The Autobiography of Abū Shāma

(1203–1268)

Introduction

Abū Shāma was born in 1203 in Damascus to a family of religious scholars. He is best known today as the author of The Book of the Two Gardens on the History of the Two Reigns (Kitāb al-Rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn), a chronologically arranged history of the reigns of Nūr al-Dīn Zangī (d. 1174) and Saladin (d. 1193), regarded as one of the most important Arabic sources for the period of the Crusades.^[1] Abū Shāma's autobiography is found listed under the year of his birth in his continuation of the original work, the Sequel to the Book of the Two Gardens (Dhayl kitāb al-rawḍatayn), which covers the years from Saladin's death to Abū Shāma's. The Sequel is also arranged chronologically and includes biographical notices of prominent figures listed under the years of their deaths. The final scene of the Sequel, in fact, describes how the author was beaten up by thugs, an incident that apparently led to his death soon afterward.

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Although Abū Shāma is today remembered primarily as a historian, his self-portrayal in his autobiography, translated here in full, shows that he considered himself first and foremost a scholar of Islamic religious sciences, particularly of Islamic law. His account of his life begins with a list of his forebears—all men distinguished by their religious learning—and then sketches the broad outlines of his education. The turning point in Abū Shāma's life is depicted as the year 624 (1227), when he traveled to Jerusalem with his most important teacher and his hair suddenly turned gray though he was only twenty-five years old. He interprets this event, in conjunction with the trip to Jerusalem and some dreams from that same year, to mean that he had “arrived” as a mature religious scholar. As he puts it in the short poem that appears in his autobiography—a poem he conventionally attributes to “some good person or other” but which he himself wrote—God marked him with the outward signs of intellectual maturity to reflect his inner intellectual growth.

Abū Shāma's autobiography poses some intriguing problems concerning the nature and function of the self-tarjama in the Arabic tradition. Throughout the larger historical text, the Sequel, Abū Shāma refers to himself exclusively in the first person, which communicates to the reader a clear sense of the author as a person beyond the text. In addition, in the larger text, he provides information of a rather personal nature (at least, in the modern sense), noting, for example, his reactions to the tragic deaths of several of his children (e.g., Dhayl, 176), expressing his love and affection for his wife in a lengthy poem (Dhayl, 196–98), and giving other intimate details of his life. He intermingles many of these with the major historical occurrences of the realm, thus placing the events of his own life on par with those of the kingdoms and reigns he chronicled:

In this year Ibn Abī Firās led the people from Iraq on the pilgrimage, and Sharaf al-Dīn, the ruler of Sarkas, those from Syria.

Also in this year, my mother passed away—May God have mercy on her! I buried her in the foothills on the road near al-Imāj and al-Maghar, next to the wadi. I hope to be buried next to her. Her death occurred on Saturday, the sixth of the month of Rajab. She was pious and virtuous—May God be pleased with her!

Also in this year, the Amīr Mubāriz al-Dīn Sunqur of Aleppo died, one of Saladin's contingent. (Dhayl, 134)

Because of the many references to Abū Shāma's own life that are woven into the larger historical flow, some scholars have suggested that the overall work should be considered a memoir.^[2] In any case, in his work of history, Abū Shāma inserts the kind of information a modern reader might expect to find in an autobiography.

In the autobiography itself, however, Abū Shāma curiously shifts to the third person and changes the tone of his self-representation drastically. Here, little of Abū Shāma's “personal” life (again, in modern terms) is portrayed, while materials such as dreams and visions occupy a prominent place alongside details of Abū Shāma's education and career. Although the critical historical facts of Abū Shāma's life are presented here, the sense of “person” that is communicated interstitially in his historical writing is replaced with an entirely different self-representation.

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By Abū Shāma's time there were a substantial number of first-person autobiographical texts in wide circulation, several of them written by famous figures of the period of Saladin's reign and therefore almost certainly known to him. Yet Abū Shāma chose to present information about his life in the standard third-person format of scholarly biography; he probably composed it specifically as a “camera-ready” text to be quoted by later historians and biographers. Arabic autobiographers clearly had a choice between first-person and third-person portrayal; Abū Shāma, however, is the only Arabic autobiographer to have couched a third-person autobiography in a larger framing text in the first person (cf. the texts by ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, ‘Abd al-Laṭīf al-Baghdādī, and Ibn al-‘Adīm, all translated in this volume, as well as the famous autobiographies of ‘Umāra al-Ḥakamī al-Yamanī and Usāma ibn Munqidh, available in French and English translations respectively). In some sense, a complete reading of Abū Shāma's text can only be accomplished alongside the numerous passages of the Sequel to the Two Gardens that provide other autobiographical glimpses of the author.

