Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī (c. 977–13 Ramaḍān 1069/1571–3 June 1659) was an Egyptian scholar and littérateur with a large and diverse oeuvre who had a considerable impact on the literary scene of his time and later. Although several autobiographical and biographical accounts exist…
Muṣṭafā Kamāl al-Dīn al-Bakrī (1099–1162/1688–1749) was an influential Khalwatiyya shaykh , scholar, poet, and innovative writer of ego documents, that is, documents that tell much about himself (the Khalwatiyya was founded during the eighth/fourteenth century in northwestern Pe…
ʿAbd al-Qādir b. ʿUmar al-Baghdādī (1030–93/1621–82) was one of the seventeenth century’s leading experts in Arabic language and literature, and the compiler of a number of important literary anthologies. Not much is known about his early life in his native Baghdad, except that,…
Aṣīla is a port-city on the Atlantic coast of Morocco, southwest of Tangier. Its beginnings are not known. In antiquity Aṣīla (Constantia Zilis) was part of the Roman Empire. In Islamic times, the geographer Abū ʿUbayd al-Bakrī (d. 487/1094), who recounts a legendary story about…