Shams ad-Dīn as-Sachāwī

Shams ad-Dīn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd ar-Rahmān as-Sachāwī ( Arabic شمس الدين محمد بن عبد الرحمان السخاوي, DMG Shams ad-Din Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Saḫāwī ) (* January 1427 in Cairo ; † 1. May 1497 in Medina ) was one of the most important Hadith -Gelehrten, Prosopographen and historians in mamlukenzeitlichen Egypt. Towards the end of the 15th century he emigrated to the Hejaz , where he also died. He is not to be confused with the Egyptian religious scholar ʿAlam ad-Dīn ʿAlī ibn Muhammad as-Sachāwī (d. 1245), who has the same nisba as him.

The Sarghitmisch Madrasa in Cairo , to which as-Sachāwī was appointed professor of hadith studies in 1475.

Life

Shams ad-Dīn as-Sachāwī belonged to a well-known family of scholars from the city of Sachā in the Nile Delta , who had emigrated to Cairo two generations earlier, and initially attended various Koran schools. In 1433 he joined the well-known hadith scholar Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī and developed under his leadership in the following years mastery in the hadith sciences. After Ibn Hadjar's death in 1449, as-Sachāwī made several trips, for example to Damiette (1450), on pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina (1452) and to Syria (1455). From the beginning of his training with Ibn Hajar until his return from Syria, as-Sachāwī heard, as he himself writes in his autobiography, narrations from more than 1,200 sheikhs , traditions and poets in eighty different places. In addition to the science of hadith, he also studied Fiqh , Usūl al-fiqh , Arabic grammar and Sufi teachings.

As-Sachāwī's hopes for a scholarly career were long disappointed. His attempts to get hold of a chair at one of the Kairinier universities were initially unsuccessful. In 1446 he asked his tutor Ibn Hajar to place him on a vacant chair at the Muʾaiyadīya , but he was informed that he had the wrong qualification because the chair in question was intended for Fiqh . He made the second attempt in 1451 when he was writing a book for Sultan Jaqmaq in order to attract his attention, but the Sultan did not react. On the recommendation of the legal scholar Kamāl ad-Dīn Ibn al-Humām (d. 1469) he got an audience with the Sultan in May 1451, but the latter did not give him a professorship, but limited himself to a financial contribution. Around 1465 he was given a position as deputy professor for hadith studies at the Zāhirīya school founded by Baibars I , but this position seems to have only had a nominal character, because as early as 1466 he went to Mecca for a year to see himself to devote to worship exercises.

As-Sachāwī experienced a new disappointment when in 1469 he was given the chair of hadith studies at the Kāmilīya school founded by al-Malik al-Kāmil . Since the sons of the former incumbent Kamāl Ibn Imām al-Kāmilīya fiercely opposed him, he soon had to vacate this post. Although he was appointed to the chair for hadith studies at the school of Amīr Sarghitmisch in 1475, this position obviously did not satisfy him in the long term, because in 1480 he went back to the Hejaz to spend the next three years there. In 1487 he moved his center of life permanently to the Hejaz. His professional disappointments in Egypt, dissatisfaction with the political situation in his home country and his friendship with important scholars in Mecca, in particular with Nadschm ad-Dīn Ibn Fahd al-Makkī, seem to have been the main reasons for this step. Although he visited Cairo again for a year in 1489, he stayed in the Hejaz for the rest of his life. In August 1496 he moved from Mecca to Medina. There he died in May 1497 and was buried in the Baqīʿ al-Gharqad cemetery.

Works

In his autobiography , which he wrote shortly before his death, as-Sachāwī mentions a total of 199 works written by him. The following works deserve special mention:

