Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Wasil was a Syrian qadt (judge) and historian.
After completing his education, he served a number of Ayyubid rulers, including the sultan al-Mu‘azzam Turan Shah. In 1261 he was sent as an ambassador to Manfred, king of Sicily, by the Mamluk sultan Baybars I. About three years later he became chief qadi of his native city of Hamah in Syria, where he remained until his death.
Ibn Wasil wrote several works, the most valuable of which is his history of the Ayyubids, Mufarrij al-Kurub ft Akhbar Bant Ayyub (The Remover of Worries about Reports of the Scions of Ayyub).
-Niall Christie
Bibliography
Cahen, Claude, “Sur le Ta’rikh Salihi d’Ibn Wasil: Notes et extraits,” in Studies in Islamic History and Civilization in Honour of Professor David Ayalon, ed. M. Sharon (Leiden: Brill, 1986), pp. 507-516.
Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999).
Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Wasil, Mufarrij al-Kurub ft Akhbar Bant Ayyub, ed. Jamal al-Din al-Shayyal, 5 vols. (Al-Qahira: Matba‘at Jami‘at Fu’ad al-Awwal, 1953-1977).
Major, Balazs, “Al-Malik al-Mujahid, Ruler of Homs, and the Hospitallers (the Evidence in the Chronicle of Ibn Wasil),” in The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity, ed. Zsolt Hunaydi and Jozsef Laszlovszky (Budapest: Central European University, Department of Medieval Studies, 2001), pp. 61-75.
Waddy, C., “An Historian Looks at the Middle East: Based on the Life of Ibn Wasil, Contemporary Historian of the Ayyubid Dynasty,” Milla wa-Milla 11 (1972), 13-19.
World History
