Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Among the recent acquisitions of the India Office Library is a volume of the Tārīḫ Baghdād of the Ḫaṭīb containing biographies of men with the names of 'Umar, 'Uthmān, and 'Alī. The MS. is acephalous, the end is missing, and many leaves have been lost, so that an edition of the whole text is out of the question. Paper and writing point to the beginning of the seventh century of the Hiğrah. This volume of the extensive biographical dictionary of the Ḫaṭīb does not appear to exist in other European libraries, the greater portion of the work having been lost. Salmon published in 1904 the geographical introduction of the book with a French translation; in his introduction he gives an account of the known MSS. and a biography of the author. With regard to the MSS. enumerated by Salmon, it must be noted that Amar (JA., vol. xi, 237, 1908) has shown that the MSS. Bibl. Nat. 2130 and 2131 are not the original work of the Ḫaṭīb, but parts of an amplification of his work by Ibn an-Nağğār (d. 643 a.h.). The fact that No. 2131 is called the twenty-eighth volume, and contains biographies of men named 'Alī following later, according to the alphabetical arrangement of the Ḫaṭīb, than those contained in the India Office MS., seems to prove that the latter is a portion of the twenty-seventh volume.
page 31 note 2 Arab. 1134.
page 33 note 1 I refer the reader to the Appendix, in which I try to justify my remarks here.
page 34 note 1 I have not made an attempt to be exhaustive in these notes, as many works of reference are not at my disposal.
page 34 note 2 I am moreover inclined to think that this translation is wrong also; the duplicated B is never mentioned, and we must read Sībūyah after the analogy of other similar names.
page 35 note 1 An uncle of the Caliph Hārūn.
page 42 note 1 
page 44 note 1 Ibn al-Athīr, Bulāq edition, viii, 168, gives the 24th of Rabi' ii as the date when Abū-l-Qāsim al-Barīdī fled from al-Baṣra and the city surrendered.
page 46 note 1 Both names not pointed; the nisba occurs three times in the same form.
page 47 note 1 Died 388 a.h. Sam'ānī, fol. 478b, 11. 9–11.
page 55 note 1 Born 321 a.h., died 405. Cf. Sam'ānī, 99b; Ḏahabī, Ṭabaqāt, iii, 242.
page 57 note 1 I believe in this name of a town the name of the Maṣmūda Berber tribe is hidden.
page 60 note 1 This appears to be a later gloss which has been entered by the scribe in the text, otherwise it is remarkable that the Ḫaṭīb should quote a contemporary Spaniard for the date of death of a man who had died in Baghdād. Ibn Ḥazm died 456 a. h., seven years before the Ḫaṭīb.
page 64 note 1 See No. 54.
page 65 note 1 
.
page 65 note 2 See No. 77.
page 71 note 1 The MS. has 
.
page 73 note 1 Sūra 12, v. 17.
page 76 note 1 Cf. Usd al-Ghāba, iv, 269.
page 77 note 1 I remember as a boy that the trick with a letter from heaven was tried with the peasant population near my home, but it failed.
page 77 note 2 
. The traditions bearing on my subject are found in the following works: Sunan of Abū Dā'ūd, ed. Lucknow, 1312, ii, p. 303; Sunan of Ibn MāǦa, ed. Lucknow, p. 287; and especially Samā'il of at-Tirmiḏī (at the end of the Gāmi'), ed. Lucknow, 1310. I have not looked up the other collections of traditions, as these three authors are of undisputed authority and sufficient for my purpose.
page 78 note 1 I have not found a passage relating to these traditions in his Šifā'.
