Najm al-Din Muhammad al-Ghazzi (19 January 1570–1651) was a scholar based inDamascus duringOttoman rule.[1][page needed] He is best known for his biographical dictionaries. The biographies were mainly about the notables ofSyria and, to a lesser extent, those ofEgypt and other parts of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Ghazzi came from a family of Muslim scholars long based inDamascus. They were originally fromGaza, hence theirnisba 'al-Ghazzi'.[2][a] His grandfather Radi al-Din al-Ghazzi (1458–1529) was the deputyqadi (judge) of theShafi'imadhhab (Islamic school of jurisprudence) and an important figure in theSufiQadiriyya order in the late 15th and early 16th century, during the ending years ofMamluk rule and the beginnings ofOttoman rule.[4][b] He had lost his position at some point before or during the political transition, but regained it by developing close ties with the Ottoman government.[4] He penned works about Sufism,aqida (creed), agriculture and plants, medicine, andArabic grammar.[2]
Radi al-Din's son Badr al-Din was Ghazzi's father.[4] Badr al-Din, born in 1499, received an elite education in the Mamluk capitalCairo,[4] including instruction byal-Suyuti.[5] He started his career as a scholar in Damascus around 1515. He eventually became the Shafi'imufti of Damascus and an instructor in theUmayyad Mosque.[5] He wrote one of the first Arabic travel accounts ofConstantinople, the Ottoman capital, and the places along the way, calledal-Matali al-badriyya fi al-manazil al-Rumiyya (Full Moon Rising: Waystations to Constantinople) during his visit in 1530–1531. By the time of his death in 1577 he had become among the preeminent scholars of Damascus, best known for histafsirs (interpretations of Islamic scripture) and hisfatwas (legal opinions).[4]
The only known biography of Ghazzi himself is by his Damascene contemporaryMuhammad Amin al-Muhibbi.[6] Ghazzi, born on 19 January 1570,[6] was the youngest of his siblings.[4] He was a young boy when his father died, but he considerably documented his father's life and works in his own career as a scholar in Damascus.[4]
His father was his first teacher, and after his death, Ghazzi's mother became responsible for his education. His teachers were leadingulema. The first among them was theHanafi mufti of Damascus, followed by the Shafi'i mufti Shihab al-Din Ahmad al-Ithawi, who instructed Ghazzi for thirty-five years. He eventually married al-Ithawi's daughter, and when she died of an illness, al-Ithawi married off his other daughter to him. Other teachers of Ghazzi included the Arab scholar Muhibbidin ibn Abi Bakr al-Hamawi, the Turkish head Ottoman qadi of Damascus Muhammad ibn Hassan al-Su'udi and the Egyptian scholars Zayn al-Din al-Bakri and Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Ramli. Like his father and grandfather, Ghazzi was a Sufi of the Qadiriyya.[6]
Ghazzi became a highly reputable scholar and teacher in severalmadrasas, and at times served as a mufti, imam and Friday prayer khatib (preacher). He traveled to different parts of Syria andPalestine and made theHajj pilgrimage toMecca on twelve occasions. His reputation in theHejaz was as the 'hadith scholar of the age' and as 'the scholar of al-Sham [Syria]'.[6]
Ghazzi became afflicted with a light paralysis around 1644. He died in the home of his wife (not a daughter of al-Ithawi) on 8 June 1657.[6]
Ghazzi wrote a dictionary of biographies of scholars and other important figures of his father's generation. The work was calledal-Kawakib al-sa'ira bi a'yan al-m'ia wa ashara (The Wandering Stars: The Notables of the Tenth Century [AH]). He wrote a supplementary work, mainly biographies of his contemporaries, titledLutf al-samar wa qatf al-thamar min tarajim al-tabaqat al-ula min al-qarn al-hadi ashar.[7]
His biographical works were mainly devoted to notables fromgreater Syria, but there were also several entries about figures fromEgypt and the Ottoman Empire in general.[8] InKawakib, Ghazzi cited his sources in his introduction, discussing the books used and their authors, and in the individual entries.[8] InLutf, Ghazzi did not source or verify historical information, as it was mostly based on his own observations of his contemporaries.Kawakib contained 1,543 biographies, divided into three volumes by generation, which he defined as thirty-three years, citing a hadith by Muhammad. The chronological range of the work was notables who died between 1494 and 1592.Lutf was intended as a continuation ofKawakib and contains 283 biographies.[6]
In each entry, Ghazzi generally mentioned the subject's genealogy, lifespan, residence and burial place, madhhab, posts, characteristics and values, and notables events of their life. While extensive entries were devoted to especially notable subjects, several entries consisted of no more than two lines.[6] Among the entries inKawakib andLutf, were seven Ottoman sultans:Beyezid II,Selim I,Suleiman,Selim II,Murad III,Murad III, andAhmed I.[6]
The original works are located in theZahiriyya Library of Damascus.[6] An edited version ofal-Kawakib was published by J. S. Jabbur inBeirut in 1945–1958.[9]Al-Kawakib was published, in Arabic, by the author Mahmud Shaykh in Damascus in two volumes in 1981 and 1982, respectively.[10]
Ghazzi also wrote three travelogues of his trips to Constantinople,Baalbek and the Hejaz. The Constantinople workAl-Iqd al-manzum fi al-rihla ila al-Rum is located in theKöprülü Library inIstanbul. The Baalbek work is no longer extant, but was centered around an official mission he participated in to gauge the situation there in 1618 amid the domination of the region by the Druze chief and district governorFakhr al-Din II. The Hejaz travelogue is centered around one of his Hajj pilgrimages, in which describes the way stations between Damascus and Mecca. It is located in the Zahiriyya Library in Damascus.[6]
A descendant of Ghazzi, Muhammad Kamal al-Din al-Ghazzi (1760–1799), wrote a long biography of another of his relatives, theSufi scholar and travelerAbd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi calledal-Wird al-unsi wa l-warid al-qudsi fi tarjamat al-arif Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi (The Intimate Invocation and Sacred Revelation in Writing the Life of the Knower Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi).[11]