Abū Shāma does not fully subordinate his account to the scholarly tarjama genre, however; he includes dimensions not commonly found in those texts, such as a large number of dream narratives (cf. al-Tirmidhī, translated in this volume), and his account of his hair turning gray (cf. Ibn al-‘Adīm, translated in this volume), marking this event even further with the inclusion of a poem (the only one in the text). His text is also lacking many of the standard components of the scholarly tarjama, such as a detailed list of his teachers and writings and extracts from his poetry. Abū Shāma's text shares much with other Arabic autobiographies and differs significantly from standard scholarly biographies. In fact, a later hand, probably that of one of his students, has attempted to rectify this situation by adding a list of teachers, some information about his writings, and a collection of extracts from his poetry.

If Abū Shāma wrote this text to be cited by later writers, his strategy failed. None of his main biographers quote it, although Ibn Kathīr (d. 1373) at least mentions its existence. On the other hand, al-Sakhāwī (d. 1497) notes Abū Shāma's sharp tongue and makes reference to his high opinion of himself,^[3] despite the approbative tone of other biographies of Abū Shāma; this may in fact be a veiled reference to Abū Shāma's autobiography, for Abū Shāma's text was cited as a respectable precedent for writing an autobiography by al-Sakhāwī's chief rival, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505).

Bibliography

Abū Shāma. al-Dhayl ‘alā al-rawḍatayn. Ed. M Kawtharī [under the title Tarājim rijāl al-qarnayn al-sādis wa-l-sābi‘]. Cairo: al-Ḥusaynī, 1948. 37–39.

Barbier de Meynard, C. Recueil des historiens des Croisades, historiensorientaux. Paris: Imprimerie National, 1872–1906. Vol. 5:207–16. [Arabic text and French translation of Abū Shāma's autobiography]

Gabrieli, F. Arab Historians of the Crusades. Trans. E. J. Costello. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969.

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Ibn Kathīr, Ismā‘īl ibn ‘Umar. al-Bidāya wa-l-nihāya. 14 vols. Cairo: al-Maṭba‘a al-Salafiyya, 1932. Vol. 8: 250–51.

Lowry, Joseph E. “Time, Form, and Self: The Autobiography of Abū Shāma.” Edebiyât:Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 313–25.

Pouzet, Louis. “Maִzāhir al-sīra al-dhātiyya fī kitāb Tarājimal-qarnayn al-sādis wa-l-sābi‘ li-Shihāb al-Dīn Abī Shāma al-Maqdisī al-Dimashqī [Autobiographical Passages in the Biographies of the Sixthand Seventh Centuries by Shihāb al-Dīn Abū Shāma al-Maqdisī al-Dimashqī].” Annales de Départment des Lettres Arabes,Institut de Lettres Orientales, Université Saint-Joseph 1 (1981): 25–35.

Rosenthal, Franz. A History of Muslim Historiography. 2d rev. ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968.

al-Sakhāwī, Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad. I‘lān bi-l-tawbīkh li-man dhamma al-ta’rīkh. Damascus: al-Qudsī, 1930.

The Life of Abū Shāma [al-Dhayl, pp. 37–39]

Also in the year 599 [1203 C.E.], the compiler of this book was born, God's supplicant, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Ismā‘īl ibn Ibrāhīm ibn ‘Uthmān ibn Abī Bakr ibn Ibrāhīm ibn Muḥammad of Jerusalem, of the Shafi‘ite school of law, on the evening of Friday, the twenty-third of the month of Rabī‘ II—may God pardon him. He was known as Abū Shāma, “possessor of the mole,” due to a large mole over his right eyebrow; he was also named Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad. He was born in this year at the head of al-Fawākhīr Street in Damascus, just inside the city's East Gate.

His distant ancestor Abū Bakr was originally from Jerusalem and Abū Bakr's father, Ibrāhīm, was a notable there. Perhaps Muḥammad, which is as far back as the family tree goes, was Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī al-Qāsim ‘Alī of the city of Ṭūs, a Qur’ān reciter and Sufi, as well as Imam of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. This Muḥammad is mentioned by the scholar Abū al-Qāsim in his History of Damascus.^[4] Ibn al-Akfānī^[5] relates as follows: “The Franks—may God forsake them—killed Muḥammad when they entered Jerusalem in the month of Sha‘bān, 492 [1099]. He is one of the martyrs whose heads are in the cave people visit in the cemetery of Mamella in Noble Jerusalem.”^[6]

