Izz al-Din ibn Shaddad al-Halabi (1217–1285) () was an
Arab
Arabs (, , ; , , ) are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in West Asia and North Africa. A significant Arab diaspora is present in various parts of the world.
Arabs have been in the Fertile Crescent for thousands of years ...
scholar and official for the
Ayyubids
The Ayyubid dynasty (), also known as the Ayyubid Sultanate, 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 ori ...
from
Aleppo
Aleppo is a city in Syria, which serves as the capital of the Aleppo Governorate, the most populous Governorates of Syria, governorate of Syria. With an estimated population of 2,098,000 residents it is Syria's largest city by urban area, and ...
.
'Izz al-Din Muhammad b. 'Ali ibn Shaddad al-Halabi, often quoted simply as Ibn Shaddad, is best known for his ''Al-a'laq al-khatira fi dhikr umara' al-Sham wa'l-Jazira'', a historical geography of
Syria (al-Sham) and
Upper Mesopotamia
Upper Mesopotamia constitutes the Upland and lowland, uplands and great outwash plain of northwestern Iraq, northeastern Syria and southeastern Turkey, in the northern Middle East. Since the early Muslim conquests of the mid-7th century, the regio ...
(al-Jazira), which he wrote in exile in
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
after the
Mongols
Mongols are an East Asian ethnic group native to Mongolia, China ( Inner Mongolia and other 11 autonomous territories), as well as the republics of Buryatia and Kalmykia in Russia. The Mongols are the principal member of the large family o ...
overran Syria. This work has been translated into French and published by as ''Description de la Syrie du Nord'' in Damascus in 1984.
He also wrote ''Ta'rikh al-Malik al-zahir'', a biography of
Baybars I, the
Mamluk
Mamluk or Mamaluk (; (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural); translated as "one who is owned", meaning "slave") were non-Arab, ethnically diverse (mostly Turkic, Caucasian, Eastern and Southeastern European) enslaved mercenaries, slave-so ...
ruler of Egypt.
1217 births
1285 deaths
13th-century Arab people
13th-century Egyptian historians
People from Aleppo
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