''Kitāb al-Iklīl'' (
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
: كتاب الإكليل) fully known as the ''Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar'' (''Crowns from the Accounts of the Yemen and the genealogies of Ḥimyar''), is a book on the ancient history of
Yemen
Yemen, officially the Republic of Yemen, is a country in West Asia. Located in South Arabia, southern Arabia, it borders Saudi Arabia to Saudi Arabia–Yemen border, the north, Oman to Oman–Yemen border, the northeast, the south-eastern part ...
and the
Himyarite Kingdom
Himyar was a polity in the southern highlands of Yemen, as well as the name of the region which it claimed. Until 110 BCE, it was integrated into the Qataban, Qatabanian kingdom, afterwards being recognized as an independent kingdom. According ...
.It was written by the 10th-century grammarian, chemist and historian
Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani
Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥasan ibn Aḥmad ibn Yaʿqūb al-Hamdānī (, 279/280-333/334 A.H.; 947;) was an Arab Muslim geographer, chemist, poet, grammarian, historian, and astronomer, from the tribe of Banu Hamdan, western 'Amran, Yemen. He was ...
.The work was originally written and published in the 10th century in ten volumes, only four of which exist to this day.
History
Of the ten volumes of ''Kitāb al-Iklīl'' published in the 10th century, only the first, second, eighth and tenth volumes survived intact to the present day.
In 1881, parts of the work were translated into
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany, the country of the Germans and German things
**Germania (Roman era)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...
by
David Heinrich Müller.
The historian
Nabih Amin Faris compiled the four surviving volumes into an annotated work, ''al-Juz' al-Thamin'', published in 1940 by
Princeton University Press
Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large.
The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial ...
as part of the Princeton Oriental Texts collection.
In 2020, a portion of the lost sixth volume was found in the archives of the
Bavarian State Library
The Bavarian State Library (, abbreviated BSB, called ''Bibliotheca Regia Monacensis'' before 1919) in Munich is the central " Landesbibliothek", i. e. the state library of the Free State of Bavaria, the biggest universal and research libra ...
in
Munich
Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...
and was published by a researcher in the Arabia Felix Academy.
An abridged version of the texts has been made available under a
Creative Commons
Creative Commons (CC) is an American non-profit organization and international network devoted to educational access and expanding the range of creative works available for others to build upon legally and to share. The organization has release ...
license for reading in some online libraries.
Content
The first two volumes record genealogies, especially that of the family of king
Sheba son of Yashjoub.
The second volume contains a poem, ''al-Risala al-Damighah''.
This poem has sometimes been published separately with commentaries.
The eighth volume describes archaeological finds in Yemen and discusses the poetry of
Dhu Jadan and
Abu Karib
Abū Karib As’ad al-Kāmil (), called "Abū Karīb", sometimes rendered as As'ad Abū Karīb, full name: Abu Karib As'ad ibn Hassān Maliki Karib Yuha'min, was king ( Tubba', ) of the Himyarite Kingdom (modern day Yemen). He ruled Yemen from 39 ...
.
The tenth volume concerns the history of the people of
Hamdan, the hometown of the author.
See also
*
The Book of Crowns on the Kings of Himyar
Kitāb al-Tījāni (Arabic: كتاب التيجان) also known more commonly as The Book of Crowns on the Kings of Himyar, is a historical and biographical work by the Yemeni historian Wahb ibn Munabbih, an 8th AD century Israʼiliyyat author. Th ...
References
{{reflist
External links
The full readable manuscript of the Kitāb al-Iklīl on the Al-Maktaba Al-Shamela libraryDigitized and PDF versions of the 1949 Cairo edition of the 10th volume of Kitab al-Iklīl, under a Creative Commons license
Middle Eastern chronicles
Biographical dictionaries
Books of Islamic biography
History of South Arabia