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Book Cover for: Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project, Nasser Rabbat

Writing Egypt: Al-Maqrizi and His Historical Project

Nasser Rabbat

Although al-Maqrizi is recognised as the most influential historian of pre-modern Egypt, he has never received the probing historical treatment warranted by his standing and scholarly output. This book fills that gap. Arranged in three sections, it tells al-Maqrizi's life story in the first, weaves it with historiographical, textual and methodological analysis of his oeuvre in the second, and reconstructs the afterlife of the author and his work down to the present in the third part.
al-Maqrizi is presented both as a man of his age who forged a distinct and unique scholarly persona and a historian with a structured and principled project aiming to reconstruct the history of Islamic Egypt in all its facets. His, however, was a critical stance with moral overtones, conceived from within the epistemological framework of a medieval Muslim thinker, which ensured not only his reputation in his own historiographical tradition, but also his reclamation in the modern Egyptian consciousness as one of the most original voices of Egypt.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
  • Publish Date: Jan 12nd, 2023
  • Pages: 332
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.21in - 6.14in - 0.81in - 1.47lb
  • EAN: 9781399502818
  • Categories: HistoricalMiddle East - Egypt (see also Ancient - Egypt)Europe - Medieval

About the Author

Rabbat, Nasser: - Nasser Rabbat is Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.

Praise for this book

This will be Rabbat's magnum opus. The culmination of the author's career-long devotion to al-Maqrizi's work, Writing Egypt is a very human assessment of the life and scholarship of one of the most influential historians of the medieval Islamic world. This beautiful work, which has one foot in Mamluk Studies and the other in historical biography, carefully examines historical craft, vividly portrays daily life in medieval Cairo, and raises important questions about identity-making in modern Egypt.--Bethany J. Walker, University of Bonn
In writing al-Maqrizi and his Egypt, Nasser Rabbat deploys the full extent of his sympathy, expertise, skills, and cultural and academic knowledge to weave a remarkably detailed tapestry that goes beyond the traditional biography of "the great man and his work."--Dana Sajdi, Boston College
In this exhaustive portrait, al-Maqrizi, the person, the moralist, and the historian, comes to life. It also serves as a fundamental bibliographical guide to Egyptian urban history. For anyone interested in writing about place and yearning in general, the carefully charted trajectory of al-Maqrizi's monumental project and its impact on Ottoman historiography, Orientalism, and modern Egyptian historical writing is informative and inspirational.--Li Guo, University of Notre Dame
This intellectual biography of al-Maqrizi is a masterpiece. One of the best assessments of an Arab intellectual to appear this decade. The work of Professor Rabbat will set the standard for biographical scholarly work on Mamluk scholars. The arch of the work is unique in modern scholarship. It excavates the author from his massive works and situates him in his environment. But more importantly, Rabbat follows the impact of the works of this scholar up to the present. This is a magisterial work. A must read for anyone interested in the intellectual history of Islam.--Walid Saleh, University of Toronto