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Al-Maqrizi

Al-Maqrizi

c. 1364 CE–c. 1442 CE · Cairo

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.

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Stop 1 of 51364Born / Raised / Educated

CairoקהירEgypt

What they did here

Al-Maqrizi was born in Cairo about 766/1364-5 (some sources give 765/1363-4) into a well-to-do scholarly family and was educated there, studying with a large number of teachers. His family's nisba traces to a quarter of Baalbek, but he himself was a native Cairene.

Cairo in this era

Under the Mamluk sultans (1250-1517) Cairo was the largest city of the Islamic world west of Persia and, after the fall of Baghdad in 1258, the seat of a line of Abbasid caliphs in name. Its many madrasas, mosques and Sufi lodges drew scholars of hadith, law and mysticism, among them Ibn Hajar al-Asqalani and Ibn Ata Allah.

About Cairo

Cairo, at the head of the Nile delta, grew from two foundations: Fustat, the garrison town built by the Arab conquerors in 641, and al-Qahira ('the Victorious'), the walled city founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969, where the mosque of al-Azhar opened in 970-72 and became a great centre of learning. Under the Ayyubids (from 1171) and the Mamluks (1250-1517) it was one of the largest cities of the Islamic world. Fustat's Jewish community, home to Maimonides in the 12th century, left the Cairo Geniza, a vast store of medieval documents. Later ruled by the Ottomans and, from 1882, under British occupation, Cairo is the capital of modern Egypt.

Across the traditions, in Cairo at the same time

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In the same place & time

Sages whose lives overlapped with Al-Maqrizi’s in the same cities, drawn from their recorded journeys.

Across the traditions

The world in their lifetime

Thinkers and teachers of other traditions whose lives overlapped with Al-Maqrizi’s — a glimpse of the wider world they lived in. Drawn purely from recorded birth and death years.

Works(23)