and even this method he does not follow, because in each paragraph he gives the entire list of writings of the authors he chooses to cite, whereas only some of these writings can be placed in the mentioned category.A historian would have grouped the works (and not the authors) in such a way as to put together all sources to be used for each section of History. The defect would not have been very serious if the titles of Arabic works always meant what the author wanted to say (which is well known not to be the case), and if Brockelmann’s Geschichte had had a subject-index, of which he does not seem to have any idea. Still worse, the Geschichte is full of errors and lacunae. The result is that it must be considered impossible to make out one’s bibliography of sources by using Brockelmann only; it can at the most provide a first approach, and the information thus gathered must always be completed and checked. Professor Franz Rosenthal published a few years ago a very interesting History of Muslim Historiography16, but, although providing a deep insight into the cultural side of Muslim historiography, it was not intended to be a methodical repertory of sources for historians. And there are no other works worth mentioning. Thus in most cases, where special studies have not been previously attempted, one must do the whole work himself, from the beginning to the end. What I want to stress is that this work must be done even by scholars only willing to edit texts. One cannot edit a historical text in the same way as a literary one. The choice of what is to be published and what is not or what can wait, depends on a comparison of the information contained in, and the interrelation between, the sources whose appreciation cannot be obtained without a good knowledge of all of them, whether edited or in manuscript. The lack of these conditions explains why so many editions provided by learned scholars and Arabists are deceptive irrespective of the fact whether the choice was bad or the historical treatment defective.

7When such a text is being edited, what is of importance to the historian is not only to provide him with the textual, linguistic and historical explanations which help him in understanding the narrative17, but also to give him the references to all other sources, I mean the original sources, not the bulk of compilations, and which of them (if there be any), were known and used by the author now edited, and in what way. If there is some doubt about it, with what other works the present one must be compared, because of common information found in them, in order to discover what are their source or sources.

8Unhappily it is the case that such a method has very seldom been followed. I need not go into further details here, but, bearing in mind the above consideration, I shall review the main chronicles which are preserved for the period beginning from the middle of the IVth/Xth century (that is, after the great works of Ṭabarī, al-Mas‘ūdī, Ṣūlī, etc.) to the end of the VIIth/XIIIth, in order to find out what are our precise needs in the field of editing for this period. My reason in beginning with the middle of the IVth/Xth century is that for the preceding period, which is considered to the classical period of both Islamic History and Islamic literature, the preserved historical works, which are of great importance but not very numerous, have been, generally speaking, correctly edited. On the contrary, the historical literature of the following times, which is much more ponderous, but also much more scattered, and which deals with periods that were too often considered as lacking in interest, is less well-known and less well-edited. Nevertheless it is impossible in this paper to study the whole bulk of Mamlūk historiography, and it will be alluded to it only in so far as it preserves original information about previous times. For the late Middle Ages, Arabic literature becomes also less interesting for the history of the non-Arabic speaking peoples of the Muslim East, and it may be less attractive to some of the readers of this Journal.

