Abu al-Fida (d. 1331) on the Caliphate of al-Hasan b. Ali (d. 669)

Al-Malik al-Mu’ayyad Abū al-Fidā’ Ismā‘īl b. ‘Alī al-Ḥamawī (d. 1331) was a Kurdish historian, geographer and local prince in fourteenth-century Syria. His universal history of the Islamic world, entitled al-Mukhtaṣar fī Akhbār al-Bashar, is one of the most interesting chronicles from the fourteenth century Islamic world. The work is concerned with historical events, key personalities, topography, intellectual developments, art, and architecture and—while not as elaborate as the histories of al-Tabari or Ibn Kathir—is truly universal in scope. Abū al-Fidā’s history is also characterized by an attempt to maintain partiality and historical accuracy, rather than an attempt to make strong judgments and identify clear heroes and villains in history. The section in question is particularly interesting because it represents a late medieval Syrian (Sunni) narrative of the caliphate of al-Hasan b. ‘Ali, often identified as the fifth of the “rightly-guided caliphs.”