• aḍ-Ḍauʾ al-lāmiʿ fī aʿyān al-qarn at-tāsiʿ , a comprehensive biographical lexicon of men and women of the 9th century of the hijra , which corresponds roughly to the 15th century of the Christian era. In it he portrays his contemporaries, some with great venom. The work was published in twelve volumes from 1934 to 1936.
• al-Iʿlān bi-taubīḫ li-man ḏamma ahl at-taʾrīḫ , a defense of historiography against the accusations of its critics. The work was translated into English by Franz Rosenthal .
• Waǧīh al-kalām ḏail Duwal al-Islām , continuation of the history of adh-Dhahabī for the years 1344–1493. The work is the subject of AA Hasso's dissertation.
• Kitāb at-Tibr al-masbūk fī ḏail as-sulūk , Chronicle of the years 845 to 857 of the Hijra (= 1441–1453 AD). The modern edition of Labība Ibrāhīm Muṣṭafā, Naǧwā Muṣṭafā Kāmil (Cairo Maṭbaʿat Dār al-Kutub wa-'l-Waṯāʾiq, 2002-2007) comprises four volumes.
• al-Qaul al-munbiʾ ʿan tarǧamat Ibn ʿArabī , a refutation of the views of the Andalusian Sufi Muhyī d-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī . A manuscript of the work is located in the Berlin State Library digitized .
• al-Ǧawāhir wa-d-durar tarǧamat šaiḫ al-islām Ibn Ḥaǧar , three-volume biography of his teacher Ibn Hajar al-ʿAsqalānī .
• Ruǧḥān al-kiffa fī bayān nubḏa min aḫbār ahl aṣ-ṣuffa. Collection of traditions on the Ahl as-Suffa based on Abū Nuʿaim's Ḥilyat al-Auliyāʾ . The work was edited by Abū ʿUbaida Mašhūr Ibn-Ḥasan Āl-Salmān (Dār as-Salaf, ar-Riyāḍ, 1995). PDF
• Iršād al-ġāwī, bal isʿād aṭ-ṭālib wa-r-rāwī li-l-iʿlām bi-tarǧamat as-Saḫāwī , his autobiography. A manuscript of this work is in the Leiden University Library .
• al-Maqāṣid al-ḥasana fī bayān al-aḥādīṯ al-muštahara ʿalā l-alsina , alphabetically arranged collection of popular traditions, which for the most part contains relatively short sayings. Many traditions are based on wisdom. An edition of the work by Muḥammad ʿUthmān al-Ḫišt was published in 1985 by Dār al-Kitāb al-ʿArabī in Beirut ( digitized version ).

literature

• AJ Arberry : Sakhawiana, a study based on the Chester Beatty Ms. Arab 733 . London 1951.
• Avner Giladi: “The child was small ... not so the grief for him”: Sources, Structure and Content of al-Sakhawi's Consolation Treatise for Bereaved Parents. In: Poetics Today. Volume 14, 1993, pp. 367-386.
• Ahmad Abdullah Hasso: Shams al-din al-Sakhawi as a historian of the 9th / 15th century: with an edition of that section of his chronicles (Wajiz al-kalam) covering the period 800–849 / 1397–1445 . PhD Dissertation, St. Andrews 1972, available online at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/handle/10023/2581
• Margarete Kärtner: The autobiography of Šamsaddīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbdarraḥmān as-Saḫāwī . Dissertation, University of Frankfurt / Main, 1983.
• Huda Lutfi: Al-Sakhāwī's Kitāb an-Nisāʾ as a source for the social and economic history of Muslim women during the fifteenth century. In: Muslim World. Volume 71, 1981, pp. 104-124.
• CF Petry: Article as-Sa kh āwī. In: The Encyclopaedia of Islam. New Edition . Volume VIII, pp. 881b-882b.
• W. Popper: Sakhāwī's criticism of Ibn Taghrī Birdī. In: Studi orientalistici in onore the Giorgio Levi della Vida . Rome 1956, Volume II, pp. 371-389.
• Franz Rosenthal: A History of Muslim Historiography . 2nd revised edition, Leiden 1968, pp. 271-529.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Hasso 30.
2. ↑ See Hasso 36.
3. ↑ See Hasso 39.
4. ↑ See Hasso 37f.
5. ↑ See Hasso 40.
6. ↑ See the overview of the titles in Hasso 52-83.
7. ↑ Cf. Carl Brockelmann : History of Arabic Literature. Supplementary volume II. Leiden 1938. p. 31.
8. ↑ Volume I (years 845-850 / 1441-1446), Volume II (years 851-853 / 1447-1449), Volume III (years 854-855), Volume IV (years 856-857).