9To start with the historiography around the Caliphate, which, in the first half of our period, is more wide-sighted than any other, it is well-known that, for two centuries after the death of Ṭabarī, some kind of a continuation of a semi-official character of his History was kept up. This is the collective work of a learned family of the heathen city of Ḥarrān in Upper Mesopotamia, the elder members of which were even no converted to Islam, but all of whom held high offices in the Caliphal administration. Ṭabarī thus was continued, truly speaking, with quite another angle, by Thābit ibn Sinān, of whose work only a small bit has so far come to light; it is in the possession of Prof. Bernard Lewis of the University of London18, who has been prevented by the Second World War from completing the edition he had begun to work upon, but who, it is hoped, will find time to resume it. In Thābit’s life-time his contemporary and compatriot Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī, main secretary to the Caliph, devoted to the history of the first Buyids an eulogizing work which came to be known as the Kitāb Tādjī, a part of which has recently been discovered and will, it is hoped, be published19. Thābit’s and Abū Isḥāq’s families became interrelated by marriage, and their common grandson Hilāl al-Ṣābī, in the second quarter of the Vth/XIth century, wrote the continuation of his ancestor’s chronicle down to 447 A.H., he in his turn being continuated, down to 478 A.H., by his own son Ghars al-Ni‘mah Muḥammad, already mentioned20. Of Hilāl al-Ṣābī’s work only a small portion, covering about three years, has been hitherto discovered and edited by Amedroz21, and of Ghars al-Ni‘ma’s work nothing at all has been found. These works were very lengthy written as day-to-day accounts of the events known to the authors, and this characteristic explains why no manuscript seems to have been seen or consulted by any historian later than the middle of the VIIth/XIIIth century; nevertheless, it is possible that one day some fragments of them come to light, and the scholars should bear in mind the interest such a discovery would have, and look for the works in Eastern libraries. So long as these momentous works remain unknown, the only thing we can do is to depend on those among their successors who made the most extensive use of them. We have already discussed the primary importance of Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī’s Mir’āt al-Zamān in that respect22. Before, his grandfather Ibn al-Djawzī in his al-Muntaẓam had made use of the same sources, but, being not interested in non-Iraqian history and, even there, dropping many significant facts, he is not so useful for us as is his grandson. To the end of the IVth/Xth century, the most important work for us is of course the Tadjārib al-Umam of Miskawayh, with its continuation by Abū Shujā‘ al-Rudhrāwārī, the first of whom wrote in the Buyid times, the second at the beginning of the Seljuq rule23; there is no doubt that they both made very extensive use of the works of Thābit and Hilāl, though they dropped many details which seemed of no interest to them, and rewrote the whole with the literary and moralizing aim in view. In any case, since their work comes to an end with the year 388 A.H. we can only rely for later times on more recent compilations. Before Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī another writer appears to have been equally important, that is, Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Malik al-Hamadhānī, who wrote around the year 500 A.H.24. Strangely enough, only the first part of his chronicle has hitherto been discovered, and that in a Maghribī manuscript; it has now been published in the Mashriq25; but the chronicle which was known to many later compilers, might be lying hidden in some Eastern libraries, and that alone would constitute an important research work for scholars in those countries. Of course all surviving parts of these works should be compared with one another in order to complement each other; in that respect a few minor chronicles may also be of some interest, among which I should like to mention the general History forming the twelfth and last part of Ibn Ḥamdūn’s encyclopaedic Tadhkira (middle of VIth/XIIth century), edition prepared in a doctorate thesis, Paris26.

10A new author must be introduced here, who is one of the greatest historians in the Muslim world, although not always considered as such i.e. Ibn al-Athīr, the author of the al-Kāmil fīl-Tārīkh. Of the Kāmil there exist numerous manuscripts and four editions; however none of these comes up to the standard as none of these has been made by comparing all manuscripts. Above all in none of these has been considered the main difficulty of the Kāmil for historical purposes. Ibn al-Athīr was a remarkable man. The bulk of his information, even dealing with very distant and remote parts of the Muslim world, is astonishing, so that there is not a single Islamic country for whose history the Kāmil is not a valuable source ; and in many cases it is the principal one, sometimes even the only one. But, contrary to most Muslim historians, he does not quote his predecessors verbatim, but intermingles them and re-writes them in his own manner, worst of all he does not even mention, with very few exceptions, who are the authors whose works he uses as his sources. The result of this method is that, if we read the Kāmil alone, we cannot know from where the author derives his information, nor can we consequently be sure of its value. This being the case, the reader will agree that an urgent need of our studies is the preparation of a critical edition of the Kāmil (or at least of that part which is a continuation of Ṭabarī) constituting not only the ordinary work of establishing the text through comparisons of various manuscripts, but above all the comparison of the Kāmil with all other sources on the subject, whether original or later compilations, in order to determine the origins and the historical value of Ibn al-Athīr’s information and his own method of rewriting and rehashing. As long as we do not possess such an edition, which should be prepared, say by a small group of scholars working together, we cannot make the correct use of the Kāmil; and run the risk of committing heavy mistakes.

