Mawsuat Safir lil-Tarikh al-Islami
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- Mawsuat Safir lil-Tarikh al-Islami
Mawsuat Safir lil-Tarikh al-Islami (The Safir Encyclopedia of Islamic History) is a multi-volume modern Arabic historical reference work composed by a team of academic historians and scholars from various Egyptian universities .
Structure and Authorship
The encyclopedia comprises sixteen volumes, organized into nine chronological eras (ʿuṣūr) and seven thematic supplements (malāḥiq) . Individual volumes were assigned to specialist academics:
- Part 1: The Era of Prophethood and the Rightly Guided Caliphate (ʿAṣr al-nubuwwa wa-l-khilāfa al-rāshida), authored by Abd al-Shafi Muhammad Abd al-Latif, Professor of Islamic History and Civilization at Al-Azhar University .
- Part 3: The Abbasid Era in Iraq and the East (al-ʿAṣr al-ʿabbāsī fī al-ʿIrāq wa-l-mashriq), authored by Hasan Ali Hasan, Professor of Islamic History and Civilization at Cairo University, and Abd al-Rahman Salim, Lecturer of Islamic History and Civilization at Cairo University .
- Part 4: The Islamic East After the Abbasids (al-Mashriq al-islāmī baʿd al-ʿabbāsiyyīn), authored by Isam al-Din Abd al-Rauf, Professor of Islamic History at Cairo University, and Muhsin Jamal al-Din, Professor of Oriental Languages at Ain Shams University .
Scope and Contents
The work opens with an extensive geographical and social survey of Arabia prior to Islam, dividing the peninsula into its primary historical regions—Tihama, the Hijaz, Najd, and southern Arabia—and outlining the pre-Islamic political entities such as the southern kingdoms of Main, Qataban, Saba, and Himyar, as well as northern principalities including the Lakhmids of Al-Hirah and the Ghassanids . It details the origins of Mecca, the genealogy of the Arabs, their nomadic and settled social stratifications, and religious conditions leading up to the mission of the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ .
The encyclopedia traces the subsequent eras of Islamic governance through the Rightly Guided Caliphate, the Umayyad state, and the Abbasid Caliphate . In its treatment of the Abbasid period, it categorizes the second Abbasid era (232–656 AH / 847–1258 CE) into four distinct phases: the era of Turkish dominance, the Buyid period, the Seljuk period, and the post-Seljuk era . Alongside political narratives, the encyclopedia addresses cultural and intellectual developments, reviewing scientific, philosophical, and geographical literature as well as foundational historiographical works by scholars such as Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi and Ibn al-Athir .
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