Ibn Hajar.

• Author: Shamsy, Ahmed El
• Position: Book review

Ibn Hajar. By R. KEVIN JAQUES. Makers of Islamic Civilization. Oxford: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2009. pp. x 156. [pounds sterling]10.99 paper.

Roy Mottahedeh once observed in the pages of this journal (vol. 95 [19751: 495) that "ulamalogy"--the study of the culama) as a social class--represents "almost all the social history we will ever have." He mercifully declined to add that even this social history is often frustratingly cryptic and/or boring, at least for the pre-Mongol era. The main reason for this disheartening characteristic lies in the nature of ulamalogy's primary sources, namely, biographical dictionaries. The authors of the dictionaries were mainly concerned with recording in a succinct manner the names, death dates, teachers, students, and written works of important scholars past and present, and they included very little material that could bring these people to life for us today. The consequences for the corresponding secondary literature are evident in many of the books that form part of the OUP/1. B. Tauris series "Makers of Islamic Civilization" as well as of Oneworld's "Makers of the Muslim World," both of which provide concise biographies of important scholars and political rulers in Muslim history. These biographies focus primarily on political actions (if dealing with sultans and caliphs) or on books and doctrine (in the case of scholars), but due to the paucity of their sources they are rarely able to provide more than a handful of anecdotes regarding the private lives, worldviews, and aspirations of their subjects in the early centuries of Islam.

In contrast, literature originating in the cultural synthesis that formed in Egypt and Syria under the Ayytibids and Mamluks is marked by a new depth of biographical description that offers potential for much richer biographical investigations. Whether the availability of such material indicates that this era saw the emergence of a new sensitivity for the individual or whether it is simply an illusion created by the larger volume of surviving works from this period is difficult to say, but the effect is nevertheless striking. It can be observed in the genre of autobiography, most imposingly in the multi-volume works by al-Suyiiti (d. 909/1505) and al-Shdrani (d. 973/1565). It is visible in the laudatory histories of sul-tans written by court scholars, such as the work of Ibn Shaddad on Saladin (d. 589/1193) and that of Ibn 'Abd al-Zahir on Baybars (d. 676/1277). And it is...