11Coming to the historiography of the Muslim world on a country-wise basis, I shall not say much about Iran, partly because I have dealt with it elsewhere27, partly because in our period Iranian histories and chronicles are mostly written in Persian. Of course our needs about Persian historiography are the same as about Arabic historiography, but we cannot speak of everything at the same time. The last important preserved historical work in the Arabic language in the East Iranian territories is the eulogizing history of Sulṭān Mahmūd of Ghazna by al-‘Utbī, of which there exists no good edition. In the next century, Ibn Funduq al-Bayhaqī, who wrote both in Arabic and in Persian, chose to write in Arabic his seemingly important general history called Mashārib al-Tadjārib, thus named because it was inspired by Miskawayh’s Tadjārib al-Umam; unfortunately the Mashārib, which was lastly known to Ibn al-Athīr in the beginning of the VIIth/XIIIth century, probably did not survive the Mongol invasion, although a discovery, which would be important, always remains possible. In the Iranian West there was composed at the end of the VIth/XIIth century the Akhbār Dawlat al-Saldjūqiyya of which Muhammad Iqbāl provided us with a satisfactory edition at Lahore. With the Iranian West and East, together with Iraq, deals the History of the Seljuqs by ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfāhānī, who wrote it in Syria somewhat earlier; it was edited in a slightly abridged form by his compatriot al-Bundarī half a century later. The original work is, however, also preserved. This original work hardly deserves to be published after Bundarī’s, but a careful comparison of both should be made28. Lastly we must recall the well-known life of the Khwārizmshāh Djalāl al-Dīn Mangubartī (Mankubirnī) by his secretary Muhammad Nasawī29.

12For the history of Iraq in the last century of the ‘Abbāsid Caliphate, there existed an important work by Ibn al-Sā‘ī, of which only a small part has been so far discovered and published30; everything of it did not disappear in the Mongol flood, for it was known to Ibn al-Fuwaṭī, a later historian (whose Baghdād Chronicle has been published by the same editor)31, and to al-Dhahabī (see infra)32 and some others. It may be hoped that some new fragments will appear here or there one day; in any case they must be looked for33.

13For the history of Upper Mesopotamia, there exist two important works, one by Ibn al-Azraq al-Fāriqī, the first half of which has now been edited34, (the second half, it is hoped, will be edited by two English scholars), and the second by ‘Izz al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād, about whom see below.

14Syrian historiography does not seem to have been of any importance before the time of the Crusades. Of course one may recall the history of the Arab-Christian Yaḥyā al-Anṭākī, who continued the work of his Egyptian ancestor Sa‘īd or Eutychius ibn Biṭrīq, but who wrote in the Byzantine city of Antioch, about the middle of the Vth/XIth century. A good edition of this work has been published in the Patrologia Orientalis35. After him many Muslim authors wrote local chronicles, most of which, however, are lost36. The only extensive work to be preserved from Syrian historical literature prior to the reign of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Ayyūbī is the so vivid Damascus Chronicle of Ibn al-Qalānisī which, as has already been said, has been published and translated into two Western languages37. Of the others a glimpse may be had through the résumé (which I edited about twenty years ago)38 of al-‘Aẓīmī, a contemporary of Ibn al-Qalānisī, himself the author of a lost larger history of Aleppo, and through later chronicles and historical works whose value lies in the preservation of this scattered material. Chronologically the first to be named is the Bustān, an abridged chronicle from Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s time, which I edited about the same year as al-‘Aẓīmī39. Then comes a very important work, a general history of the Muslim world from a Syrian and Shī‘ite point of view, by Ibn Abī Ṭayyi’, a native of Aleppo, in the beginning of the VIIth/XIIth century. This History in its turn, partly because somewhat heretical in character, has not been preserved, although some part of it, at least, was still known in Egypt about 800 A.H. and perhaps later. However, from this work very extensive quotations concerning Nūr al-Dīn’s and the beginning of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s reigns are to be found in the Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn of Abū Shāma (a fact already noticed by many scholars); and for the earlier half century, not noticed for long, in the great work of the much later Egyptian historian Ibn al-Furāt40. Of Ibn al-Furāt’s a few volumes dealing with the old periods have been preserved and almost the whole (but for Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s reign), of the volumes dealing with the VIth/XIIth and VII/XIIIth centuries, as well as those bearing on the lifetime of the author (end of VIIIth/XIVth century). This last, which of course bears genuine testimony to the events of that time, has been correctly edited41. The volumes giving the history of the VIIth/XIIIth century are far less useful to us, as most of the information contained therein is derived from preserved chronicles, of which we will speak later and it is to be regretted that the editor of the above-mentioned volumes has spent much of his time in editing the last of them, rather than publishing the earlier volumes which constitute original sources42. As for the volumes dealing with the first half of the VIth/XIIthe century, it has recently been proposed to edit them, but they remain hitherto practically unknown to the great majority of scholars. Of course the same cannot be said of Abū Shāma’s extracts from Ibn Abī Ṭayyi’, of which we will be provided with a good edition on the completion of the new edition of the Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn. Lastly some other quotations are found in Ibn Shaddād’s al-A‘lāq, for which see below.

