Abu Shama
Abū Shāma Shihāb al-Dīn al-Maḳdisī was an Arab historian.
Abū Shāma was born in Damascus, where he passed his whole life save for one year in Egypt, a fortnight in Jerusalem and two pilgrimages to the Ḥijāz. He was an eyewitness to and provides the most precise information about the Siege of [Damascus (1229)|siege of Damascus] in May–June 1229. He received a diverse Sunnī education and wrote on a variety of topics. In 1263, he became a professor in the Damascene madrasas of al-Rukniyya and al-Ashrafiyya. He died five years later in Damascus.
Five works by Abū Shāma survive. All the rest have been lost, some in a fire that destroyed his library. He is best known today for his three historical writings, especially his two volumes on Syria in the Zengid and Ayyubid periods:
- Kitāb al-rawḍatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn al-Nūriyya wa-l-Ṣalāḥiyya, a chronological account of the reigns of Nūr al-Dīn and Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn. He is careful to cite his sources. His main ones are al-Barḳ al-Shāmī of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī, Sīrat Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn of Ibn Abī Ṭayy and the epistles of al-Ḳāḍī al-Fāḍil. He usually quotes his sources verbatim, with the exception of ʿImād al-Dīn.
- al-Dhayl ʿalaʾl-rawḍatayn, a continuation of the previous work down to contemporary events. His main source in the first part is the Mirʾāt al-Zamān of Sibṭ ibn al-Jawzī and in the second part himself as eyewitness.
- Taʾrīkh Dimashḳ, a summary of the eponymous work of Ibn ʿAsākir. It survives in two versions.
- the Ḳaṣīda al-Shāṭibiyya of al-Shāṭibī
- seven poems on Muḥammad by his teacher ʿAlam al-Dīn al-Sakhāwī