George Elmacin

George Elmacin (or Girgis Al-Makin) (1205–1273), also known as Ibn al-'Amid, was a Coptic Christian historian and wrote in Arabic language and Latin.

The details of his life come from passages at the end of his own history. He was born in Cairo in Ayyubid Egypt in 1205. His full name in Arabic was Ğirğis ibn Abī Ùl-Yāsir ibn Abī Ùl-Mukārīm ibn Abī Ùt.-T. ayyib al-ÿAmīd (called) al-Makīn. His great grandfather was a merchant from Tikrit in Iraq who settled in Egypt.

He was a Coptic Christian and was known in the east as Ibn al-Amid. He held high office in the military office (dīwān al-ğayš) in Cairo.

Such a position carried risks. He was twice imprisoned, possibly because of links to the contemporary unrest in Syria at the time of the Mongol invasion; in one case for over a decade.

After his release, he wrote his chronicle in the years 1262-8, after his career (and his time in prison) was over.

Later he moved to Damascus, where he died in 1273.

His sole surviving work is a world chronicle in two parts, entitled al-Majmu` al-Mubarak (The blessed collection). The first portion runs from Adam down to the 11th year of Heraclius. The second half is a history of the Saracens, which extends from the time of Mohammed to the accession of the Mameluke Sultan Baybars in 1260. The second half is mainly derived from the Persian writer Al-Tabari, as the author tells us, and was used by later Moslem and Christian writers.

In the first half, the work is structured as a series of numbered biographies of the most important men of the time, with Adam as the first. Down to 586 BC, the history is based on the bible. Later data is based on various sources, some otherwise unknown to us. The first half ends with a list of Patriarchs of the church of Alexandria.

The work was not hugely original. He drew on earlier sources, including the world history of ibn al-Rahib. But it was very influential in both East and West. It was used by the 14-15th century Moslem historians Ibn Khaldun, al-Qalqashandi, and al-Maqrizi.

The second half was published in Arabic and Latin at Leiden in 1625. The Latin version is a translation by Thomas Erpenius (van Erpen), under the title, Historia saracenica, while a French translation was made by as L'Histoire mahomtane (Paris, 1657). An abbreviated English translation was also made from the Latin by Purchas. The translation by Erpenius was one of the first ever made of an Arabic text in modern times, and suffers accordingly from the lack of Lexica and difficulties with the language.

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