al-Musabbihi

Muhammad ibn Abi l-Qasim Ubaidallah ibn Ahmad ibn Ismail ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Musabbihi al-Katib ( Arabic محمد بن أبي القاسم عبيد الله بن أحمد بن إسماعيل بن عبد العزيز المصابحي, DMG Muḥammad b. Abī l-Qāsim ʿUbaid Allāh b. Aḥmad b. Ismāʿīl b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz al-Muṣābiḥī ; * March 4, 977 in al-Fustat ; † April / May 1029 ibid), shortened to al-Musabbihi , was an Arab official and chronicler in Egypt at the height of the Fatimid era under Caliph al-Hakim .

The ancestors of al-Musabbihi came from Harran in northern Mesopotamia ( al-Ǧazīra ) , but he himself was born in Egypt. He was evidently a Sunni , but in 1007/08 he entered the service of the Shiite-Ismaili caliph al-Hakim, initially as a soldier, as he is known as an officer (amīr) and has worn military clothing throughout his life. For a time he administered the Upper Egyptian Gaue al-Qais ( Kynopolis ) and al-Bahnasa ( Oxyrhynchos ), until he finally held the office (dīwān) for the payment of wages. Al-Musabbihi seems to be one of the few people to have enjoyed the lifelong trust of the notoriously suspicious caliph and to have gained his appreciation, of which his honorary title “the chosen one, glory of the empire” ( Arabic المختار عز الملك, DMG al-Muḫtār ʿIzz al-Mulk ). When he died in 1029, the funeral prayer was said for him in the Sunni Amr mosque of al-Fustat.

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Though an academic layman, al-Musabbihi was arguably one of the most prolific writers in Egyptian history. He wrote no less than thirty, mostly multi-volume, works on an estimated 40,000 pages. He wrote down everything he was interested in, regardless of whether it was statecraft, mathematics, astronomy, poetry, foreign religions, anecdotes, prayers, interpretations of dreams, demons ( Jinn ) , or the right time to enjoy wine in good company . For his "Book on Meat and Sauces" he used two thousand pages. In the “book about drowning and strangling ” he devoted himself to the biographies of people who died in this way on four hundred pages. In four volumes on two thousand two hundred pages he summed up “On the different types of coitus ”, a kind of Arabic Kama Sutra .

His most important work, however, was undoubtedly his "Reports on Egypt" (Aḫbār Miṣr) , which were summarized in several volumes and reached a monumental size with over 13,000 pages and were among the most important contemporary chronicles about the era of the Fatimids and the caliph al-Hakim.

Al-Musabbihi's entire oeuvre has been lost over the centuries; its existence is only known through copies by other authors such as Ibn Muyassar (d. 1278) and al-Maqrizi (d. 1442). Ibn Khallikan (d. 1282) seems to have known the majority of them, as he made a list of the best known works. Of the “Reports on Egypt” only a fragment from 74 folios has survived in the library of the Escorial in Spain , which just cover the years 1023 to 1025. This fragment shows that al-Musabbihi probably made entries for each day of the year. It was edited in two volumes by Ayman F. Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis.

Edition

• Ayman F. Sayyid and Thierry Bianquis: al-Juzʾ al-arbaʿūn min akhbār miṣr, 2 volumes. Cairo 1978-1984.

literature

• Farhad Daftary : Ismaili Literature. A Bibliography of Sources and Studies. IB Tauris, London 2004, pp. 23, 190. ISBN 1-85043-439-5
• Heinz Halm : The Caliphs of Cairo. CH Beck, Munich 2003, p. 171. ISBN 3-406-48654-1

source

• Ibn Challikan : "The Death of Eminent Personalities and the News of the Sons of Time" (Wafayāt al-aʿyān wa-Anbāʾ abnāʾ az-zamān) , ed. by William Mac Guckin de Slane : Ibn Khallikan's biographical dictionary , Volume 3, 1868, pp. 87-90.

annotation

1. ↑ Notwithstanding this, Daftary attributes him to the Ismaili Shia .