Hilyat al-Bashar fi Tarikh al-Qarn al-Thalith Ashar
- Author died
- 1335 AH
- Editions
- Dar Sader
Hilyat al-Bashar fi Tarikh al-Qarn al-Thalith Ashar (The Adornment of Mankind in the History of the Thirteenth Century) is a biographical dictionary of thirteenth-century AH notables by the Damascene scholar and historian Abd al-Razzaq al-Bitar (1250 or 1253–1335 AH / 1837–1916 CE) .
Composition and Structure
Al-Bitar composed the work across different periods of his youth, middle age, and elder years . He ceased writing and editing more than ten years prior to his death after suffering partial paralysis and affliction in his right hand . Before his passing, he entrusted his grandson, Muhammad Bahjat al-Bitar, with preparing a clean fair copy from his drafts and omitting non-historical passages that merely inflated the text's volume .
The book is arranged alphabetically according to the names of the biographees . Its prose style largely emulates that of Muhammad Khalil al-Muradi in his twelfth-century biographical dictionary Silk al-Durar, employing rhymed prose (saj') and compiling selections of the subjects' poetry and prose .
Scope and Contents
The dictionary chronicles prominent Muslim figures of the thirteenth Hijri century across Syria (al-Sham), Egypt, the Hijaz, Yemen, Iraq, and al-Jazira, covering religious scholars, political administrators, Sufis, and literati . Among the notables profiled are Ibn Abidin, Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ibrahim Pasha of Egypt, Tawfiq Pasha, Emir Abd al-Qadir al-Jaza'iri, Abu al-Huda al-Sayyadi al-Rifa'i, Arif Hikmat Bey, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, Dawood Pasha, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, Jamal al-Din al-Afghani, Hasan al-Attar, Mahmud al-Alusi, Mahmud Hamza, and Murtada al-Zabidi .
Alongside individual biographies, the work references major political and military events in passing, such as the revolt against Selim Pasha, the governor of Damascus; the campaigns of Ibrahim Pasha; the events surrounding Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar; and the 1860 civil conflict in Damascus (hadithat al-sittin) .
Transmission and Publication
Prior to its formal publication, the manuscript was consulted by contemporary scholars who cited entries from it in their own biographical writings, including Muhammad Raghib al-Tabbakh for his history of Aleppo and Muhammad Jamil al-Shatti for Rawd al-Bashar . When editing the work, Muhammad Bahjat al-Bitar supplemented entries that the author had omitted, including a biography of the author's elder brother, Muhammad al-Bitar, as well as biographies of the scholars Muhammad and Ahmad al-Shatti .
Hilyat al-Bashar was published in three volumes under the auspices of the Arabic Language Academy in Damascus, edited and annotated by Muhammad Bahjat al-Bitar (1380 AH / 1961 CE) . A second edition was later issued by Dar Sadir in Beirut (1413 AH / 1993 CE) .
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