al-Fath al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi = Hurub Salah al-Din wa Fath Bayt al-Maqdis
- Author died
- 597 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Manār
al-Fath al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi (The Eloquent Conquest on the Holy Conquest), also known as Hurub Salah al-Din wa Fath Bayt al-Maqdis, is a historical work by al-Imad al-Isbahani (519–597 AH / 1125–1201 CE) that chronicles the military campaigns of Sultan Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi and the recapture of Palestine and the Levant between 583 AH and 589 AH (1187–1193 CE) .
Title and Composition
The author originally titled the work al-Fath al-Qudsi (The Holy Conquest) . Upon presenting it to his contemporary, the chancellor al-Qadi al-Fadil, the latter suggested altering the title to al-Fath al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi (or al-Fayh al-Qussi fi al-Fath al-Qudsi) . In its opening prologue, the work was dedicated jointly to the Abbasid Caliph al-Nasir li-Din Allah and Sultan Salah al-Din Yusuf .
Subject Matter and Scope
The chronicle commences with the military events of the year 583 AH (1187 CE) and concludes with the year 589 AH (1193 CE), the year of Salah al-Din's death . It documents key engagements between the Muslim armies and the Crusaders, including the Battle of Hattin, the surrender of Acre (Akka), and the siege and liberation of Jerusalem (Bayt al-Maqdis) . Because al-Imad served as a secretary in the chancery and accompanied the sultan on his travels and campaigns, the work functions as a firsthand eyewitness chronicle of the events it narrates .
Style and Literary Reception
The book is composed in elaborate, rhymed prose (saj') and ornate rhetorical styling (badi'), incorporating formal meters and rhyming rhythms . Later scholars evaluated this literary form from differing perspectives:
- Mujir al-Din al-'Ulaymi praised the text as one of the world's exceptional works for its rhetorical craft and eloquence .
- The historian Abu Shama, who drew extensively on the book for his own chronicle Kitab al-Rawdatayn, observed that al-Imad's protracted descriptions and continuous rhyming could prove tedious and obscure the factual sequence of events for historical inquiry; he therefore extracted the historical material while discarding most of the rhymed embellishments, retaining only select descriptions such as those describing the liberation of Jerusalem .
- Later literary critics similarly characterized its style as overly ornate, noting that its heavy reliance on rhetorical figures could lead to obscurity and stiffness in expression .
Manuscripts and Publication
Manuscript copies of the work are preserved in institutions across several countries, including the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, the Gotha Research Library, the Leiden University Library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the British Museum in London, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, the Vatican Library, the Süleymaniye Library collections (such as Aya Sofya and Köprülü) in Istanbul, the Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, and the Egyptian National Library in Cairo .
The Arabic text was first edited by Count Carlo de Landberg and published in Leiden in 1888 under the title Conquête de la Syrie et de la Palestine par Salâh ed-Dîn . It was subsequently reprinted multiple times in Cairo, including an edition prepared and annotated by Mahmud Subh .
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