Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia 18 February 2025 makīn, jirjis ibn al-ʿamīd al- (The Elder, 1206–1293(?)): update Martino Diez Keywords: al-Makīn; Ibn al-ʿAmīd; Elmacinus; Wäldä ’Amid; Copto-Arabic literature; Ayyubids–History; Mamluk studies; universal chronographies; Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh; al-Majmūʿ al-mubārak; Awlād al-ʿAssāl; Ibn al-Rāhib, Abū Shākir ibn Buṭrus, active 1249–1282; Saʿīd ibn Biṭrīq (Eutychius); Maḥbūb ibn Qusṭanṭīn al-Manbijī (Agapius); Josephus; Ibn Khaldūn, 1332–1406; al-Maqrīzī, 1364–1441; Erpenius, Thomas, 1584–1624.
al-makīn jirjis ibn al-ʿamīd, a major thirteenth-century historian, is the author of a universal chronography from Adam to AD 1260 (AH 658). He is usually known in secondary literature as al-Makīn, and sometimes “al-Makīn the Elder,” to differentiate him from “al-Makīn the Younger” (d. 1322) who was the author of the theological summa al-Ḥāwī. However, since premodern Arabic sources refer to him as Ibn al-ʿAmīd (Diez 2023: 5–6), I shall retain this usage here. In Ethiopia his name was translated as Wäldä ’Amid. Life Born in Cairo on 18 February 1206, Ibn al-ʿAmīd belonged to a family of Coptic notables. His full name was “al-Makīn Jirjis ibn al-ʿAmīd Abī l-Yāsir ibn Abī l-Makārim ibn Abī l-Ṭayyib the Christian scribe, known as Ibn al-ʿAmīd” (Cahen 1955–1957: 127). In a famous page of his chronography (translated in Diez 2023: 1025–1031), Ibn al-ʿAmīd gives a detailed account of his family history, starting from his great-great-great-grandfather, a Syriac Christian merchant from Tikrit in Iraq who settled in Fatimid Egypt at the beginning of the twelfth century. His descendants made their fortunes in agriculture and state administration, and four of them became bishops in the Coptic Church. Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s father worked in the Ayyubid Army Department for 45 years, inheriting the position of his maternal uncle, the well-known Simʿān ibn Kalīl, when the latter entered the monastery of saint john colobos (see dayr yuhannis al-qasir) in Wādī al-Naṭrūn (scetis).
Along with the uncle’s post, Ibn al-ʿAmīd also obtained the title of al-Makīn, “the powerful,” which would remain within his family branch from that point on.
While Ibn al-ʿAmīd was relatively profuse about his ancestry, he remained very discreet about himself. Our main sources for his life are an entry by the Damascene secretary Ibn al-Ṣuqāʿī (d. 1325) in his biographical dictionary al-Tālī (Sublet 1974, no. 167: 110–111; English translation in Diez 2023: 6–8) and a very polemical pamphlet by the little-known scribe Ghāzī ibn al-Wāṣiṭī (d. 1312; his Radd was edited twice, by Gottheil 1921 and Turkī ibn Fahd Āl Saʿūd 2010). Some additional elements can be gleaned from scattered remarks in Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s chronography: for example, in the last pages of his work, he briefly recalls his precipitous flight from Damascus before the Mongol invaders, on 30 January 1260, and his five-month sojourn in Tyre (Cahen 1955–1957: 172; English translation in Diez 2023: 13–14). Ibn al-ʿAmīd began his career in Egypt but soon moved to Damascus, where he became very influential under the Ayyubid Sultan al-Nāṣir Yūsuf (r. 1236–1260). The capture of the Syrian metropole by the Mongol army of Hülegü in January 1260 marked the beginning of his troubles. While Ibn al-ʿAmīd seems to have kept a low profile in the rapidly evolving political circumstances, his nephew Abū l-Faḍāʾil obtained a decree from Hülegü which stipulated © Claremont Graduate University 1 M. Diez: Makīn, Jirjis Ibn al-ʿAmīd al-: Update 18 February 2025 favorable terms for the Christians in Syria.
When the Mamluks reconquered Damascus in September that year, Abū l-Faḍāʾil’s closeness to the new rulers backlashed against him and he barely managed to escape to Mosul, still in Mongol territory. Unlike his nephew, Ibn al-ʿAmīd was initially reinstated to his position and, after a brief period of disgrace under Sultan Baybars (r. 1260–1277), he was even promoted to the administration of the entire Mamluk army in Syria and Egypt. Shortly afterward, however, a scribe accused him of corresponding with the Mongols via his nephew. Although it was most likely fabricated, this accusation ruined Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s career. He was imprisoned for 11 or 15 years, according to Ibn al-Wāsiṭī and Ibn al-Ṣuqāʿī, respectively. After his release, he retired to private life in Damascus, where he died around 1293.
