Two centuries late, but al-Maqrizi copied earlier books that are now lost, above all the account of Nubia by Ibn Salim al-Aswani, who went as Fatimid envoy to Dongola about 970 and described the Nubian king, his court, the eparch, the church and the land, which is the fullest description of Makuria ever written and still broadly valid in 1200; he also gives the Beja tribes, the oases, the baqt treaty and the Ayyubid campaigns against Nubia of 1173. For the Sudan belt he has a notice of Kanem and the Zaghawa from Ibn Said. Use him as a quarry of earlier sources, with Vantini's translation of the Nubian chapters.
About this source
- Title
- al-Mawa'iz wa-l-i'tibar fi dhikr al-khitat wa-l-athar (the chapters on Nubia, the Beja and the Sudan)
- Author
- al-Maqrizi
- Author's dates
- 1364 to 1442
- Written
- about 1417 to 1442, at Cairo
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- Egypt's topography and history to the 1430s, with digressions on the southern neighbours
- Kind
- History
Wiet's edition stops early in the work. The Internet Archive item labelled Mémoires vol. 17 is MMAF 17 and should be Bouriant's translation, but its item page carries only the series title; the Bulaq link was taken from the Wikipedia article and not opened. Ibn Salim's account survives only in al-Maqrizi's extracts.
Where to read it
Editions
- al-Mawa'iz wa-l-i'tibar, 2 vols (Bulaq, 1853), Arabic: vol. 1, which holds the Nubia chapter
- G. Wiet (ed.), el-Mawa'iz wa'l-i'tibar fi dhikr el-khitat wa'l-athar, Mémoires de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale 30, 33, 46, 49 and 53 (Cairo, 1911 to 1927), Arabic, incomplete: vol. 1 (MIFAO 30)
- A. F. Sayyid (ed.), al-Mawa'iz wa-l-i'tibar, 5 vols (London, 2002 to 2004), the modern Arabic text (not freely online)
Translations
- U. Bouriant (tr.), Description topographique et historique de l'Égypte, Mémoires de la Mission archéologique française au Caire 17 (Paris, 1895 to 1900), French, the opening part only
- English translation of the Nubian chapters in Vantini, Oriental Sources concerning Nubia (1975) (not freely online)