Abu Shama

Abū Shāma Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maḳdisī¹ (10 January 1203 – 13 June 1267)² was an Arab historian.

Abū Shāma was born in Damascus, where he passed his whole life save for one year in Egypt, a fortnight in Jerusalem and two pilgrimages to the Ḥijāz.³ He was an eyewitness to and provides the most precise information about the siege of Damascus in May–June 1229.⁴ He received a diverse Sunnī education and wrote on a variety of topics. In 1263, he became a professor in the Damascene madrasas of al-Rukniyya and al-Ashrafiyya. He died five years later in Damascus.³

Five works by Abū Shāma survive. All the rest have been lost, some in a fire that destroyed his library. He is best known today for his three historical writings, especially his two volumes on Syria in the Zengid and Ayyubid periods:³

• Kitāb al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn al-Nūriyya wa-l-Ṣalāḥiyya (The Book of the Two Gardens, Concerning Affairs of the Reigns of Nūr al-Dīn and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn),⁵ a chronological account of the reigns of Nūr al-Dīn (1146–1174) and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn (1174–1193). He is careful to cite his sources. His main ones are al-Barḳ al-Shāmī of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, of and the epistles () of . He usually quotes his sources verbatim, with the exception of ʿImād al-Dīn.