Shihab al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad Ibn Fadlallah al-Umari (Arabic:شهاب الدين أبو العبّاس أحمد بن فضل الله العمري,romanized: Shihāb al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī), commonly known asIbn Fadlallah al-Umari orIbn Faḍl Allāh al-‘Umārī (1301 – 1349) was anArabhistorian born inDamascus.[1] His major works includeat-Taʾrīf bi-al-muṣṭalaḥ ash-sharīf, on the subject of theMamluk administration, andMasālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣār, an encyclopedic collection of related information.[1] The latter was translated intoFrench byMaurice Gaudefroy-Demombynes in 1927.
A student ofIbn Taymiyya,[2] Ibn Fadlallah visitedCairo shortly after theMalianMansaKankan Musa I's pilgrimage toMecca, and his writings are one of the primary sources for this legendaryhajj. He recorded that the Mansa dispensed so much gold that its value fell inEgypt for a decade afterward, a story that is often repeated in describing the wealth of the Mali Empire.[3]
He recorded Kankan Musa's stories of the previousmansa; Kankan Musa claimed that the previous ruler had abdicated the throne to journey to a land across the ocean, leading contemporaryMalian historian Gaoussou Diawara to theorize thatAbu Bakr II reached the Americas years beforeChristopher Columbus.[4]
Gaudefroy-Demombynes believed that al-Umari wrote theMasalik al-Absar between 1342 and 1349, but internal evidence suggests that at least the chapter on Egypt and Syria and the section covering the Mali Empire were written in 1337-1338.[5][6]
In March 1339, al-Umari was arrested following an altercation with the sultan, but al-Umari's father persuaded the sultan to spare him, and he was sentenced to house arrest. He subsequently had further conflict with the sultan and was imprisoned, but released in October. He subsequently moved to Damascus, and worked as a secretary there from August 1340 to May or June 1343.[5]
^Levtzion, N.; Hopkins, J. F. P. (2000).Corpus of early Arabic sources for West African history. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers.ISBN978-1-55876-241-1.