15A second great Aleppo historian, who lived generation after Ibn Abī Ṭayyi’ is Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-‘Adīm. Although the name and one of the works of this author have long been known in scholarly circles, even this work has not so far been completely edited. Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-‘Adīm has written two great historical works. One of them is the Zubda, a history of his native town down to his own times, some parts of which were edited by different scholars43, while the last century, still unedited, was translated, very badly indeed — in French half a century ago44; a complete edition has by now been taken in hand by the Syrian scholar Sāmī Dahhān who, it is hoped, will bring it quickly to an end45. But for our purpose the main work of Ibn al-‘Adīm is his Bughya. This is a biographical dictionary of the illustrious men of Aleppo, which one could believe is more or less on the same lines as Ibn ‘Asākir’s History of Damascus or al-Khaṭīb’s History of Baghdad, that is devoted only to notices of learned or pious people. Indeed Ibn al-‘Adīm intended to rival these two works, but what he achieved is something partly different. First, he gave a much larger place in his own work to all kinds of persons and problems; secondly he inserted a lot of quotations from earlier chronicles, which he used while compiling both the Zubda and the Bughya, but cites them only in the Bughya. It is not sure that the work was ever finished, and in any case only some volumes of it were preserved two centuries later and are still extant. Only quite recently was attention paid to them46, and it is to be hoped that Dr. Dahhān, alone or with some help, will be able to publish the whole when he has done with the Zubda, as both works must be read together. Lastly, a third Aleppo historian must be mentioned, of whom more will be said later, that is ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn Shaddād, who, in his al-A‘lāq, combined geographical, administrative and historical data relating to the provinces of Syria, Palestine and Upper Mesopotamia47.

16Outside Aleppo three almost contemporary chronicles need be mentioned for the purpose of our present study; these are by Ibn Abi l-Damm, Ibn Naẓīf, and the Tārīkh Ṣāliḥī by Ibn Wāṣil — all three from the city of Ḥamā. But only the first one having actually written his chronicle there. About Ibn Abī l-Damm there arises a question: what is preserved of him consists of an abridged general history down to the reign of al-Muẓaffar of Ḥamā and the year 629 A.H.48. However, quotations in the Mufarridj of Ibn Wāṣil (see below) and even in a few European works of the XVIIth century, taken from a manuscript in the Escurial, testify to the existence of a much larger history, also dedicated to al-Muẓaffar and named after him, which Ḥājji Khalīfa either knew or at least knew to have existed49; its mention in the manuscript catalogue of Ayā. Sofyā, Istanbul, is an error, and, since the work is no more to be found in the Escurial, it must be considered as lost. However, it is known that many manuscripts in the Escurial were destroyed by fire at the end of the XVIIth century, but fragments of them still survive in uncatalogued fragmentary manuscripts in the library. An inquiry should be made there, with the possible result of discovering remains of Ibn Abī l-Damm’s greater work, which are believed to be of some interest. As for Ibn Naẓīf, the work, preserved in a unique manuscript in Leningrad, has quite recently been published in photostat by a young Russian scholar50. It bears great resemblance with the Bustān. Lastly, the Tārīkh which Ibn Wāṣil51 dedicated to his master al-Malik al-Ṣāliḥ in Egypt is also an abridged universal history. While none of these chronicles brings much new material to our knowledge, nevertheless a comparison of their contents with the other preserved sources shows that their authors also utilized a few others, not now preserved, which only a joint reading of these chronicles may help to precisely fix. Thus, if Ibn Abi l-Damm and the Tārīkh Ṣāliḥī do not deserve a complete edition, in addition to Ibn Naẓīf (more important for the Ayyūbid period), they deserve at least a joint study.

