Muhammad al-Amin ibn Fadlallah ibn Muhiballah ibn Muhibb al-Din al-Dimashqi, commonly known as al-Muhibbi was an Ottoman historian based in Damascus. He is best known for voluminous dictionary of biographies of 17th-century Muslim notables.

Biography

Muhibbi was born in Damascus in 1651 to a scholarly family from the

Hanafi The Hanafi school ( ar, حَنَفِية, translit=Ḥanafiyah; also called Hanafite in English), Hanafism, or the Hanafi fiqh, is the oldest and one of the four traditional major Sunni schools ( maddhab) of Islamic Law (Fiqh). It is named ...

madhhab A ( ar, مذهب ', , "way to act". pl. مَذَاهِب , ) is a school of thought within ''fiqh'' (Islamic jurisprudence). The major Sunni Mathhab are Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i and Hanbali. They emerged in the ninth and tenth centuries CE ...

, the Islamic school of law favored by the Ottoman state, which conquered the Levant in 1516. His great-grandfather Muhibb al-Din Muhammad was originally from

Hama Hama ( ar, حَمَاة ', ; syr, ܚܡܬ, ħ(ə)mɑθ, lit=fortress; Biblical Hebrew: ''Ḥamāṯ'') is a city on the banks of the Orontes River in west-central Syria. It is located north of Damascus and north of Homs. It is the provinci ...

and served as a

qadi 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 ...

(judge) in several northern Syrian towns,

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo met ...

and an instructor in Damascus. Muhibbi moved to

Beirut Beirut, french: Beyrouth is the capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, which makes it the third-largest city in the Levant region. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint o ...

when his father Fadlallah ibn Muhiballah was appointed the

(head judge) of the city, a position he held until 1669. Muhibbi returned to live in Damascus on several occasions during this period. Sometime after his father died in 1671, he studied in

Bursa ( grc-gre, Προῦσα, Proûsa, Latin: Prusa, ota, بورسه, Arabic:بورصة) is a city in northwestern Turkey and the administrative center of Bursa Province. The fourth-most populous city in Turkey and second-most populous in t ...

for a short period, returning to Damascus in 1675. He was patronized by the prominent qadi Muhammad ibn Lutfallah ibn Bayram al-Izzati, who had funded his studies in Bursa and later secured him an appointment as the qadi of

Edirne Edirne (, ), formerly known as Adrianople or Hadrianopolis (Greek: Άδριανούπολις), is a city in Turkey, in the northwestern part of the province of Edirne in Eastern Thrace. Situated from the Greek and from the Bulgarian borders, ...

. When Izzati became ill and resigned, Muhibbi accompanied him to the Ottoman capital

Constantinople la, Constantinopolis ota, قسطنطينيه , alternate_name = Byzantion (earlier Greek name), Nova Roma ("New Rome"), Miklagard/Miklagarth ( Old Norse), Tsargrad ( Slavic), Qustantiniya (Arabic), Basileuousa ("Queen of Cities"), Megalopolis ( ...

where he died in 1681. Upon his return to Damascus shortly after his patron's death, Muhibbi began his writing career. After making the Hajj pilgrimage to

Mecca Mecca (; officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, commonly shortened to Makkah ()) is a city and administrative center of the Mecca Province of Saudi Arabia, and the holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow val ...

in 1690 he was appointed a deputy qadi in Damascus and worked as an instructor in the Aminiyya Madrasa. He died in the city on 11 November 1699.

Works

Muhibbi is best known for writing a collection of biographies about the notables of his lifetime and the preceding generation. His finished work consisted of 1,283 entries and was completed in 1685. He also had a draft work of biographies about notables from the Hejaz and

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast an ...

. Muhibbi authored a second biographical work universal in scope. Among his sources were his Damascene near-contemporaries Najm al-Din al-Ghazzi's and al-Burini's biographical dictionaries. Muhibbi went further in scope, including many luminaries from the Hejaz, Yemen and Bahrayn, as well as

India India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the ...

. Having learned Turkish and Persian during his extensive time in Constantinople and Anatolia, he translated into Arabic numerous poems from the two languages. Muhibbi composed poetry himself was regarded by the 18th-century Damascene historian Khalil al-Muradi as highly talented and popular among his listeners.

Notes

References

Bibliography

* *{{EI2 , last=Brockelmann , first=C. , authorlink=Carl Brockelmann , volume=7 , pages=496–497 1651 births 1699 deaths 17th-century Arabic writers 17th-century biographers 17th-century people from the Ottoman Empire People from Damascus