Nuzhat al-Anam fi Tarikh al-Islam
- Author died
- 809 AH
- Editions
- al-Maktabah al-Asriyyah lil-Tiba'ah wal-Nashr
Nuzhat al-Anam fi Tarikh al-Islam (The Promenade of Mankind in the History of Islam) is a multi-volume annalistic chronicle of Islamic history composed by the Egyptian historian Ibn Duqmaq (c. 750–809 AH / 1349–1407 CE) .
Scope and Contents
The work was conceived as an extensive general chronicle of Islamic history arranged chronologically by year, with a particular emphasis on the history of Egypt and the surrounding regions . Bibliographical records indicate that it originally comprised up to twelve volumes extending down to the year 779 AH .
The complete original text has not survived intact, but several non-contiguous manuscript portions are preserved in international libraries :
- A section covering the years 436–552 AH preserved in Gotha, Germany, in the author's handwriting .
- A section covering the years 628–659 AH (1230/1231–1261 CE), spanning the final decades of the Ayyubid dynasty and the transition to the Mamluk Sultanate, preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris .
- Two sections covering 701–742 AH and 768–779 AH, also preserved in Gotha .
- An eighty-page fragment covering the reign of Sultan al-Mansur Ali from 778 to 804 AH, preserved at Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya in Cairo .
Methodology and Sources
Ibn Duqmaq followed the traditional annalistic method (ta'rikh hawli) common among medieval Muslim historians, recording major political, military, and administrative events under each successive year, followed by biographical notices and obituaries (wafayat) of notable figures who died during that year .
For his historical and biographical data, Ibn Duqmaq relied heavily on earlier chronicles and biographical dictionaries. Among his primary sources were Sibt Ibn al-Jawzi (author of Mir'at al-Zaman), Ibn Khallikan, and al-Safadi, particularly for biographical notices . He also drew on works by Abu Shama, al-Dhahabi, Ibn 'Abd al-Zahir, Ibn al-'Adim, Ibn al-Najjar, and Izz al-Din Ibn Shaddad .
The prose style reflects the colloquial Arabic and non-standard orthographical conventions typical of many Mamluk-period historiographical texts, including relaxed rules concerning the writing of the hamza and variations in the forms of the terminal alif .
Manuscript Transmission and Modern Editions
The Paris manuscript (MS Arabe 1597) is an autograph consisting of 134 folios with 17 lines per page, written in Naskh script with prominent headings for each year . The manuscript was found in al-Mansura and entered the Bibliothèque nationale de France in December 1871 . It opens defectively at the end of the events of 627 AH with the obituary of 'Abd al-Salam al-Lakhmi (known as Ibn Barrajan), before continuing with the continuous annals of the years 628–659 AH .
This section (628–659 AH) was edited by Samir Tabbara as part of a doctoral dissertation at the University of Melbourne and published by al-Maktaba al-'Asriyya in Beirut .
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