17If, for the time being, we leave Syria and turn to Egypt, to return soon to the later historiography of both Syria and Egypt, we are faced with still more difficult questions. The period under examination in Egypt is that of the Fāṭimid rule, of which the orthodox later régimes tried to suppress all evidence. In that way many works were lost, though some were concealed to reappear later when people became interested in past Egyptian history; some preserved in foreign countries, where only contemporary scholars found them out. However, as for chronicles, in the present state of things, next to nothing has directly come to us from the Fāṭimid historiography. What we know we owe to later compilers; first of all to al-Maqrīzī, who wrote only in the IXth/XVth century his invaluable Khiṭaṭ Miṣr and some other works. But it is difficult for us even to use Maqrīzī’s compilations owing to lack of a good edition. The only complete edition of the Khiṭaṭ is full of errors, typographically inconvenient to consult, and totally lacks index in a kind of book which cannot be consulted without such an index. The critical and annotated edition which was begun by Professor G. Wiet52 was stopped by the First World War and subsequent events: it must be resumed.

18As for the history of the Fāṭimids by the same author, it was long believed that only the opening chapters had survived53, and this part has been edited twice54. In 1936 I had the good luck of discovering a complete manuscript, which, however, has only recently been published (Cairo)55. Other late authors namely the above-quoted Ibn al-Furāt (only for the VIth/XIIth century), al-Qalqashandī and Ibn Taghrībardī enable us to complete our knowledge of the same sources which were used by al-Maqrīzī, Ibn Taghrībardī’s Nudjūm and al-Qalqashandī’s Ṣubḥ al-A‘shā have since been edited56, but not the relevant chapter in Ibn al-Furāt. The main source which was used by them and not by the earlier writers is Ibn al-Ṭuwayr who had composed under Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn a most valuable history of the last Fāṭimids and had given an account of their administrative system57.

19Going back to the older works, the most important chronicle for the first fifty years of the Fāṭimid rule in Egypt was that of al-Musabbiḥī. Written by way of a political diary, it was so long and uneasy to consult for ordinary readers of hasty compilers that no complete manuscript of it is likely to have survived the author, though in the time of Maqrīzī substantial parts of it could still be found with different persons. Whatever be the case, only a fragment of it is preserved today in an Escurial manuscript; detailed as it is, it gives much valuable information about the life in Egypt; only a small portion has since been published58; the remaining should also be studied and published59. No other extensive history of Egypt with the exception of Ibn Muyassar’s Continuation of al-Musabbiḥī’s, truly in a much more concise form, is preserved before the second half of the VIIth/XIIIth century; about one half of it exists in a single manuscript, which has been edited60, but there has been no attempt to supplement the information contained in the missing parts. This supplement is rather easy to obtain through two works: one the Tārīkh al-Duwal al-Munqaṭi‘a by the Egyptian Ibn Ẓāfir al-Azdī, who flourished during Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn’s reign. This work deals with all past dynasties, but is of particular value for the history of the Fāṭimids, for which his sources were the same as those of Ibn Muyassar; the second is the encyclopaedic work of al-Nuwayrī (see below) whose part, treating of the history of the Fāṭimids, is based on Ibn Muyassar, including those parts which have not come down to us61. Unfortunately, the Duwal has been edited only recently (Ferré, Cairo)62. As for al-Nuwayri’s work an edition is in progress63, but owing to the bulk of the work and the slowness of editing, it is likely that we all shall be no more before the volume on the Fāṭimids could be published. It would have been more advisable to decide which parts were to be the most useful and urgently published than to undertake such a lengthy enterprise as a whole. In the same period as Nuwayrī’s (first half of VIIIth/XIVth century), a Mamlūk officer, Ibn al-Dawādārī, wrote a general history, the sixth volume of which is devoted to the Fāṭimids; although the extracts from the original sources it preserves are much more important for the Maghribine than for the Egyptian period of the Fāṭimids, there can be found a few supplements to other existing Fāṭimid histories, and we may be satisfied that, after having remained quite unknown, this chronicle, I mean the Fāṭimid part of it, has now been edited64. (For the ninth part part see below.)

20The Ismā‘īlis themselves, during and after their supremacy in Egypt, seem to have written more on Ismā‘īlian theory than history. As late as the IXth/XVth century, a Yemenite dā‘i Idrīs, composed a general history, of which a photostat copy exists in England, but which does not seem to yield as much original material as might have been expected.

