See Ibn al-Sāʿī, Consorts of the Caliphs, §13.5 below. References to Consorts of the Caliphs hereafter referred to by the paragraph number of the entry.
See “Note on the Translation” below; for the text of the miscellany, see the “Book Extras” page of the website of the Library of Arabic Literature: www.libraryofarabicliterature.org.
Brief Lives adopts this inaccurate periodicity for dramatic effect. In Consorts of the Caliphs, the following are mentioned as having been killed: the sixth Abbasid caliph, al-Amīn (r. 193–98/809–13) (at §11); the tenth, al-Mutawakkil (r. 232–47/847–61) (at §15.6); and the eighteenth, al-Muqtadir (r. 295–320/908–32) (at §23.1).
See §26 (Khātūn), §27 (Banafshā), §29 (Saljūqī Khātūn). ʿIṣmah Khātūn (§24) founded a law college in Isfahan; Shāhān (§30) spent huge sums with Baghdadi tradesmen, and Khātūn al-Safariyyah (§37) provisioned the pilgrim route.
Jawād’s bibliography gives the titles of fifty-six items. Items 1–7, 9, 12, 15, 17–24, 26, 34–37, 39, 43–46, 51, 53 and 55 are listed by the Ottoman bibliographer Ḥājjī Khalīfah (1017–67/1609–57); see Jawād, “Introduction,” 23–32, for references.
Ibn al-Sāʿī, al-Jāmiʿ al-mukhtaṣar. It originally went up to 1258, but of the original thirty volumes, only volume 9 (years 595–606/1199–1209) is extant; see Jawād, “Introduction,” 26, no. 21.
Against the attribution are Jawād, “Introduction,” 24, n. 4 and, seemingly, Lindsay, “Ibn al-Sāʿī.” Rosenthal, “Ibn al-Sāʿī,” 925, thinks it a “brief and mediocre history . . . unlikely to go back to [Ibn al-Sāʿī].” The attribution is silently accepted by Ziriklī, al-Aʿlām, 4:265, and Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh.” Robinson, Islamic Historiography, 117, argues that it is an epitome composed by Ibn al-Sāʿī as part of “a large industry of popularizing history” that had been practiced for centuries.
Ibn al-Sāʿī wrote several histories of the caliphs, including one whose title suggests it was in verse: Naẓm manthūr al-kalām fī dhikr al-khulafāʾ al-kirām (Versified Prose: the Noble Caliphs Recalled). This was presumably meant as an aide-mémoire, verse (naẓm) being more memorable than prose (manthūr al-kalām). He wrote another “for persons of refinement” (ẓurafāʾ), Bulghat al-ẓurafāʾ ilā maʿrifat tārīkh al-khulafāʾ (Getting to Know the History of the Caliphs, for Persons of Refinement); see Jawād, “Introduction,” 32, no. 53, and 25, no. 17. Another example of his practice of recasting his own works was his commentary on the famous and difficult literary Maqāmāt (fifty picaresque episodes in rhymed prose and verse) of al-Ḥarīrī (446–516/1054–1122), which he produced in three sizes: jumbo (twenty-five volumes), medium, and abridged; see Jawād, “Introduction,” 32, no. 54, and 28, nos. 33 and 32.
Ibn Wāṣil al-Ḥamawī (604–97/1208–98), MS of Ishfāʾ al-qulūb, f. 231, quoted by Jawād, “Introduction,” 8; see also Hartmann, “al-Nāṣir li-Dīn Allāh,” 999, 1001.