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His descendant Abū Bakr later moved to Damascus and resided there where there were born to him two sons, ‘Uthmān and ‘Abd al-Raḥmān; the latter was a teacher near the Damascus Mosque Gate—his story will be told below.^[7] God increased their progeny in Damascus, and their dwellings in the districts around the East Gate, and, by and by, ‘Uthmān fathered Ibrāhīm, the author's grandfather, who passed away in the month of Sha‘bān in 575 [1180], and was buried in the cemetery at Paradise Gate.^[8] Ibrāhīm sired two sons, Abū al-Qāsim, who passed away on Friday, the ninth of Ramaḍān, in 604 [1208] and was buried in a cemetery between the East Gate and the Gate of Thomas, and Ismā‘īl, who passed away on the thirteenth of the month of Rabī‘ I in 638 [1240]. Ismā‘īl also had two sons, Ibrāhīm, whose birthday was on the night of Monday, the twenty-fifth of the month of Muḥarram 591 [1194], and the compiler of this book, ‘Abd al-Raḥmān.^[9]

God—may He be exalted—instilled in him even in his youth a love for memorizing the Precious Scripture and for the pursuit of knowledge, making that his ambition. He did not let his father know of this until he said to him, “I have finished memorizing the Qur’ān!” Then he took up the study of the seven variant readings of the Qur’ān, law, Arabic grammar, the ḥadīth of the Prophet, history, the biographies of the transmitters of the Prophet's ḥadīth and other fields, and he wrote many works on these subjects that will be mentioned below [ = later in the book, not in the autobiography]. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca with his father in the year 621 [1224–25], and then again in the following year. He visited Jerusalem in 624 [1226–27] and Egypt in 628 [1230–31], studying in various places in Egypt, then in Cairo, Damietta, and Alexandria. Thereafter, he continued to reside in Damascus, engaged in the task at hand, namely, his pursuit of knowledge. He assembled it in his writings and in the legal opinions he issued on the the rules of law and other such matters.

In his youth he used to recite the Qur’ān in the Damascus mosque while observing the learned professors such as Fakhr al-Dīn Abū Manṣūr Ibn ‘Asākir.^[10] He noted how the latter related his legal methodology and conclusions when giving legal opinions for Muslims, how people sought him out and studied the Prophet's ḥadīth with him all while he made his way from the maqṣūra [the enclosed area in a mosque] named after the Prophet's Companions beneath the Eagle Dome, where he taught ḥadīth, to the Taqwiyya law school where he gave lectures in jurisprudence. He noted how people turned to him and resorted to him time and again, as well as his good reputation and his moderation in dress. He found that he liked these ways of Ibn ‘Asākir, and therefore desired to attain the same rank in learning, to be equally well known, and to have people derive benefit from his own legal opinions. God granted him this beyond his most fervent hopes. Gray appeared in his beard and in his hair when he was but twenty-five years old. God—may He be exalted—brought old age to him prematurely, both in outward appearance and in inward demeanor. About this, some good person or other has composed the following:

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	If he grew gray upon reaching his twenty-fifth year,     still, the grayness in him was not uncouth.
	People knew not the full maturity of his learning,     though his lights shone bright even in his youth.
	God illuminated the very heart of him;     truly he embodied guidance for those unsure of truth.
	A shaykh in the true meaning; grayness came early to him,     dignifying him above his fellow youths.
	He comprised excellence as a boy and old man;     a station near to God and a fair resting place are his both.[11]

People had auspicious visions in their sleep which foretold of the good fortune in learning that was to come his way, and of the good things for which he had hoped. For example, while he was still quite young, going to and from grammar school, and his father was marveling at his enthusiasm for school and his ardor in reading, contrary to the fashion of most young boys, his mother—may God rest her soul—told his father: “You shouldn't be surprised! For when I was pregnant, I dreamt that I was at the very highest spot on a minaret, at the crescent moon on its top, and I was giving the call to prayer. I later recounted this to a dream-interpreter who said, ‘You will give birth to a boy whose fame in learning and goodness will spread throughout the earth.'”

He himself [ = Abū Shāma], in the month of Ṣafar 624 [1227], dreamt that ‘Umar ibn al-Khattāb [the second caliph, renowned for his piety and righteousness]—may God rest his soul—had come to Syria to aid its people against the Franks—may God abandon them. He had a special relationship with ‘Umar such that ‘Umar would delegate things to him and talk with him concerning the affairs of Muslims while he walked at ‘Umar's side, touching his shoulder. This continued until people began to ask him about ‘Umar and what ‘Umar intended to do. He would inform them and it was as though he were the medium between ‘Umar and the people.

In this year, he also dreamt that he and the legal scholar ‘Abd al-‘Azīz ibn ‘Abd al-Salām^[12]—may God grant him peace—were inside the Gate of Mercy in Jerusalem. He wanted to open it, but there was someone preventing him from doing so, pushing on it so that it stayed closed. The two of them, however, continued to apply themselves to the matter until they opened its two halves completely, such that each half of the door ended up leaning against the wall behind it.

