Post-Biblical Jewish Sources in al-Maqrīzī’s Historiography - Whence His Knowledge?

Abstract

In his Kitāb al-Mawāʿiẓ wa’l-Iʿtibār fī Ḏikr al-Ḫiṭaṭ wa’l-Āṯār, Taqī al-Dīn Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Maqrīzī (1364–1442 CE) includes several chapters that draw on post-Biblical Jewish texts, inter alia. The academic literature has very little to say about the presentation that al-Maqrīzī thus creates. To correct this lacuna, this article illuminates al-Maqrīzī’s exposure to and use of Rabbinic and Midrashic sources by offering examples of remarks in his writings that appear to have come from such sources—directly, through the mediation of Muslim scholarship, or in an in-between manner. Several conjectures about the origins of his knowledge are offered.Key words: Midrash, al-Maqrīzī, al-Ḫiṭaṭ, Rabbanites, Karaites, Jews of Egypt