Unwan al-Diraya fiman urifa min al-ulama fi al-mi'a al-sabi'a bi-Bijaya
- Author died
- 714 AH
- Editions
- Manshurat Dar al-Afaq al-Jadidah
Unwan al-Diraya fiman urifa min al-ulama fi al-mi'a al-sabi'a bi-Bijaya (The Banner of Knowledge Regarding the Scholars Known in the Seventh Century in Bejaïa) is a biographical dictionary by the Maliki judge and scholar Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Ahmad al-Ghubrini (644–714 AH / 1246–1314 CE; also reported as d. 704 AH / 1304 CE) , chronicling the scholars, jurists, judges, and literary figures associated with the city of Bejaïa in the central Maghreb during the seventh Islamic century .
Scope and Contents
The work contains biographical entries for more than 140 individuals who lived across the late Almohad Caliphate and Hafsid dynasty eras, documenting their deaths, writings, doctrinal orientations, and customs . Alongside local scholars from Bejaïa and other regions of Algeria, it includes figures connected to the city from Tunis, the wider Maghreb, and al-Andalus .
Beyond standard biographical details, the entries preserve historical occurrences, legal questions and fatwas, hadith traditions, and specimens of prose and verse attributed to the subjects . The text concludes with the author's own curriculum (barnamaj), roughly a gathering (kurrasa) in length, which details the transmission lineages and chains of narration (asānīd) for the foundational texts and disciplines he studied under around seventy teachers .
Method and Style
Al-Ghubrini's writing style is characterized by the persistent use of rhymed prose (saj'), short phrases, and rhetorical ornaments across the text . He frequently employed standardized formulaic descriptions when introducing entries—such as referring to figures as accomplished jurists, pious ascetics, or scrupulous scholars—often without drawing stylistic distinctions based on whether an entry was a poet, traditionist, or historian . The work also reflects the author's interest in Sufism and asceticism, incorporating accounts of miraculous feats reported from his teachers or quoted from earlier literature .
Transmission and Editions
The book served as an important source for later historians; Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib drew upon it in al-Ihata, such as in his biographical entry on Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari . The work was transmitted via scholarly chains connecting through Abu al-Tayyib Ibn Alwan al-Tunisi to Ibn Marzuq al-Hafid .
Unwan al-Diraya was first published in Algiers in 1910 (1328 AH), edited by Muhammad ibn Abi Shanab based on four manuscript copies: one held in the National Library in Algiers (MS 1734), and three private manuscripts belonging to Abd al-Razzaq al-Ashraf, Ali ibn al-Hajj Musa, and Abu al-Qasim Muhammad al-Hafnawi . It was later edited with extensive annotations and comprehensive indices by Adil Nuwayhid and published in Beirut in 1969, with a second edition appearing in 1979 .
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