‘Imad al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad, known as al-Katib al-Isfahani, was a historian and katib (secretary-scholar) born in Isfahan in Persia and educated in Baghdad.
In 1157, he caught the attention of the vizier Ibn Hubayra, who appointed him as his na’ib (representative) at Wasit and Basra. When Ibn Hubayra died in 1165, al-Isfahani lost his position, but two years later he became a katib in the service of Nur al-Din and soon rose in prominence. After the death of Nur al-Din (1174), al-Isfahani was supplanted by rivals and eventually fled to Mosul. There he fell ill, but he recovered, and upon hearing that Saladin was advancing on Damascus, he sent the sultan greetings in the form of a poem. He passed into Saladin’s service, eventually becoming both his official secretary and close companion. He remained in almost constant attendance upon his master until the latter’s death in 1193, after which he settled in Damascus and spent the rest of his life on literary work.
Al-Isfahani wrote several important works, including a chronicle of the years from 1187 to just after the death of Sal-adin, al-Fath al-Qusslfl’l-Fath al-Qudst (Qussian Eloquence on the Conquest of Jerusalem) and an autobiographical account of the sultan’s military expeditions, al-Barq al-Shami (The Syrian Lightning). He also collected a great anthology of the Arab poets of the twelfth century, Kharidat al-Qasr wa-Jaridat Ahl al-‘Asr (The Pearl of Selection and Roll of the People of the Age), and wrote other historical chronicles.
-Niall Christie
Bibliography
‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani, Al-Fath al-Qussi, ed. M. M. Subh (Al-Qahirah: Al-Dar al-Qawmiyah li’l-Tiba‘ah wa‘l-Nashr,
1965).
-, Conquete de la Syrie et de la Palestine, trans. H.
Masse (Paris: Geuthner, 1972).
-, Khartdat al-Qasr wa al-Jartdat al-‘Asr, ed.
Muhammad Bahjat al-Athari, 2 vols. (Baghdad: Dar al-Hurriyah li’l-Tiba‘ah, 1973).
-, Al-Barq al-Shamt, vols. 3 and 5, ed. M. al-Hayyari
(Amman: Mu’assasat ‘Abd al-Hamid Shuman, 1987).
-, Der Syrische Blitz: Saladins Sekretdr zwischen
Selbstdarstellung und Geschichtsschreibung, ed. and trans.
L. Richter-Bernburg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1998).
Lyons, Malcolm Cameron, and David E. P. Jackson, Saladin: The Politics of Holy War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
Rabbat, Nasser, “My Life with Salah al-Din: The Memoirs of ‘Imad al-Din al-Katib al-Isfahani,” Edebiyat 8 (1997), 267-287.
Richards, Donald S., “‘Imad al-Din al-Isfahani: Administrator, Litterateur and Historian,” in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 1993), pp. 133-146.
World History
