Diya‘ al-Din Abu ‘Abd Allah Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi was a Muslim historian and religious scholar from a prominent Hanbali family of Damascus. He is often quoted in Arabic sources as an authority on twelfth - and thirteenth-century Palestine and Damascus.
Diya‘ al-Din’s life was typical of men from his milieu. As a youth he studied in his hometown, then traveled to other centers of Islamic learning. Upon returning to Damascus, he established a college for the study of hadith (Prophetic tradition) and settled down to teach and compose works on hadith, law, and local history. Of special interest are his vivid portrayals of Muslim life under Frankish rule, particularly in the region of Nablus, which were included in his hagio-graphical dictionary of Palestinian shaykhs, Kardmdt Masha’ikh al-Ard al-Muqaddasa (The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the Shaykhs of the Holy Land). Diya‘ al-Din propagated resistance and jihdd (holy war) against the Franks in his writings and accompanied military campaigns of Saladin along with other men of religion who attended to the spiritual needs of the army.
-Daniella Talmon-Heller
Bibliography
Leder, Stephan, “Charismatic Scripturalism: The Hanbali Maqdisis of Damascus,” DerIslam 74 (1997), 279-304.
Talmon-Heller, Daniella, “Arabic Sources on Muslim Villagers under Frankish Rule,” in From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies, 1095-1500, ed. Alan V. Murray (Turnhout: Brepols, 1998), pp. 103-117.
-, “The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings of the
Shaykhs of the Holy Land by Diya‘ al-Din b. ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Maqdisi (569/1173-643/1245): Text, Translation and Commentary,” Crusades 1 (2002), 111-154.
World History
