Nuzhat al-Anzar fi Ajaib al-Tawarikh wa al-Akhbar
- Author died
- 1228 AH
- Editions
- دار الغرب الاسلامي
Nuzhat al-Anzar fi Ajaib al-Tawarikh wa al-Akhbar (The Promenade of Glances into the Wonders of Histories and Chronicles), also known as Da'irat Maqdish, is a general and regional history composed by the Tunisian scholar Mahmud Maqdish (d. 1228 AH / 1813 CE) . The book surveys Islamic geography, general history, the dynasties of the Maghrib and the Ottoman state, and concludes with a detailed historical and biographical monograph on the city of Sfax .
Background and Composition
Maqdish composed the work partly in response to requests from colleagues to document the military expeditions of the Companions, the Ottoman armies, the rulers who secured the Maghrib from early Islamic times, its geography, and biographies of the scholars and righteous figures of Sfax and beyond . Textual evidence indicates that drafting began around 1203 AH (1788–1789 CE), during the reign of the Ottoman sultan Selim III, and the author noted working on the entry for Oran in 1207 AH (1793 CE) . The orientalist Ignaty Krachkovsky observed that Maqdish completed the first volume around 1210 AH (1796 CE) . Some manuscripts include a very brief continuation of events down to 1238 AH (1822 CE), which later copyists likely inserted from marginal notes after the author's death .
Structure and Content
The work is divided into two roughly equal volumes consisting of eleven discourses (maqalat) and a substantial epilogue (khatima) :
- Volume One: Opens with a brief theoretical preface on the nature and utility of history, followed by ten discourses . The first discourse—the longest—covers human, physical, and descriptive geography of the Maghrib, its territories, borders, and al-Andalus in four chapters . The subsequent discourses summarize Islamic history from the early Caliphate through the Umayyad, Abbasid, Fatimid, Ayyubid, Almoravid, Almohad, Marinid, Zayyanid, and Hafsid dynasties .
- Volume Two: Contains the eleventh discourse on the Ottoman Empire in three chapters, covering the Ottoman sultans up to Selim III, the arrival of the Ottomans in Ifriqiya, and the local rulers of Tunis under Ottoman sovereignty under the Muradid and Husaynid dynasties .
- The Epilogue (Khatima): Comprising roughly one-third of the entire book, this section is dedicated entirely to the regional history of Sfax and its surroundings . It is arranged in four chapters:
- The foundation, walls, layout, and socio-economic life of Sfax .
- The governors and rulers who held power over the city .
- The city's military history and engagements against European powers, particularly conflicts with Malta and Venice .
- Biographies of the local scholars, teachers, jurists, Sufis, and pious figures of Sfax—the longest chapter in the epilogue .
Sources and Methodology
For the geographical and dynastic overviews in the first volume, Maqdish drew directly from established authorities, including al-Idrisi's Nuzhat al-Mushtaq, Ibn al-Wardi's Kharidat al-Ajaib, Zakariyya al-Qazwini's Ajaib al-Makhluqat, Ibn Khallikan's Wafayat al-Ayan, al-Zarkashi's Tarikh al-Dawlatayn, and Ibn Abi Dinar's al-Munis . For the Ottoman and Tunisian dynasties, he utilized works like Bashair Ahl al-Iman by Husayn Khujah and al-Hulal al-Sundusiyyah by al-Wazir al-Sarraj .
While the general historical compendium leans heavily on compilation, modern scholars regard the regional epilogue on Sfax as the most original and valuable component of the book . In it, Maqdish relied on local biographical monographs, oral traditions, and his own firsthand observations to document Sfax's demographic, agricultural, commercial, and intellectual life during the eighteenth century .
Reception and Editions
The work has been utilized and cited as an essential source for late Maghribi urban, economic, and maritime history by historians such as Ibn Abi Diyaf, Carlo Alfonso Nallino, Ignaty Krachkovsky, and Ahmad Abdesselem .
Nuzhat al-Anzar was first printed as a two-volume lithograph edition in Tunis in 1321 AH (1903 CE), though this early print contained numerous printing errors and corruptions . A critical two-volume edition based on primary manuscripts—including the copy preserved in the library of Shaykh al-Islam Arif Hikmat in Medina—was edited by Ali al-Zuwari and Muhammad Mahfuz and published by Dar al-Gharb al-Islami in Beirut in 1408 AH (1988 CE) .
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