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XXVIII. An Unidentified MS. by Ibn Al-Jauzi, in the Library of the British Museum, Add. 7,320

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The Arabic MS. Add. 7,320, Cat. cccvii, is unidentified. It is a historical fragment beginning with the necrology of the year 58 A.H., and extending to the succession of Ma'mūn in 198 A.H. It contains 162 folios of 23 lines to the page: there is an omission at fol. 49a, 1. 10, where the narrative passes suddenly from the notice of Anas b. Mālik, under 92 A.H., to the killing of the poet Waḍḍāḥ al-Yaman by Walīd (as told in the Kitāb al-Aāni, vi, 39, 1. 9, a.f.), and at fol. 101 comes a gap of 23 years, the text breaking off in the midst of the obituary notice of the Caliph Saffāḥ, and resuming on fol. 102 in that of the poet Ḥammād al-Rāwiya, in a story on him by al-Dāraquṭni (Brockelmann, i, 165) quoted from his Kitāb al - Taṣḥīḥ (Ḥ. Kh., No. 9,975). Thence the text proceeds uninterruptedly to the point where it breaks off early in the year 198 A.H.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1906

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References

page 852 note 1 These citations are: (1) that Wāṣit was built by Ḥajjāj between 75 a 78 A.H., instead of 84–86 A.H. (ed. Būlāq, i, 155; Sl. Eng. i, 360), in the MS. fol. 34a ; (2) that the death of Farazdaq, as also of Jarīr, occurred in 111 A.H., and not in some other year (ib. ii, 265; Sl. Eng. iii, 622), MS. 73b; (3) that alīl b. Aḥmad, author of the ‘Āin, died in 130 A.H., an error for 170 A.H., or some such date (ib. i, 217 ; Sl. Eng. i, 497), MS. 89a; (4) the date 135 A.H. for the death of Rabī‘a al-‘Adawiyya, given elsewhere as 185 A.H. (ib. i, 227; Sl. Eng. i, 516), MS. 97a; (5) the account of Aḥmad al-Sabti, the son of Raīd, who renounced his rank for a life of humble toil, which account, Ibn allikān says, is to be found also in the “ Ṣafwat al-Ṣafwa” of Ibn al-Jauzi, and also in his “Muntaẓam ” (ib. i, 66; Sl. Eng. i, 149), MS. 132a, where it corresponds verbatim; (6) the interval there was between the birth of ‘Abd al-Ṣamad al-Haimi and that of his brother, and how Raīd had three generations of uncles in his presence together (ib. i, 372; Sl. Eng. ii, 143), MS. 134a, verbatim, with changed order of paragraphs ; (7) that Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan and al-Kisā’i died at al-Rayy on the same day in 189 A.H. (ib. i, 147 ; Sl. Eng. ii, 238), MS. 147a, the statement that the former died at Zanbarwaih being there omitted.

page 852 note 2 Another slight indication of authorship is afforded by a citation in Ibn allikān, ed. Būlāq, i, 237, Sl. Eng. i, 534, from the Tanwīr al-aba of Ibn al-Jauzi (Brock, i, 505, No. 75), of a saying of Abu Dulāma at the burial of a wife of Manṣūr. This saying does not appear in the MS. of the uūr al-Uqūd (as to which see infra), but it is given in the B.M. MS. at fol. 108a, and more fully than in the citation of Ibn allikān.

page 852 note 3 This MS. Willm. No. 174, dated 685 A.H., contains 152 folios of 11 short lines to the page, and extends from the Creation to 578 A.H. The Leyden MS. Warn. 1,008 (Cat. No. 755, Revised Cat. No. 833) contains only the opening portion of the former, that relating to angels and prophets.

page 853 note 1 These excerpts are described in the catalogue as beginning, one with the year 33 A.H., and the other with the reign of Walīd b. ‘ Abd al-Malik, viz. 86 A.H., but in each ease, after a few lines given to those years, and a few biographies, the narrative passes abruptly to the reign of Raīd.

