Thirteenth Century

Abū al-Faraj ‘Abd al-Raḥmān Ibn al-Jawzī (b. 511/1116, d. 597/1201)

Jurist, historian, and preacher. This text consists of advice from the author to his son, but the third section recounts the author's own childhood and young adulthood in exemplary terms. Laftat al-kabad ilā naṣīḥat al-walad (The Turning of the Heart toward Advising One's Son), ed. ‘Abd al-Ghaffār Sulaymān al-Bindarī (Beirut: Dār al-Kutub al-‘Ilmiyya, 1987).

‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī (b. 519/1125, d. 597/1201)

Personal secretary/chancellor to Saladin and historian. His al-Barq al-shāmī (The Syrian Thunderbolt), a professional diary of sorts, is written as a historical account of Saladin's reign and includes not only narrative accounts of Saladin's actions but also official letters, poems, and memorandums, all told with a distinctly autobiographical voice emphasizing al-Iṣfahānī's role in the events. Al-Suyūṭī (d. 909/1505) and al-Sha‘rānī (d. 973/1565), see below, both refer to it as al-Iṣfahānī's tarjama of himself. Al-Barq al-shāmī, vol. 3, ed. Muṣṭafā al-Hayarī, and vol. 5, ed. Fāliḥ Ḥusayn (‘Ammān: ‘A. H. Shuman, 1986–87). Only two of the seven volumes of al-Barq have survived, but a condensed version, the Sanā by al-Bundarī, gives a summary of the whole: al-Fatḥ ibn ‘Alī al-Bundarī, Sanā al-barq al-shāmī, ed. Ramazan Şeşen (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1971).

Abū Muḥammad Rūzbihan ibn Abī Naṣr al-Fasā’ī al-Baqlī al-Shirāzī (b. 522/ 1128, d. 606/1209)

Sufi mystic and Qur’ān commentator. His spiritual autobiography was written in 557/1181–82 when he was fifty-five. It is in the first person and recounts his visionary encounters with God, angels, prophets, and Sufi figures. In the first fifth of the text, which is the autobiographical memoir proper, Rūzbihan describes how he was overwhelmed by a vision at the age of fifteen and thereafter abandoned his vegetable shop for a year of wandering in the desert. Abridged versions of the Arabic text are available in Ruzbihan al-Bakli ve kitab Kaşf al-asrar’i ile Farsca bazi Şiirleir, ed. Nazif Hoca (Istanbul: Edebiyat Fakultesi Matbaas=i, 1971), and in “Kashf al-asrār,” ed. Paul Nwyia, in al-Machriq 64 (1970): 385–406. The text exists, however, in two complete manuscripts and is being edited for publication by Javad Nurbakhsh. For a recent English translation based on these manuscripts, see Rūzbihan Baqlī, The Unveiling of Secrets: Diary of a Sufi Master, trans. Carl Ernst (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Parvardigar Press, 1997), 9–26.

[Al-Malik Muḥammad ibn ‘Umar al-Manṣūr (b. 567/1171–2, d. 617/1220)

Ruler of Ḥamāh and historian. There are numerous autobiographical remarks in his chronicle glorifying Saladin. Regrettably, only a final section survives in Miḍmār al-ḥaqā’iq wa-sirr al-khalā’iq, ed. Ḥasan Ḥabashī (Cairo: Ālam al-Kutub, 1968), passim. See Angelika Hartmann, EI² 6:429–30.]

Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (b. 575/1179, d. 622/1229)

Prominent biographer and encyclopedist. He appended his autobiography to the end of his monumental biographical compendium, Irshād al-arīb. It is mentioned by al-Suyūṭī (d. 909/1505), Ibn Ṭūlūn al-Dimashqī (d. 953/1546), and al-Sha‘rānī (d. 973/1565), see below, but has since been lost.

Muwaffaq al-Dīn Abū Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Laṭīf ibn Yūsuf al-Baghdādī (b. 557/1162, d. 629/1231)

Grammarian, lexicographer, philosopher, and physician. The autobiography appears to have been part of a larger work titled Ta’rīkh (History, or Diary), composed for his son, Sharaf al-Dīn Yūsuf. The complete work has not survived, but excerpts are preserved in ‘Uyūn, 683–96. Selections are translated in this volume, and an extensive English paraphrase appears in George Makdisi, The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981), 84–88. See also Shawkat Toorawa, “Language and Male Homosocial Desire in the Autobiography of ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī,” Edebiyât: Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 251–65.

Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn al-‘Arabī (b. 560/1165, d. 638/1240)

One of the most important figures in postclassical Sufism. He is often cited for the strongly autobiographical nature of his writings, but no single text presents itself as an autobiography per se. See Rūḥ al-quds fī munāṣaḥat al-nafs (Damascus: Maṭba‘at al-‘Ilm, 1964); al-Durra al-fākhira fī dhikr man intafa’tu bihi fī ṭarīq al-ākhira (see Austin below); and al-Futūḥāt al-makkiyya, 12 vols. (Cairo: al-Hay’ah al-Miṣriyya li-l-Kitāb, 1972–91). English translations of the first two appear in R. W. J. Austin, Sufis of Andalusia: The Rūḥ al-Quds and al-Durrah al-fākhirah of Ibn ‘Arabī (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972 [London: Allen and Unwin, 1971]).

Kamāl al-Dīn ‘Umar ibn Hibat Allāh Ibn al-‘Adīm (b. 588/1192, d. 660/1262)

Aleppan scholar and historian. The complete autobiography that Ibn al- ‘Adīm wrote at the behest of his friend and biographer Yāqūt has not survived, but passages are cited in Yāqūt¹ 6:18–46 and Yāqūt² 5:2068–91 and are translated in this volume. See also Nuha N. N. Khoury, “The Autobiography of Ibn al-‘Adīm as Told to Yāqūt al-Rūmī,” Edebiyât: Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 289–311.

‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismā‘īl al-Maqdisī Abū Shāma (b. 599/1202, d. 665/ 1268)

Damascene jurist and historian. His complete autobiography is translated in this volume: Al-Dhayl ‘alā al-rawḍatayn, ed. Muḥammad Kawtharī as Tarājim rijāl al-qarnayn al-sādis wa-l-sābi‘ (Cairo: Dār al-Kutub al-Malikiyya, 1947), 37–39; see also an edition from a different manuscript, Tarjamat Abī Shāma manqūla min Dhayl kitāb al-rawḍatayn, ed. and trans. Barbier de Meynard, in Recueil des Historiens des Croisades, 5:207–16 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1872–1906). See also Joseph Lowry, “Time, Form, and Self: The Autobiography of Abū Shāma.” Edebiyât: Special Edition—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 313–25.

Manṣūr ibn Salīm al-Hamadānī al-Iskandarānī Wajīh al-Dīn Abū al-Muִzaffar Ibn al-‘Imādiyya (b. 607/1210, d. 673/1275)

Muḥtasib (inspector of the markets) of Alexandria who is identified as an autobiographer in IN, 25. The text remains unidentified.

Sa‘d al-Dīn ibn Ḥamawiyya al-Juwaynī (b. 592/1196, d. 674/1276)

Damascene military commander and historian. The original text does not survive but appears to have been a historical chronicle with a highly autobiographical tone. Claude Cahen has pieced together the fragments preserved in later sources that include first-person passages relating to the birth of the author's father, the author's political exploits, opinions of various personalities, and his eventual retirement from his military career to become a Sufi. Claude Cahen, “Une source pour l'histoire ayyubide: Les mémoires de Sa‘d al-dīn ibn Ḥamawiya al-Juwaynī,” Bulletin de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg, 7 (1950): 320–37; rpt. in Les peuples musulmans dans l'histoire médievale (Damascus: Institut Fran;alcais de Damas, 1977), 457–82.

Ṣafī al-Dīn ibn Abī al-Manṣūr Ibn Ẓāfir (b. 595/1198, d. 682/1283)

Sufi mystic identified by al-Sha‘rānī (d. 973/1565—see below) as an autobiographer. The author figures in many of the entries in a collection of biographies of saintly men he encountered, purportedly penned for his son, Ibrāhīm, but the focus remains biographical. It is not clear, however, that this is the text intended by al-Sha‘rānī. See La Risāla de Ṣafī al-Dīn ibn Abī Manṣūr ibn Ẓāfir: Biographies des ma;afitres spirituels connus par un cheikh égyptien du VIIe/XIIe siècle, ed. and trans. Denis Gril (Cairo: Institut Fran;alcais d'Archéologie Orientale du Caire, 1986).

Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Alī ibn Mūsā Ibn Sa‘īd al-Maghribī (b. 610/1208, d. 685/ 1286)

Andalusian man of letters and biographer. Al-Maqqarī (2:262) reports that in his autobiography, included in al-Mughrib fī ḥulā al-Maghrib, Ibn Sa‘īd cites three previous autobiographers and their works as predecessors: Ibn al-Imām (d. 550/1155), Simṭ al-jumān; al-Ḥijārī (d. 549/1155), al-Mushib; and Ibn al-Qaṭṭā‘ (d. 433/1041) al-Durra (see above). Extant editions of the Mughrib, however, do not contain Ibn Sa‘īd's autobiography.

Abū al-Rabī‘ al-Mālaqī. Identified as an autobiographer by al-Sha‘rānī (d. 973/1565—see below), perhaps Abū al-Ḥasan ‘Ubaydallah ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Rabī‘ (b. 599/1202, d. 648/1289), the author of an unpublished al-Barnāmaj (see GAS Suppl. 1:547).