XX. Panegyric on Sultan Jaqmaq

Extract

The late Professor S. Arthur Strong, at the time of his lamented death, was engaged upon an edition (to be published in the Monograph Series) of the work of the celebrated historian Abu-l-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn 'Arabshāh entitled At-ta'lif aṭ-ṭāhir fī shityam al-Malik aḍh-ḍhāhir al-Qā'im bi-nuṣrat al-Ḥaqq Abī Sa'īd Jaqmaq, of which a unique MS. exists in the Library of the British Museum (Or. 3026). This treatise, a panegyric upon the Mamlūk Sulṭān of Egypt and Syria, al-Malik aḍh-Ḍhāhir Saif ad-dīn Jaqmaq (842–857 H.), was composed by the author in the year 843, when Jaqmaq had been less than two years on the throne, as an antidote (he says) to his previous work, the biography of that scourge of humanity, the great devastator Tlmūr the Lame, in order that, having set forth the career of a ruthless destroyer of mankind, he might draw also the picture of a just and righteous monarch, the father of his people and the terror only of the enemies of Islam.