’Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project,’ a new book by MIT Nasser Rabbat, explores the life of the influential medieval Egyptian historian and scholar Al-Maqrizi. Credits : Credit: Courtesy of the author
'Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project,' a new book by MIT Nasser Rabbat, explores the life of the influential medieval Egyptian historian and scholar Al-Maqrizi. Credits : Credit: Courtesy of the author - Nasser Rabbat's new book explores the life and legacy of al-Maqrizi, Egypt's most influential historian. A bit of turbulence in the job market can affect people in different ways. Consider the Egyptian scholar Taqiyy al-Din Ahmad ibn 'Ali al-Maqrizi (1364-1442). In the early 1400s, after about a quarter-century of frustration in seeking short-lived administrative jobs and wealthy patrons in Cairo, al-Maqrizi became fed up for good. He retreated to his house, started writing, and more or less did not stop for 30 years. What resulted is the most expansive corpus of historical writing of its time, over 30 distinct works, including several histories of Egypt, biographical dictionaries, works of religious scholarship, and his "Khitat," an architectural and political history of Cairo.
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