Mawrid al-Latafa fi Man Wali al-Saltana wa al-Khilafa
- Author died
- 874 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣrīyah
Mawrid al-Latafa fi Man Wali al-Saltana wa al-Khilafa ("The Source of Elegance on Those Who Held the Sultanate and the Caliphate") is an abridged historical and biographical chronicle by the Cairene historian Ibn Taghri Bardi (813–874 AH / 1410–1470 CE), surveying the caliphs and sultans of Islam from the prophetic era down to the author's lifetime.
Scope and Structure
In his introduction, Ibn Taghri Bardi states that he designed the work as a concise reference compendium focused strictly on the rulers who exercised caliphal and sultanic authority, omitting extraneous biographical and historical material.
The book opens with a brief overview of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, including his birth, selected military campaigns, household, wives, and death. It then proceeds in chronological order through the caliphs, beginning with Abu Bakr al-Siddiq and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, continuing through the dynastic successions down to the Abbasid caliph in Cairo during the author's era, al-Qa'im bi-Amr Allah Hamza. The work likewise covers the Fatimid rulers (al-Ubaydiyyun) and the dynasties that succeeded them over Egypt, such as the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans, as well as accounts of regional Muslim sovereigns like the Ottoman Sultan Murad I.
Continuations and Transmission
The Meccan historian Ibn Fahd (d. 954 AH / 1547 CE) composed a continuation to the work titled Manhal al-Zarafa bi-Dhayl Mawrid al-Latafa fi Man Wali al-Saltana wa al-Khilafa.
Multiple manuscript copies of Mawrid al-Latafa are preserved across international collections, including the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, Princeton University Library, and Dar al-Kutub in Cairo. An early edition of the work was printed in Cambridge in 1207 AH (1792 CE), and it was later reissued in Cairo.
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