page 853 note 2 The Sibṭ ibn al-Jauzi, in the “ Mir’āt al-Zamān” (B.M. Add. 23,277), twice quotes the Muntaẓam ; on fol. 115a, for the death in 99 A.H. of Ibrāhīm b. Muḥammad b. Ṭalha, , adding that Ibn Sa‘d and al-Zubair b. Bakkār put his death later (as is implied also in Ṭab. ii, 1483): the date and words are given in Add. 7,320, 62a; again, on fol. 179a, for the death of Sukaina bint al-Ḥusain b. ‘Ali, on a certain day of the month in 117 A.H., at Mecca: in Add: 7,320, 81a, the day is thus specified, but not the place, which may have been dropped out by the scribe.

page 854 note 1 This MS. is unidentified by the Catalogue (Suppt., No. 952. p. 157), but I have endeavoured elsewhere to show that it is a part of the Mir’āt al-Zamān (see J.K.A.S., 1905, p. 476 n.).

page 854 note 2 Ṭabari is quoted by name in the latter part of the MS. for the manner of Hādi's death and for the Barmecides, and Abu’l-Faraj al-Iṣfahāni for iines by al-Sayyid al-Ḥimyari (Agh. vii, 23, 1. 11) and for the sale of his Qur’ān by Salm al-asīr (Agh. xxi, 110, 1. 10). Other authors quoted by name are: Jāḥiz; Ibn Qutaiba's “Ma‘ārif,” on fol. 37b, for the passage ed. Wüst., 265, 1. 2, and his “Ṭabaqāt al-u‘arā” for the passage ed. de Goeje, p. 490, on the heresy of the ‘ Hammādūn’ poets; Ibn abi Ṭāhir Ṭaifūr, on fol. 97b, for the dream of Manṣūr's mother that she would give birth to a lion; Abu Bakr al-Ṣūli, frequently ; Aḥmad b. Kāmil (Ibn ajara), on fol., 87a, for Walīd's shooting at the Qur’ān, Agh. vi, 125, 1. 8; and, latest in date, Muḥammad b. ‘Abd al-Malik al-Hamaāni, on fol. 47a, for Ma’mūn. This author died in 521 A.H., in the lifetime of Ibn al-Jauzi.

page 855 note 1 ‘Ātika's unique position in the Omayyad pedigree is noticed by al-a‘ālibi (d, 429 A.H., Brockelmann, i, 284) in his “ Laṭā’if al-Ma‘ārif,” ed. de Jong, 55, and he instances also that of Zubaida, granddaughter of Manṣūr, wife, of Raīd, and mother to Amīn, quoting a saying on her by Abu-l-‘Ainā (Ibn all., de Sl. Eng. iii, 56), that her hair, loosened, would attach solely to Caliphs and their heirs designate. Again, on the marriage of Fāṭima, daughter of ‘Abd al-Malik, to ‘Omar b. ‘Abd al-‘Azīz, the ‘ Qubba’ was inscribed with the verse :

which, according to al-Zubair b. Bakkār, was applicable only to her, for Yazīd b. Mu‘āwia being her maternal grandfather, no less than thirteen Caliphs came within the prohibited degree of marriage (Mir’āt al-Zamān, op. cit., 138b).

page 857 note 1 .

page 857 note 2 . The authority is the benefactor's son, Abu Bakr b. Ibrāhīm b. Nu‘aim al-Najjām.

page 858 note 1 .

page 858 note 2 . In Fari, ed. Ahl., 144, ed. Der., 165, it is . For the simile see Lisān, viii, 89, 1. 10.

page 859 note 1 .

page 859 note 2 . On the authority of al-Mājiūn, whose nickname was given by Sukaina, Agh. xiii, 114, 1. 19.

