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Ibn Abi 'L-Surūr and His Works

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Abdul-Karim Rafeq
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Extract

Several biographical notices on the seventeenth-century Egyptian chronicler Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Muḥammad Abi ‘l-Surūr b. Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī al-Miṣrī al-Shāfi’ī al-Wārthī al-Ash’arī sibṭ Abi ‘l-Ḥasan, better known as Ibn Abi ‘l-Surūr, have been written in more than one language, but most of them contain misleading, and sometimes erroneous, statements about his birth and death dates and works. The new edition of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, for instance, in its brief notice ‘al-Bakrī, b. Abi ‘l-Surūr’, states that this is the ‘name of two Arab historians of the notable family of Egyptian shaykhs of the Bakriyya ṭarīḳa’, viz. (1) Muḥammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr b. Muḥammad b. ‘Alī al-Ṣiddīḳī al-Miṣrī, d. 1028/1619; (2) Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr Shams al-Dīn Abū ‘Abdallāh, son of the above, b. c. 1005/1596, d. c. 1060/1650. While the entry ‘ al-Bakrī b. Abi ‘l-Surūr’ really refers to the first, it does not, as such, apply to the alleged second historian whose identity, supposed works, and relationship to the first have to be established. The notice, moreover, gives wrong dates and erroneously ascribes some of the works of Ibn Abi ‘l-Surūr to his supposed son.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , February 1975 , pp. 24 - 31
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1975

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References

1 Muḥammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr, Nuzhat al-abṣār wa-juhaynat al-akhbār, Berlin, MS 9475, We. 354, fol. 185b; ‘Alī Mubārak, al-Khiṭaṭ al-jadīda al-tawfīqiyya li-Miṣr al-Qāhira, III, Būlāq, 1305/1887–8, 127.

2 Ibn Abi ‘l-Surūr, Nuzhat al-abṣūr wa-juhaynat al-akhbār, fol. 184b; Mubārak, III, 126.

3 Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzi, Luṭf al-samar wa-qaṭf al-thamar min tarājim a’yān al-ṭabaqa al-ūlā min al-qarn al-ḥādī ‘ashar, Ẓāhiriyya, Damascus, MS 41, fols. 172a, 184b, 185a; Muḥammad Amīn al-Muḥibbī, Khulāṣat al-athar fi a’yān al-qarn al-ḥādā ‘ashar, 4 vols., Cairo, 1284/1868 (repr. Beirut, 1966), I, 117–18; Muhammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr, al-Minah al-rahmāniyya fi ‘l-dawla al-’Uthmāniyya, Dar al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya, MS tārīkh 1926, fol. 69a.

4 Al-Ghazzī, Luṭf al-samar, fols. 172b, 200b; al-Muḥibbī, I, 474.

5 Al-Ghazzī, Luṭf al-samar, fols. 172a, 184b, 203b, 204a; al-Muḥibbī, II, 196–9; an eyewitness, Muḥammad Ḥāfiz al-Dīn al-’Ajamī al-Qudsī, Asfār al-asfār wa-abkār al-ankār, Berlin, MS 6134, We. 214, fols. 81a, 82b, 85b, 86a, states that his death occurred on 12 Rabi’ II 1013.

6 Al-Ghazzī, Luṭf al-samar, fols., 190b, 203b; al-Muhibbī, I, 145–8, 474.

7 Al-Ghazzī, Luṭf al-samar, fol. 190b; al-Muḥibbī, I, 474, quoting others, states also that he died on 8 Rabī’ II 1007/8 November 1598 (this is also the death date of his brother Abū ‘l-Surūr).

8 See, for example, al-Minaḥ al-raḥmāniyya, fol. 69a.

9 Al-Muḥibbī, ii, 357, iii, 465–8.

10 Al-Muḥibbī, I, 201–3; cf. Muhammad b. Abi ‘l-Surūr, al-Kawākib al-sā’ira fī akhbār Misr wa ‘l-Qāhira, BM, MS Add. 9973, fol. 44a.

11 Al-Muḥibbī, ii, 357–8; Ibrāhīm al-Khiyārī, Tuhfat al-udabā’ u-a-salwat al-ghurabā’, Berlin, MS 6135, We. 125, fol. 165b.

12 Al-Khiyārī, fol. 164a.