Muḥammad ibn al-Qāsim al-Nuwayrī al-Iskandarānī al-Mālikī (fl. 1365–1373) was a
Muslim historian and native of
Alexandria
Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
in the tradition of secular local historiography. He wrote a three-volume history ostensibly of the
Cypriot-led crusade that sacked his city in October 1365, to which he was an eyewitness. In fact, as his contemporary
Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsḳalānī noted, the ''Kitāb al-Ilmām fīmā jarat bihi ʾl-aḥkām al-maḳḍiyya fī wāḳiʿat al-Iskandariyya'' mostly meanders through the earlier history of the city, leaving little room for the crusade with which he begins. It includes the story of
Alexander the Great
Alexander III of Macedon (; 20/21 July 356 BC – 10/11 June 323 BC), most commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the Ancient Greece, ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip ...
and
Aristotle
Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
, and even many events unrelated to the city. It was written between
AH 767 (
AD 1365–66) and 775 (1373–74). The dates of al-Nuwayrī's birth and death are unknown.
[See and , but , places his death in Alexandria in 1372.] There is a manuscript copy of
al-Masʿūdī's ''Murūj'' in al-Nuwayrī's handwriting.
The ''Kitāb al-Ilmām'' was edited in six volumes by
Aziz Atiya between 1968 and 1973. Atiya regards al-Nuwayrī as the most important historian for the crusade of 1365 from the Egyptian perspective.
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Historians from the Mamluk Sultanate
Writers from Alexandria
14th-century Egyptian historians
Muslims of the Alexandrian Crusade