''Būstān al-jāmiʿ li-jamīʿ tawārīkh al-zamān'' ( ar, بستان الجامع لجميع تواريخ الزمان, , General Garden of All the Histories of the Ages). is an anonymous

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...

chronicle from

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty ( ar, الأيوبيون '; ) was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni Muslim of Kurdish origin, Saladin ...

Syria.

Claude Cahen Claude Cahen (26 February 1909 – 18 November 1991) was a 20th-century French Marxist orientalist and historian. He specialized in the studies of the Islamic Middle Ages, Muslim sources about the Crusades, and social history of the medieval Is ...

, "Une chronique syrienne du VI^e/VII^e siècle: Le ''Bustān al-Jāmiʿ''", ''Bulletin d'études orientales'' 7/8 (1937/1938), 113–158. The ''Būstān'' was written, probably in Aleppo, in the years 1196–1197 (592–59З AH). It may have been completed in

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...

. It survives in two manuscripts: one of the 14th-century, now Istanbul, Saray 2959, and the other Oxford, Huntington 172. In the Istanbul manuscript, the text is corrupted but the handwriting is neat. The scribe attributes it to a ''

qāḍī A qāḍī ( ar, قاضي, Qāḍī; otherwise transliterated as qazi, cadi, kadi, or kazi) is the magistrate or judge of a ''sharīʿa'' court, who also exercises extrajudicial functions such as mediation, guardianship over orphans and minor ...

'' named ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, but if this is not a mistake it must be a different person from ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, author of ''al-Barq al-Shāmī'', whose information on the reign of

Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi () ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known by the epithet Saladin,, ; ku, سه‌لاحه‌دین, ; was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from an ethnic Kurdish family, he was the first of both Egypt and ...

is less extensive than that found in the ''Būstān'' and sometimes contradicts it. The scribe added a continuation to the ''Būstān'', which, drawing on the works of Ibn al-Athīr and Ibn Wāṣil, brings the account down to the time of

Baybars Al-Malik al-Zahir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Bunduqdari ( ar, الملك الظاهر ركن الدين بيبرس البندقداري, ''al-Malik al-Ẓāhir Rukn al-Dīn Baybars al-Bunduqdārī'') (1223/1228 – 1 July 1277), of Turkic Kipchak o ...

. The ''Būstān'' is a "bare and summary history of Islam". It focuses on Aleppo and Egypt, but contains information not found in any earlier source. It is frequently an original source, especially as regards Egypt. It does share a lost source with

Ibn Abī Ṭayyiʾ Ibn Abi Tayyi ( Arabic: إبن أبي طيء) Yaḥyā Abū Zakariyyā ibn Ḥamīd al-Najjār (1180–1228) was a Shi'i historian and poet from Aleppo )), is an adjective which means "white-colored mixed with black". , motto ...

and cites

al-ʿAẓīmī Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad al-Tanūkhī (), commonly known as al-ʿAẓīmī (1090–post-1161) was an Arab chronicler of the history of Aleppo. Al-Azimi was a poet and school master in Aleppo. He was a contemporary of t ...

. The later works of Ibn Abī al-Dam and Ibn Wāṣil rely either on the ''Būstān'' or on one of its lost sources. One of these may have been a

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the ...

source.

Ibn Khallikān Aḥmad bin Muḥammad bin Ibrāhīm bin Abū Bakr ibn Khallikān) ( ar, أحمد بن محمد بن إبراهيم بن أبي بكر ابن خلكان; 1211 – 1282), better known as Ibn Khallikān, was a 13th century Shafi'i Islamic scholar w ...

, Ibn Muyassar and al-Jazarī all make use of the ''Būstān'' as a source. It is a valuable source for the early

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and sometimes directed by the Latin Church in the medieval period. The best known of these Crusades are those to the Holy Land in the period between 1095 and 1291 that were ...

References

{{reflist 1190s 12th-century Arabic books Medieval historical texts Middle Eastern chronicles Syria under the Ayyubid Sultanate