21Another kind of chronicle to be mentioned here is the History of the Coptic Patriarchs of Alexandria, the collective works of a team of authors down to the VIIth/XIIIth century. The narrative very often extends beyond the pure ecclesiastical history, and is of real value for the knowledge of popular life. Unfortunately the edition, which had been under-taken half a century ago for the Patrologia Orientalis by Evetts65, and has since been resumed by the Coptic Archaeological Society, has made very slow progress and the two last centuries of it remained hidden in the Paris manuscript (until a recent time)66. From the time of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, Egypt and Syria were united under the same régime, which situation endured until the Ottoman conquest. From that time also their historians are practically the same, although here and there a Syrian or an Egyptian group might have attained distinction. It has already been said that for the life of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn the main source is the al-Barq al-Shāmī of ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, but only three fragments of it were extant, and the remaining work was known only through the use which was made of it, very extensively indeed, by Abū Shāma and, to a less extent, by all other writers about the great Sulṭān. Nevertheless, for the sake of comparison, those three fragments should be edited, the more so as they preserve many official letters67. Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn had another biographer in the person of Bahā’ al-Dīn ibn Shaddād of Mawṣil, not to be confused with the Aleppo scholar ‘Izz al-Dīn ibn Shaddād. The work is well-known and has been edited68.

22Of the works of Ibn Abī Ṭayyi’, Ibn al-Athīr, Ibn Abī l-Damm, Ibn Naẓīf, Sibṭ ibn al-Djawzī and Kamāl al-Dīn ibn al-‘Adīm, who wrote in the time of the Ayyūbids, much has already been said69. But other authors, who wrote some time after the fall of the Ayyūbids, under the early Mamlūks must also be considered. The History of the Christian Ibn al-‘Amīd was, as has been said above, the first to be known to the European world; but the edition stopped at the year 525 A.H. The published part was of an abridged character and was consequently neglected by later scholars; it was only quite recently that I paid attention to the unedited part and could publish it70. The valuable Dhayl written by Abū Shāma to his Rawḍatayn has been edited recently71. But the main source for the history of the Ayyūbids is the Mufarridj al-Kurūb of Ibn Wāṣil, the same author who in his younger days wrote the Tārīkh Ṣāliḥī quoted above. The story as to how this work came to notice or rather did not attract notice, is very interesting. The Mufarridj is by far the most detailed, the most richly informed, the most intelligent narrative we possess on the period of the Ayyūbids. It lay ignored in four good manuscripts in such well-known libraries as that of Paris (2 copies), Cambridge and Istanbul. However, almost no one paid attention to it, and, when the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres planned the Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, including in it the Arabic historians who had told of the Crusades, the name of Ibn Wāṣil was forgotten72. This may seem strange but the reason is obvious. Ibn Wāṣil had a younger compatriot in Ḥamā, who was none else than the prince Abū l-Fidā. Abū 1-Fidā had an interest in history, and he wrote a general History of Islam which, for the period of the Ayyūbids, merely shortens the narrative of his predecessor : as he was a prince, he had a number of manuscripts made of his History which indeed is easy to read. The editors of the Recueil, and others, having no idea of the elementary treatment of sources in historical research, published Abū l-Fidā and did not take care of Ibn Wāṣil73. Only in our own time could the value of the Mufarridj be realised74, and an edition be undertaken, which it is hoped will progress more speedily75.

23The same kind of story may be told for some historians of the early Mamlūks. The main source is Muḥyī al-Dīn ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir who deals with the lives of Baybars and his successors down to al-Ashraf. Although his Life of Baybars was as rich in content and beautiful in form, very small notice was taken of it. Only a few years ago was a complete manuscript discovered in an Istanbul library, an edition of which is now under preparation76; but even before, while a partial manuscript existed in the British Museum, it had to wait till 1956 for an edition to be made (by a young lady of Dacca)77 and the character of the work was, with a few exceptions, so deeply misunderstood that Brockelmann, even in the second edition of his History of Arabic Literature, and the Supplement describes it as written in verse78. As for the life of Qalāwūn and that of al-Ashraf, it was long till the right name of the author could be discovered79; the life of Qalāwūn still awaits an editor80. Once more the reason is obvious. Ibn ^‘Abd al-Ẓāhir’s work was the main, sometimes the unique source on which relied most of the later historians of the Mamlūk régime. Of course very little information can be found in his chronicles which could not be and had not been found in various general histories, in a somewhat abridged but more readable form. Since Quatremère had made, more than a century ago, a French translation of the first half of Maqrīzī’s History of the Mamlūks81, together with footnotes which are still valuable, the history of Baybars’ reign was studied through him and even in our own days the learned Egyptian scholar Muṣṭafā Ziyāda thought it advisable, prior to other works, to make an edition of Maqrīzī’s, which he could not yet bring down to the author’s lifetime, wherefrom it would have become an original source82. The same may be said of the edition of Ibn al-Furāt’s History dealing with the end of the VIIth/XIIIth century and of the proposed edition of those chronicles treating of the reign of Baybars83 and even of the edition of al-Bidāya of Ibn Khatīr (second half of VIIIth/XIVth century)84, which although well-informed and well-written, has nothing new to teach us before the author’s lifetime.

