Al-Maqrizi

Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn Ali al-Maqrizi (c. 766/1364–845/1442) was an Egyptian historian of the Mamluk period, remembered above all for chronicling the city of Cairo. He was born and raised in Cairo into a comfortable scholarly family; his nisba (the place-name appended to an Arabic name) derives from Harat al-Maqariza, a quarter of Baalbek (in present-day Lebanon) from which his paternal forebears came. He received a broad education, studying under many teachers — by his own report some 600 — and, according to the tradition, was a student of the great North African historian Ibn Khaldun, whose theory of the rise and fall of civilizations is often said to have shaped his analytical outlook. Trained first in the Hanafi school of law (madhhab), he is reported to have moved to the Shafi'i and finally the Zahiri school.

He held a series of posts: writer of decrees, deputy judge, and several brief terms as muhtasib (the official inspecting markets and public morals) of Cairo around 801–807 AH. He preached and taught hadith at major Cairo mosques and madrasas. About 810/1408 he moved to Damascus for roughly a decade of teaching and administrative work, then withdrew to private scholarship in Cairo. He performed the Hajj more than once and spent time in Mecca, especially during a long journey begun around 833/1430.

His monumental Khitat (al-Mawa'iz wa'l-i'tibar), composed across the 1410s–1430s, remained the unrivalled source on Egypt's urban past for centuries; he also wrote histories of the Fatimid and Mamluk states and on famine and currency.