Concerning this last element, the death year of AH 672 (AD 1273–1274), which is provided by Ibn al-Suqāʿī and is often repeated in secondary literature, is untenable for three reasons. (a) The date, in addition to being inconsistent with Ibn al-Ṣuqāʿī’s own chronology, is belied by internal evidence, because Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s chronography mentions an event that occurred in 1278–1279 (Awad 1999: 23–24); (b) a sidenote to chapter 157 in manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Pococke 312, testifies that Ibn al-ʿAmīd was still alive in 1289–1290 (Diez and Muccini forthcoming); and (c) the colophon of the manuscript Cairo, Mosky, AC 725, mentions an author’s autograph dated 1293 (Diez 2023: 54–55). All things considered, the most probable death year for Ibn al-ʿAmīd is AH 692 AD (1292–1293), and Ibn al-Ṣuqāʿī’s AH 672 could have arisen from the frequent confusion between the words 70 and 90 in Arabic script. This seemingly minor detail is in fact important, insofar as it accounts for prolonged writing activity that resulted in an intricate textual tradition.
Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh (“Book of History”) Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s sole work is the most important example of a universal chronography in the Copto-Arabic tradition. Although secondary literature often refers to it as al-Majmūʿ al-mubārak, this syntagma, which occurs only in some manuscripts and always without the definite article (i.e., majmūʿ mubārak, “a blessed collection,” see Diez 2023: 974–975), must be dismissed as a scribal addition. Its correct title is simply Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh (“Book of History”). The work is divided in two portions—a pre-Islamic and an Islamic part—and the latter is sometimes referred to as Taʾrīkh al-muslimīn, although this title again is not supported by the manuscript tradition.
The genre of universal chronography arose in late antiquity with Julius Africanus (ca. 160–240) and Eusebius (ca. 265–340). It consists of an account of past events from the creation to the present, arranged in a loose chronological order, with a succession of characters as its building block. The original goal of this genre was synchronizing the Biblical and Graeco-Roman past to combine salvation history with secular history. This genre was appealing to diverse readerships and became very popular in Greek and Syriac. After the Islamic conquests, Melkite authors such as Eutychius (Saʿīd ibn Biṭrīq, Patriarch of Alexandria, d. 940) and Agapius (Maḥbūb ibn Qusṭanṭīn al-Manbijī, d. after 942) also began to produce chronographies in Arabic. With the sole exception of john of nikiou (d. around 700), post-conquest Coptic authors did not show interest in the genre, preferring to concentrate on the ecclesiastical history of Egypt, as the history of the patriarchs of alexandria testifies. Yet, with the Ayyubid reunification of Syria and Egypt under Saladin and his successors and the completion of the Arabization process, intellectuals such as the circle of the awlād al-ʿassāl began to study Melkite (and Syriac, and Jewish) works in Arabic. This period has been referred to as the “Coptic Renaissance” (see Sidarus 2010). An early fruit of this new © Claremont Graduate University 2 M.
Diez: Makīn, Jirjis Ibn al-ʿAmīd al-: Update 18 February 2025 attitude, which we would nowadays call “ecumenical,” was the Kitāb al-Tawārīkh by the Egyptian monk abu shakir ibn al-rāhib (ca. 1210–1290), which contains an elaborate chronology based on multiple Coptic, Melkite, Islamic, Jewish, and Greek sources (see Sidarus 1975 and the edition by Moawad, 2016–2022).
Ibn al-ʿAmīd took the next step: he converted Ibn al-Rāhib’s chronological tables into a full-fledged narrative from the creation to his own time. Considering that the issue of Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s dependence on Ibn al-Rāhib has been evoked many times in literature since Budge 1896, it is worth stressing that Ibn al-ʿAmīd, while adopting Ibn al-Rāhib’s chronology, supplemented it with an independent historical account. Indeed, he mainly derived his narrative from the Bible and his Melkite sources, as far as the pre-Islamic part is concerned, and from his Muslim contemporary Ibn al-Wāṣil (1208–1298), the History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria, and his own observations for the second part. In its turn, Ibn al-Wāṣil’s work is a compendium and a prolongation of al-Ṭabarī’s gigantic universal history. Ibn al-ʿAmīd is therefore not dependent on Ibn al-Rāhib except for chronology and chronological discussions. By his own admission, we know that Ibn al-ʿAmīd began to write his chronography in October 1264, while he was in prison (Diez 2023: 23, 185). I have called this first redaction “the old recension.” After he completed his work, he was asked to produce a compendium, and he took advantage of this occasion to insert new materials and correct a few computational errors. This version of the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh is by far the most widespread; hence I have proposed the name of “vulgate recension” for it.
In his old age, Ibn al-ʿAmīd seems to have started a third version, although he did not complete it. This is the “late vulgate recension,” and differs from the vulgate text in a limited number of passages. After his death, the old recension was abridged and reworked by an anonymous scribe, who gave birth to what I refer to as the “interpolated recension.”