24Next to Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir’s Life of Baybars, another writer had written a life of this Sulṭān, the above-mentioned ‘Izz al-Dīn Ibn Shaddād of Aleppo. Of this work only the second half was discovered twenty-five years ago, in the Library of Edirne (Turkey). At present only a Turkish translation is available85, but no edition of the text has been published. From the undiscovered part many quotations are preserved in later chronicles, first of all in that of al-Yūnīnī. It has already been said86 that of al-Yūnīnī’s only a small part has been edited and that too not well.

25From our present point of view special mention must be made of the authors who, like Yūnīnī, wrote under the Mamlūk régime in the first of the VIIIth/XIVth century. Though by far less well-known and less made use of than their successors of the later Mamlūk régime, they alone, for the history of the first Mamlūks, and sometimes even for more ancient times, have preserved the information which, completing Ibn ‘Abd al-Ẓāhir’s and Ibn Shaddād’s chronicles, was used through them by the later compilers. Along with Yūnīnī in this respect come Baybars Manṣūrī, al-Djazarī, al-Dhahabī, Birzālī in Damascus and Nuwayrī in Egypt. The chronicle of Baybars Manṣūrī, which relies on Ibn al-Athīr and Ibn Wāṣil, as long as they are available, becomes useful in the middle of the VIIth/XIIIth century, especially for the history of Asia Minor: it is still unedited and practically ignored87. The History of al-Djazarī was until quite recently not even identified, though several manuscripts of it are to be found in European libraries88; a detailed analysis of the Paris fragment has been published by J. Sauvaget89, but the remaining portion still awaits an editor90. The different parts of the enormous Tārīkh al-Islām by al-Dhahabī are, of course, of very unequal value. It combines with the narration of the events extensive biographical data, which are of the same kind and richness as those of al-Dhahabīs’ contemporary and compatriot al-Ṣafadī’s, but are arranged chronologically instead of alphabetically. For the section of events, al-Dhahabī has preserved some sources, for instance, Ibn al-Sā‘ī’s History of Iraq, or ‘Abd al-Laṭīf’s and Sa‘d al-Dīn’s Memoirs, which are not to be found elsewhere91. Thus the last volumes of this monumental work fully deserve the attention of an editor whom they still await, whereas an edition of the whole work will prove a cumbersome and not very useful enterprise. However, that is what was proposed, with the result that only a few of the unimportant first volumes have appeared, and there is no hope of the whole work being ever finished92. As for Birzālī, this work is an invaluable diary of Damascus life, unfortunately difficult to read in the unique manuscript in Istanbul. Nobody has ever made any use of it and it must be brought to light93.

26The above-mentioned works also deal with a part of Muhammad al-Nāṣir’s reign, about which two other interconnected special historical writings have been edited and published94. Now a little digression. It is well-known that the term tārīkh is applied not only to chronicles but also to other kinds of works devoted to the study of a province or of a town, among which are included especially dictionaries of learned, pious and sometimes other distinguished men of a city. We have already discussed the remarkable value of Kamāl al-Dīn Ibn al-‘Adīm’s Bughya for the history of Aleppo. A great number of other ‘dictionaries’ were composed, among which the two most illustrious are al-Khaṭīb’s History of Baghdād and Ibn ‘Asākir’s History of Damascus, of which something has been said above. Many of these dictionaries are lost, but many others are still preserved. Other dictionaries, also partly lost and partly preserved, are devoted to men no more from one city but from one category (scholars, jurists of various schools, physicians, poets, etc.). Our aim here is not to give a list of them95; but to suggest the way of dealing with them, because they cannot be separated from the chronicles: the latter, since the VIIth/XIIIth century, very often append to the narrative of the events of each year, biographical notes on celebrities who died in that year, and the material used by them is exactly the same, as was used by al-Dhahabī and al-Ṣafadī, in their dictionaries: the only difference being here and there chronological or alphabetical.

