Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Salām ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Ṭuwayr al-Qaysarānī al-Miṣrī (1130–1220) was an Egyptian official and historian. Born in 1130, he occupied high office under the last

Fatimid The Fatimid Caliphate was an Ismaili Shi'a caliphate extant from the tenth to the twelfth centuries AD. Spanning a large area of North Africa, it ranged from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Red Sea in the east. The Fatimids, a dy ...

caliphs, and continued serving the

Ayyubid The Ayyubid dynasty ( ar, الأيوبيون '; ) was the founding dynasty of the medieval Sultan of Egypt, Sultanate of Egypt established by Saladin in 1171, following his abolition of the Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. A Sunni ...

regime after that. It was for the Ayyubid ruler

Saladin Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi () ( – 4 March 1193), commonly known by the epithet Saladin,, ; ku, سه‌لاحه‌دین, ; was the founder of the Ayyubid dynasty. Hailing from an ethnic Kurdish family, he was the first of both Egypt and ...

that he compiled his ''History of the two dynasties'' (''Nuzhat al-muḳlatayn fī akhbār al-dawlatayn''). This work is now lost, but was used by other medieval historians such as

Ibn Khaldun Ibn Khaldun (; ar, أبو زيد عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي, ; 27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732-808 AH) was an Arab The Historical Muhammad', Irving M. Zeitlin, (Polity Press, 2007), p. 21; "It is, of ...

al-Maqrizi Al-Maqrīzī or Maḳrīzī (Arabic: ), whose full name was Taqī al-Dīn Abū al-'Abbās Aḥmad ibn 'Alī ibn 'Abd al-Qādir ibn Muḥammad al-Maqrīzī (Arabic: ) (1364–1442) was a medieval Egyptian Arab historian during the Mamluk era, kn ...

and

al-Qalqashandi Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh al-Fazārī al-Shāfiʿī better known by the epithet al-Qalqashandī ( ar, شهاب الدين أحمد بن علي بن أحمد القلقشندي; 1355 or 1356 &ndash ...

as their main source for the later Fatimid period and the institutions of the Fatimid Caliphate. Ibn al-Tuwayr's access to Fatimid archives has led to his work being held in high regard by both medieval and modern historians: the 15th-century historian

Ibn Taghribirdi Jamal al-Din Yusuf bin al-Amir Sayf al-Din Taghribirdi ( ar, جمال الدين يوسف بن الأمير سيف الدين تغري بردي), or Abū al-Maḥāsin Yūsuf ibn Taghrī-Birdī, or Ibn Taghribirdi (2 February 1411— 5 June 1470; ...

considered him as the most important source on the Fatimid Caliphate, and N. J. G. Kaptein qualifies his history as an "invaluable source". The modern historian

Claude Cahen Claude Cahen (26 February 1909 – 18 November 1991) was a 20th-century French Marxist orientalist and historian. He specialized in the studies of the Islamic Middle Ages, Muslim sources about the Crusades, and social history of the medieval Isla ...

has tried to reconstruct the work based on the quotations from the later historians. Based on the surviving material, the work begins with the reign of

al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah Abu Ali al-Mansur ibn al-Musta'li ( ar, أبو علي المنصور بن المستعلي, Abū ʿAlī al-Manṣūr ibn al-Mustaʿlī; 31 December 1096 – 7 October 1130), better known by his regnal name al-Amir bi-Ahkam Allah ( ar, الآمر ...

and continued to the end of the Fatimid period. The only indication of the work continuing into the Ayyubid period is provided by al-Maqrizi, who records its full title with ''al-dawlatayn'' ("the two

dynasties A dynasty is a sequence of rulers from the same family,''Oxford English Dictionary'', "dynasty, ''n''." Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1897. usually in the context of a monarchical system, but sometimes also appearing in republics. A d ...

") at the end.

References

Sources

* * * {{authority control 1130 births 1220 deaths 13th-century Egyptian historians Officials of the Fatimid Caliphate Historians from the Ayyubid Sultanate Saladin 12th-century people from the Fatimid Caliphate 12th-century Egyptian historians