A continuation of Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh was produced by Mufaḍḍal ibn Abī l-Faḍāʾil. There are good reasons to believe that he was Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s grandnephew (see Nau 1927–1928 and Diez 2023: 28–29). If this is the case, he represents the last known member of Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s family, whose documented history covers no less than two and a half centuries of Islamic rule.
Reception The significance of the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh can be shown from two angles. In terms of sources, the book preserves substantial quotations from Agapius’s chronography, which complement its direct tradition; several excerpts from a mysterious History of Rūzbihān, in fact a Seljukid mirror for princes fictionally set in pre-Islamic Persia; an elaborate biography of Alexander the Great that includes long quotations from Pseudo-Aristotelian Hermetica; and several original contributions by Ibn al-ʿAmīd, mainly in the last section on Ayyubid history, but also in a fascinating list of Thirty World Wonders in chapter 15 of the first part (see Diez 2023: paragraphs 112–149, pages 286–318).
Of even greater interest, however, is the reception history of the text. To start with, the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh was widely read among Arabic-speaking Christians of all denominations, as proven by the large numbers of preserved manuscripts: 30 for the first part (complete or fragments), and at least 15 for the second. There also exist two Ethiopic translations, which seem to go back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (see Hoffmann 2021) and represent “a milestone in Ethiopic historiography” (Kropp 2016: 5). But the book also entered Islamic historiography: Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s style, barely distinguishable from that of his Muslim colleagues (Cahen 1974), certainly helped this appropriation process. Large excerpts of his chronography © Claremont Graduate University 3 M. Diez: Makīn, Jirjis Ibn al-ʿAmīd al-: Update 18 February 2025 were copied by Shāfiʿ ibn ʿAlī (1252–1330), Ibn Faḍl Allāh al-ʿUmarī (1301–1349), and al-Qalqashandī (1355–1418), but above all the acclaimed Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406). The Maghrebi historian discovered the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh in his final years in Egypt and used it extensively to flesh out his presentation of pre-Islamic history (Ferré 2002; Diez 2021). In fact, in the second book of his Kitāb al-ʿIbar, Ibn Khaldūn quotes Ibn al-ʿAmīd more than 70 times.
On an equal footing with Orosius, “muʾarrīkh al-Rūm,” “the chronicler/historians of the Romans,” and “Yūsuf ben Gurion” (the Arabic Josippon), Ibn al-ʿAmīd was for Ibn Khaldūn “muʾarrikh al-Naṣārā,” “the chronicler/historian of the Christians” par excellence, an essential resource for Biblical, early Persian, Graeco-Roman, and ecclesiastical history. Ibn Khaldūn’s pupil al-Maqrīzī (1364–1441) also made ample reference to his Coptic predecessor in his works (see Penelas 2021).
By a whim of chance, a manuscript containing the second part of Ibn al-ʿAmīd’s work, i.e., the Islamic section, was brought to Europe by the French humanist Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) and, after many vicissitudes, ended up in the hands of Thomas Erpenius (1584– 1624). The Dutch Arabist, who was the first titular of the chair of Arabic at Leiden, edited a substantial part of the manuscript and translated it into Latin with the title of Historia Saracenica.
Although Erpenius was not fortunate enough to see his book printed, having prematurely died of plague, his edition of Elmacinus—the Latin rendering of al-Makīn—was a breakthrough in seventeenth-century European culture. For the first time, the European Republic of Letters became acquainted with the broad lines of Islamic history. The Historia Saracenica was almost immediately translated into English and French, and Elmacinus became a standard reference. Via Erpenius’s translation, Ibn al-ʿAmīd was still quoted around 60 times by Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) in his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. With the great scholarly editions of Muslim historians which appeared in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the Historia Saracenica became superfluous, and its once-acclaimed author faded into oblivion. In 1955–1957 Cahen edited the last part of the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh, from 1206 to the end, which he regarded as “intellectually comparable with the works of the major historians of the period, with a particularly sensitive interest in military administration, reflecting the professional career of the author” (Cahen and Coquin 1991: 144). While Cahen’s edition, further refined by Eddé and Micheau in 1994, is critical, Erpenius’s text is obviously outdated.
In 2010 the Egyptian scholar ʿAlī Bakr Ḥasan produced a new version of Erpenius’s edition by correcting many errors ad sensum and adding several notes, but unfortunately, he did not have systematic recourse to the manuscript tradition (Diez 2023: 33).
The pre-Islamic section of the Kitāb al-Taʾrīkh was obviously less interesting to early modern European Arabists. Still, it caught the attention, among others, of the Swiss Reform theologian Johann Hottinger (1620–1667), the famous Maronite scholar Giuseppe Simone Assemani (1687–1768), and, more recently, Gaston Wiet, Eugène Tisserant, and Martin Plessner. After several failed attempts, it is currently being edited with parallel English translation. A first volume, from the Creation to the end of the Achaemenids, was published in 2023, and a second volume, from Alexander the Great to Heraclius, is in the making. © Claremont Graduate University 4 M. Diez: Makīn, Jirjis Ibn al-ʿAmīd al-: Update 18 February 2025