27Now two points emerge: first, that it would be useful for us if we were able to consult all these dictionaries, not only because of the additional information they provide but because they explain to us who was such and such a person mentioned in the chronicles; but secondly, that it is quite impossible to have all these bulky dictionaries published, and that their utility would be meagre as most of the people named are of little significance and what is said about others is too often awfully monotonous. Thus what should be done is to publish alphabetical lists, with full references, of all the persons listed in such dictionaries, so that we should know whether such and such a person is dealt with and where. This would suffice to get the relevant paragraph in the manuscript photographed or copied when needed. A few lists of various kinds have been prepared96, but they are not exhaustive and do not always give the necessary references. That is only a very small part of what should be done.

28A last word. There is a kind of documents which is quite different from the chronicles, but which occurs often in them. I mean archival documents. Of course, it is well known that, till the end of the Middle Ages, such archives, but for the Egyptian finds, are extremely rare. For this reason it is interesting to study those documents which have partly or entirely been reproduced in the chronicles and elsewhere. This is being done for the Fāṭimid period97 and it is a good idea. It has also been done for the first three centuries of Islamic History98. Of course the kind of documents quoted in the chronicles consists almost exclusively of letters and diplomas from sovereigns or high state dignitaries; and very seldom emanate from the lower classes. This is not to say that some of them do not possess a high value, and it is easy to see that often the information they give is precisely that on which the chroniclers rely; it may even happen that high ministers are known to have written such letters, and on these have been based the chronicles, for instance those of ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī and his contemporary the Qāḍī al-Fāḍil99. Now it so happens that these great men not having preserved their letters and diplomas themselves, there are collections of those of their official or private letters which were thought either by themselves or by their admirers to be the most beautifully composed or the most valuable for posterity. Much more care should be taken of these collections than has hitherto been the case. Suffice it to say how marvellously instructive is the published inshā’ collection of the Būyid minister, the Ṣāḥib Ibn ‘Abbād100. Perhaps less varied, but also interesting, is in the same period the collection of the Caliphal secretary, the well-known Abū Isḥāq al-Ṣābī (for whom see above). Of this collection some extracts have been edited101, almost without any commentary, but the great majority of his letters and diplomas, of which there exist quite a large number of manuscripts, still await their editor. These two instances should suffice as we do not intend to give an exhaustive list102. There is yet another example which may be cited: the letters of the Qāḍī al-Fāḍīl. We possess not only many extracts from them in the Rawḍatayn of Abū Shāma and other literary works, but several manuscript collections of them are also extant. Half a century ago a young German scholar103 made an examination of those documents etc. he could find in published works and in some (mostly German) manuscripts, but neither his list nor his study are complete, and cannot form the basis of an edition of the letters themselves. I know that such an edition demands patience and hard work, because, as the letters are not the same in all the collections and literary works, and are not quoted in the same order, and as there are other letters of which only the fragments are met with, their classification may prove somewhat a hard task. But it is strange to be confronted with the fact that, although al-Qāḍī al-Fāḍil was in his time and in the eyes of posterity one of the most renowed stylists, no attempt at publishing his writings seems to have ever been made104.

29To conclude, I very consciously feel that many a reader will ask why this paper was devoted to such elementary matters. However, I think I have no apology to offer. Those among our colleagues and younger scholars who very well know what I have said above, also know very well that some of these things are not generally known to those whose duty it is to know them. I happen to have been trained as a historian, as scholars are in European history. Later, I became interested in Muslim history, and for this reason I was distressed to see how often with Orientalists, even with the greatest of them, something of the historical method and spirit, as experienced in the field of European history, do not seem to have found favour.

30It is evident that very happily a growing number of scholars in many countries are applying themselves to the task of editing. I wish I could give them some ideas both on the selection of works to be edited and the way of editing them, in order to prevent them from (partly) wasting their time as was too often the case with some of their predecessors. If that be the case, I shall be glad; if not, let my devotion to Muslim history be my apology.