Ibn al-Adim

Kamal ad-Din Abu'l-Qasim Umar ibn Ahmad ibn al-Adim ( Arabic كمال الدين أبو القاسم عمر بن أحمد بن الأديم, DMG Kamāl ad-Dīn Abūʾl-Qāsim ʿUmar ibn Aḥmad ibn al-ʿAdīm ; * December 1192 or January 1193 in Aleppo ; † April 21, 1262 in Cairo ) was an Arab judge and chronicler of the 13th century.

biography

Ibn al-Adim came from the respected Aleppo family of the Banū al-ʿAdīm ("sons of the poor man"), who had held the office of chief judge ( qādī l-qudāt ) in the city for several generations . Allegedly they were descendants of a companion of the Prophet's son-in-law Ali .

After studying in Baghdad and traveling to Damascus , Jerusalem and Mecca , Ibn al-Adim took over the office of judge himself. He was later used as a minister and diplomat under the Ayyubid princes . When the Mongol conquering army of the Hülegü approached , he fled in the first days of January 1260 in the entourage of the last Ayyubid an-Nasir Yusuf and took exile in Cairo, Egypt . With Hulegu's permission, he was able to return once more and see his hometown lying in ruins, for which he wrote an elegy , which Abu'l-Fida has preserved in fragments.

plant

Ibn al-Adim is one of the most important contemporary chroniclers of Muslims in the era of the Crusades . His best-known and most extensive work is the ten volumes “Everything Desirable about the History of Aleppo” (Buġyat al-ṭalab fī taʾrīḫ Ḥalab) , an alphabetical compilation of biographical representations for the history of Aleppo of important personalities. In his second work, "The Cream of Milk from the History of Aleppo" (Zubdat al-ṭalab min taʾrīḫ Ḥalab), he compressed this work into a narrative city chronicle, which ends unfinished in 1243 due to his death.

In addition, Ibn al-Adim wrote a short family chronicle and a commemorative publication on the occasion of the birth of the eldest son of the Emir az-Zahir Ghazi in 1213.

expenditure

Part editions

• Selecta ex historia halebi. Edited by Georg Wilhelm Freytag . Paris 1819 (partial Latin translation of the Zubdat ; digitized version on archive.org).
• Extraits de la Chronique d'Alep by Kemal ed-Dîn. Edited in: RHC , Historiens orienteaux. Vol. 3 (1884), pp. 571–690 (French partial translation of the Zubdat , years 1097–1146).
• Extraits du dictionnaire biographique de Kemal ed-Dîn. Edited in: RHC, Historiens orienteaux. Vol. 3 (1884), pp. 691-732 (French translation of selected Viten des Buġyat ).
• Kamâl-ad-Dîn, Histoire d'Alep. Edited by Edgard Blochet. Paris 1900 (French partial translation of the Zubdat , years 1146–1243).

Complete editions

• Bughyat al-ṭalab fī taʾrīkh Halab, ṣannafahū Ibn al-ʿAdim al-sāḥib Kamāl al-Dīn ʿUmar b. Aḥmad b. Abī Jarāda. Edited in 11 volumes by Suhayl Zakkar. Damascus 1988.
• Zubdat al-ḥalab min tārīkh Ḥalab li-l-ṣāḥib Kamāl al-Dīn ʿUmar b. Aḥmad b. Abī Jarāda al-mutawaffā fi sanat 660 h. Edited in 2 volumes by Suhayl Zakkar. Damascus / Cairo 1997.

literature

• Ferdinand Wüstenfeld : The historians of the Arabs and their works. Göttingen 1882, No. 345, p. 130 f.
• David W. Morray: An Ayyubid Notable and His World: Ibn Al-ʻAdīm and Aleppo as Portrayed in His Biographical Dictionary of People Associated with the City. Leiden 1994.