Dhayl Tarikh Baghdad - Ibn al-Najjar
- Author died
- 643 AH
- Editions
- al-Ilmiyya
Dhayl Tarikh Baghdad (The Continuation to the History of Baghdad), formally titled al-Tarikh al-Mujaddad li-Madinat al-Salam wa-Akhbar Fudala'iha al-A'lam wa-man Waradaha min 'Ulama' al-Anam, is a biographical dictionary of Baghdad by the Iraqi traditionist and historian Muhibb al-Din Ibn al-Najjar (578–643 AH / 1183–1245 CE) .
Composition and Scope
Ibn al-Najjar composed the work as a continuation (dhayl) and rectifying supplement (istidrak) to Tarikh Madinat al-Salam by al-Khatib al-Baghdadi . In compiling his dictionary, he integrated the material from earlier continuations written on al-Khatib's work, particularly those of Ibn al-Sam'ani and Ibn al-Dubaythi, while adding numerous independent biographical entries and historical reports collected during his extensive travels and studies across Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Hijaz, and Khurasan .
The work encompasses detailed biographies of scholars, transmitters of hadith, literati, and eminent figures who either lived in Baghdad or visited it . Ibn al-Najjar organized the biographical entries alphabetically according to the subjects' given names and framed them similarly to generational classes (tabaqat) .
Size, Extant Portions, and Transmission
Classical sources describe the original compilation as consisting of 300 parts (juz'), bound into varying numbers of volumes: Ibn al-Sa'i reported reading it directly with Ibn al-Najjar in sixteen volumes, another account describes it in seventeen volumes, and Hajji Khalifa recorded that it spanned thirty volumes .
Most of the original compilation has been lost over time . Only two volumes survive from a fifteen-volume manuscript copied in 748 AH: volume ten, preserved at the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus (MS 42 Tarikh), and volume eleven, held at the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris (MS 2131 Arabe), both containing entries from the Arabic letters 'Ayn and parts of Fa' . Another portion was preserved in the library of the Murjan Mosque in Baghdad . The Damascus manuscript was edited and published in three parts by the Da'irat al-Ma'arif al-Uthmaniyya in Hyderabad between 1978 and 1982, and subsequently reprinted in Beirut alongside editions of al-Khatib al-Baghdadi's history .
Reception, Abridgments, and Continuations
Ibn al-Najjar's contemporary peers and younger scholars praised the extensive breadth of the dictionary; Yaqut al-Hamawi noted that it demonstrated his encyclopedic mastery of historical transmission and biographical lore . Later biographical and hadith compilers drew upon it extensively, notably al-Dhahabi and Ibn Qutlubugha, who frequently cited its otherwise unrecorded biographies .
The book was abridged by Ibn Aybak al-Dimyati (d. 749 AH) in his work al-Mustafad min Dhayl Tarikh Baghdad . It was also given further continuations by subsequent historians, most notably by Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Rafi' (d. 774 AH) in his Dhayl Tarikh Ibn al-Najjar .
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