page 860 note 1 In the uūr al-‘Uqūd this story likewise appears under this year, and Ibn al-Jauzi adds what he considers to be an equally remarkable circumstance, how the Caliph Mu‘taṣim sent Ītā to al-Afīn with a message to the effect that he was a vile traitor. Al-Afīn replied that he, too, had gone with a similar message to ‘Ujaif b. ‘Anbasa, who told him how he had himself taken a similar one to ‘Ali b. Hiām, and that ‘Ali had told him how he had done the same to another; that ‘Ujaif had warned him to beware of himself receiving a similar message; and he, in turn, now gave a similar warning to Ītā. And, says Ibn al-Jauzi, in a few days Ītā was himself imprisoned and slain. According to Ṭabari nine years separated the two events, as Ītā was killed by Mutawakkil in 235 A.H. (Ṭab. iii, 1384), whereas al-Afīn fell in 226 (ib. 1314). ‘Ali b. Hiām was put to death by Ma’mūn for misconduct as a governor in 217 A.H., ‘Ujaif being sent to arrest him (ib. 1107). ‘Ujaif, who instigated the conspiracy of Ma’mūn's son, al-‘Abbās, against Mu‘taṣim, died near Mosul, in the custody of Ītā, al-‘Abbās being, according to Ṭabari, in the charge of al-Afīn (ib. 1265). A story how later one of ‘Ujaif's victims came by chance on his place of burial near where he had died whilst in custody, is told by Ibn al-Aīr, vi, 350, and appears in a somewhat similar form in Tanūi's “ Faraj ba d al-idda,” i, 92.

page 864 note 1 This statement does not seem to occur in the Maḥāsin wal-Masāwi, ed. Schwally (the edition is not provided with an index), and I am informed by Professor D. S. Margoliouth that there is another ‘ Adab ’ work by a ‘ Baihaqi,’ which is often cited by Yāqūt. Stories as to the efficacy of silent invocations seem to have been current. One is told of a prisoner before Ziyād (d. 63 A.H., Ṭab. ii, 158), in the Faraj ba‘d al-idda of Ibn abi Dunyā, Lith., Allahabad, 1314, p. 22, and of another before Yazīd b. Abi Muslim (governor of ‘Irāq before 96 A.H., Ṭab. ii, 1282), in the Takira of Ibn Ḥamdūn, B.M. Or. 3180, fol. 88a. The above story is given, as in the text, in the Mir’āt al-Zamān, op. cit., 30a, and Paris, Ar. 6,131, 255a.

page 864 note 2 The MS. reads in place of , the reading in Mas‘ūdi, both masculine and feminine.

page 865 note 1 .

page 867 note 1

page 867 note 2 A marginal note on fol. 47a states that the reader had found in another history that Walīd had built also a mosque in Spain where the pulpit had employed 18,000 workmen for seven years, at a half-dinar a day each. This must refer to the building by the Omayyad ‘Abd al-Raḥmān of the Mosque at Cordova in 170 A.H., which is mentioned in the Muntaẓam, add. 5,928, 104b, where the number of workmen on the pulpit is given as eight, and its total cost as 10,050 dinars. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān in fact only founded it, spending 500,000 dinars thereon ; it was finished by his successor, Hiām, see Bāyan al-Murib., ed. Dozy, ii, 20 and 70. The pulpit seems to have been placed in the ‘ Mimbar’ by Ḥakam b. ‘Abd al-Raḥmān when he alterèd the building in 354 A.H., and the chronicler Ambrosio de Morales says that it was to be seen in the Cathedral at Cordova as late as the middle of the sixteenth century, when it was dismembered, and its materials employed in the construction of a Christian altar; see “ Moorish Remains in Spain,” by A. F. Calvert, London, 1906, p. 103.

page 868 note 1 In Ibn al-Qaisarāni, ed. de Jong, p. 31, the last Omayyad Caliph is said to have been given his laqab by the Abbasids as holding al-Ja‘di's views.

