1. Excerpts in English translation are found in F. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). [BACK]

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

3. Franz Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, 2d rev. ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1968); Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad al-Sakhāwī, I‘lān bi-l-tawbīkh li-man dhamma al-ta’rīkh (Damascus: al-Qudsī, 1930). [BACK]

5. A Damascene historian (d. 1129); the quote may be from his now lost Jāmi‘ al-wafāyāt. [BACK]

6. Cf. “Jerusalem was taken from the north on the morning of Friday, July 15, 1099. The population was put to the sword by the Franks, who pillaged the area for a week. . . . In the al-Aqsa Mosque, the Franks slaughtered more than 70,000 people, among them a large number of Imams and Muslim scholars, devout ascetic men who had left behind their homelands to live lives of pious seclusion in the Holy Place.” Ibn al-Athīr (d. 1233), quoted in Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, 10– 11. [BACK]

7. The biographical notice of ‘Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Abī Bakr, Abū Shāma's grandfather's uncle, appears later in the Dhayl. [BACK]

8. Reading fa-awlada ‘Uthmān Ibrāhiִm ibn ‘Uthmān (the Arabic edition contains an extra ibn that does not accord with Abū Shāma's full name given at the beginning of the text). [BACK]

9. Only first names have been used in this passage; the original Arabic includes two or more generations for each individual cited. [BACK]

10. Nephew of the above-mentioned and far better known historian of the same last name. [BACK]

11. A reference to Qur’ān 38:40, where this phrase is said of Solomon. [BACK]

12. Abū Shāma's most important teacher with whom he twice made the journey to Jerusalem. [BACK]

13. Qur’ān 50:41; trans. Yusuf Ali. [BACK]

14. Reference to the pool [ḥawḍ] from which the faithful will be given to drink on the Day of Resurrection. [BACK]

15. Two editions contain additional text after this point that has not been translated here. They appear to be additions made by one of Abū Shāma's students. This is the opinion of the Egyptian editor and appears reasonable on internal grounds as well; at this point, for example, all references to the author shift from “the compiler of this book” [muṣannif al-kitāb] to “the aforementioned one” [al-madhkūr]. [BACK]