He also dreamt in the month of Jumādā II of that year that some Muslims were performing their Friday prayers in severe heat. He grew afraid that they might become dehydrated since there was no water there, so far as anyone knew. Then he saw an ancient well near him and a trough, and it occurred to him to draw water from the well and to pour it into the trough so people could drink from it when they finished their prayers. Someone in front of him whom he did not know drew a bucket or two, then he took the bucket from him and drew a great number of buckets, so many he could not count them all, pouring them into the basin.

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Then al-Muhtār Hilāl ibn Māzin ibn al-Ḥarrābī dreamt that he saw Abū Shāma bearing the weight of a great edifice and al-Muhtār exclaimed: “See how so-and-so assumes the burden of the Word of God!”

An old woman dreamt that a group of the pious had gathered in the mosque of the village of Bayt Sawā, one of the villages in Ghūṭa, outside Damascus. They were asked what they were doing and replied, “We are waiting for the Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—to pray with us.” She said that he—that is, the author of this book—arrived and prayed with them.

Also, there was once a man who had come seeking a legal opinion while he was in the great lecture area reserved for books, in the uppermost part of the lecture hall in the ‘Ādiliyya law college—this is the place where he sits most of the time giving out legal opinions and so on—and at that point [Abū Shāma] passed by on his way to pray in the law college. The man was astonished and was asked, “What do you find so astonishing?” “I have never seen this place before,” he said, “but I dreamt in my sleep that I was in this, the ‘Ādiliyya law college, and there was a huge group of people in it. Someone said to the people, `Stand aside, for the Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—is passing by.' So I looked up and he came out to us from the great lecture area reserved for books and passed by, exactly as [Abū Shāma] just did, on his way to the prayer niche.”

Also, al-Ṣalāḥ the Sufi dreamt, on the first night of the month of Jumādā II in 665 [1267], that the compiler of this book was setting out on the pilgrimage so well outfitted that he had provisions for everything that he could possibly need, such that the one dreaming was astonished.

Ḥasan al-Ḥijāzī, in the month of Ramaḍān 657 [1259], dreamt that someone from the occult world, unseen by him, but whose voice he could hear, said, “Shaykh Abū Shāma is the Prophet of this era,” or something to that effect. He also said that he saw him another time on a lofty bridge and under the bridge was abundant wheat.

Among these auspicious dreams were those of his brother, Shaykh Burhān al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm ibn Ismā‘īl, older than him by about nine years and one of the pious. He dreamt that their father—may God rest his soul—was saying to him, “Occupy yourself with learning; look at the station of your brother.” So he looked up and suddenly his brother was on top of a mountain and his father and the one dreaming were walking at its base. He also dreamt in the month of Ṣafar in 657 [1258] that the author was holding fast to a rope that was hanging down from the heavens, leading up to them. So he asked someone in the dream about that and suddenly there appeared to the two of them the Dome of the Rock and the Aqsa mosque [of Jerusalem], whereupon that person asked, “Who built that mosque?”

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“Solomon, son of David,” he replied.

“Your brother has been given the like of that which Solomon was given,” he said.

“How is that?”

“Was not Solomon brought so many things that he had no need of anyone thereafter? Was he not given this and that and brought a great number of different types of things?”

“Indeed, yes he was.”

“And so too your brother has been brought many different kinds of knowledge,” or something to that effect.

Also, al-Sharaf al-Ṣarkhadī dreamt that the author was above the roof of an isolated house giving the call to prayer, and that he then recited from the Qur’ān: “And listen for the Day when the Caller will call out from a place quite near . . .”^[13] He also dreamt that the Day of Resurrection had come and that the author of this book was riding a donkey, making great haste. He was asked about this and replied, “I am seeking out the Prophet—may God bless him and grant him peace—for the sake of the pool from which his people will be given to drink.”^[14]

And finally, al-Sharaf ibn Ra’īs also dreamt that he saw the Day of Resurrection and described some of it terrors. He said, “I saw so-and-so—that is, the compiler of this book—and so I asked how he was, saying to him, `How were you met?' `I was well met,' he replied.”

But these dreams and other things have only been recorded here to testify to the grace of God—may He be exalted—just as He commended in His words—may He be exalted: “And as for the bounty of your Lord, speak!” [Q 93:11]. Moreover, the Prophet said—may God bless him and grant him peace—“All that will remain of the glad tidings is a true vision which the faithful person will view, or which will be shown to him.”

O God, give us thanks that we might thank You for these blessings, seal them with goodness, protect us in this life and in the next, help us to have faith in Your well-conceived plan, and let us not forget Your mention.^[15]

Notes

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