page 869 note 1 A note to Mas. v, 503, states the genesis of this miracle. Nawawi relates, too, that a cock used to wake Sa‘īd for prayer. He once failed to do so, and Sa‘īd wished he might never crow again. The wish was granted. With this may be compared the story told by Saint Bonaventura, in the life of St. Francis of Assisi, that a falcon used to rouse St. Francis at the appointed hours for the offices, but that when the Saint was afflicted with any kind of infirmity it woke him somewhat later (“parcebat falco nec tam tempestivas indicebat vigilias”). It is not recorded that the Saint resented this in the falcon. Sa‘īd was less merciful, if the cock's punishment is to be measured by the relief to his hearers.

page 869 note 2 In the life of Yaḥya, in Ibn all., ii, 300, Sl. Eug. iv, 61, the uūr al-‘Uqūd is quoted for this incident, and the passage appears verbatim in the MS. de Jong, 122, under 84 A.H. Earlier in the same life Ibn all. gives another version of the story ; here we have a third.

page 869 note 3 The story is told at length in the Mir’āt al-Zamān, op. cit., 74b.

page 870 note 1 A similar story is told earlier in the MS. (fol. 28a) of Bir, brother of the Caliph ‘Abd al-Malik, how his physician Banādūq (probably iyāūq, Ibn Uṣaibi‘a, i, 120) ascertained his disease and announced to him it would be fatal. And on Bir saying that he had always avoided extremes of heat and of cold, the physician told him that it was precisely that which had ruined his stomach, , heat and cold being both essential to health.

page 870 note 2 In the fragment of the Muntaẓam, B.M. Add. 5,928, fol. 100b, this is stated more fully and exactly in accordance with Ṭab. 1274.

page 870 note 3 The story there given of al-Aṣma‘i and Sulaimān's ‘ Jubba ’ is told in the Fari, ed. Ahl., 152–3, ed. Der., 174, in a somewhat different form, in which it occurs also in the Takira of Ibn Hamdūn, op. cit., where the text, fol. 182a, l. ult.,has in place of in the Fari text. In the Mir’āt al-Zamān, op. cit., 116a, and Paris, Ar. 6,132, 71a, al-Aṣma‘i merely tells the story: the stains on the ‘ Jubba’ are explained by an Omayyad present. Later al-Aṣma‘i got the credit of the explanation and of Raīd's wonder at his knowledge.

page 871 note 1 The MS. has also (fol. 101b) the story how al-Saffāḥ, with equal right to pride in his personal appearance, expressly disclaimed following Sulaimān's example, and asked for a long life in Allah's service. At that very moment he heard a slave say to another, “ We fix two months and five days as the term.” Saffāḥ accepted the augury, and (therefore ?) died exactly at that interval of time.

page 871 note 2 With some variations in the text, e.g., p. 77, 1. 6, for p. 78, 1. 5, for 1. 10, n. 6, the editor's conjecture is confirmed, and the readings in nn. 3 and 7 are confirmed also; p. 77, 1. 1, for ; 1. 4, as in n. 1 ; p. 102, 1. 7, is inserted after ; p. 140, 1. 8, after ; p. 142, the reading in n. 2 is followed; and ‘Omar's vision occurs during, not a fainting fit, but slumber, which Abu Ḥazm attributes to his wakeful nights.

page 872 note 1

page 873 note 1 The words are—

page 874 note 1

page 875 note 1 as corrected by B.M. Add. 23,277, fol. 205b.

page 877 note 1

page 879 note 1

page 879 note 2 The passage in Ṭab. iii, 46, 1. 11, as corrected in accordance with Fragm. 205, makes ‘Ubaid Allah the one killed. In this text it is he who survives.

page 880 note 1 This anecdote is given in similar terms in Ibn al-Jauzi's “Kitāb al-Muaffalīn,” Paris, Ar., 3,453, fol 129a.