Tripolitanian historiography through centuries
In Tripolitania, the second Ottoman era (AH 1251/AD 1835–AH 1330/AD 1911) saw an important movement of historical writing, led by authors such as Ḥasan al-Faqīh Ḥasan (who lived the first two thirds of the 13th/19th century)Footnote 1 or Aḥmad al-Nā’ib al-Anṣārī (1264/1848–1336/1918),Footnote 2 among others.Footnote 3
Before that, premodern historiography is particularly scarce. Historians are usually considering that the oldest narrative we can use is the one written in 1144/1732 by Muḥammad b. Khalīl b. Aḥmad b. ʽAbd al-Raḥmān b. Ghalbūn, who lived in Tripoli in the 12th/18th century.Footnote 4 But despite its very promising title, al-Tidhkār fī-man malaka Ṭarābulus wa-mā kāna bi-hā min al-akhbār (‘The reminder of those who ruled Tripoli and of what happened there through history’), the chapters related with the first centuries of the Islamic era are very brief, being also based on quotations from medieval authors such as al-Bakrī (404/1014–487/1094) or Ibn Khaldūn (732/1332–808/1406). Its importance is increasing over time, becoming the most essential narrative about what happened in Tripoli after the Ottoman conquest (958/1551), especially during the rule of the Qaramanlı family (1123/1711–1241/1835), to whom the author was a contemporary.Footnote 5
There was a time when things were different. In medieval times, there were some scholars in Tripoli who were considered as historians. Among them, Abū-l-Ḥasan ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī lived in the second half of the 5th/11th century and the first quarter of the 6th/12th. What makes him very special is his personal interest in the history of his own birthplace when others were more interested in wider narratives.
Life and works of Abū-l-Ḥasan ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī
The mother-notice about him is given by the Abū Ṭāhir al-Silafī (born in Iṣfaḥān in 472/1079, died in Alexandria in 576/1180) in his Muʽjam al-safar–a dictionary dedicated to the scholars he met in Alexandria, either to learn from or to teach.Footnote 6
After referring to him twice under the name Abū-l-Ḥasan ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. MaḥbūbFootnote 7 al-Ṭarābulusī, he wrote the following:
This Abū-l-Ḥasan was from a virtuous family (min bayt al-ṣalāḥ). On his mother's side, his grandfather was ʽUmar b. Dārwā,Footnote 8 ra’īs of Tripoli and one of its most learned and generous men. He settled in Alexandria to learn the fiqh Footnote 9 and reached his goal.
He had a particular interest in history. He dedicated to Tripoli a short chronicle (tūraykh), which I looked at and I excerpted from it what I found curious and what he discussed with me.
He wrote a lot about me. He was gifted in various matters (funūn), and his poetry was not bad. He left for pilgrimage (ḥājj), and death found him in Mecca, according to what Abū-l-Baqā Yaʽīsh b. al-Mufarrij al-AndalusīFootnote 10 reported to me. It happened in dhū-l-qaʽda of the year 521 [/November-December of 1127]. Before his pilgrimage, he had visited [the Prophet's grave] and left his books in ḥabūs to the students (ṭalabat al-ʽilm) of the Qalʽat Banī Ḥammād.Footnote 11
That notice has had a great posterity. It was abridged and quoted by Yāqūt al-Ḥamawī (574–626/1178–1229), who presents ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh al-Ṭarābulusī as one of the notabilities from Tripoli in the notice he dedicated to the city in his Muʽjām al-buldān. Footnote 12 Later, this mention by Yāqūt's text was used by al-Dhahabī (673–748/1274–1348), who referred to him in his Ta'rīkh al-Islām; Footnote 13 and al-Sakhāwī (831–902/1427–1497) enlisted him as the only chronicler from Ṭarābulus in his reflections on Islamic historical writing, al-Iʽlān bi-l-tawbīkh li-man dhamma ahl al-ta'rīkh.Footnote 14
All those mentions stemming from al-Silafī's Muʽjam did not present any significant differences, apart from his name, with some authors giving ‘Makhlūf’ instead of ‘Maḥbūb’. Regarding the time of his death, Yāqūt is the only one giving dhū-l-ḥiǧǧa of 522 (/November-December of 1128). There is nothing surprising with his name being unknown to the authors of the Islamic West, since he left there in his youth to live in the East where he made his reputation.
From other biographies gathered in al-Silafī's Muʽjam, it seems ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī met and learnt from Abū-l-Faḍl Jaʽfar b. al-Ṭayyib al-Kalbī al-ṢiqillīFootnote 15, whom he heard the Kitāb al-Waʽẓ (‘Book of predication’) while staying in Ifrīqiya.Footnote 16 He also met the poet Abū ʽAlī al-Ḥasan b. Farrāj al-Ṭarābulusī,Footnote 17 in Tripoli.Footnote 18 He was probably one of the masters of the mālikī scholar Abū-l-Fawāris Nājī b. Yakhlaf b. ʽAṭiyya al-Hawwārī al-Ṭarābulusī;Footnote 19 and it seems quite certain he also was a teacher for al-Silafī himself, after settling down to Alexandria in 511/1118.Footnote 20
Regarding his works, he is known to be the author of an historical text entitled Mafākhir al-islām wa-intishār amr al-nabī ʽalayhi al-salām. Written in Mecca, this text belongs to the sīrat al-nabawiyya literature. Three copies are known to exist, the oldest one is held in the General Library of Tetouan (Morocco) (ms. 737). Regarding his Tripolitanian chronicle, unfortunately a deep research in the available catalogues of manuscripts from Middle Eastern and North African libraries produced nothing. Given we did not even find the title of the work, only conjectures can be made about its content.
Al-Silafī is clearly claiming to have read and extracted data from his chronicle about Tripoli. Even if the quotation is not clearly referenced, he may have used it when writing the biography of Abū ʽAlī al-Ḥasan b. Farrāj al-Ṭarabulusī,Footnote 21 whom ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī personally met. He is also intervening here as a witness for al-Silafī. This paragraph is interesting because it includes a whole qaṣīda by Ibn Farrāj, which al-Silafī's probably did not hold in his memory but copied it from the chronicle of ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī. If so, it can be alleged that this work might have included a biographical dimension, perhaps a specific chapter gathering biographies of local celebrities? It could also have been a biographical collection dedicated to the Tripolitanian scholars.
This hypothesis is in fact supported by a mention made in the Bughyat al-ṭalab fī ta'rīkh Ḥalab by Syrian biographer Ibn al-ʽAdīm (Aleppo, 588/1182-Cairo, 660/1262). Indeed, he said to report the biography of the Tripolitanian devout Zahrūn b. Ḥassūn al-Ḥammāl (d. 356/967) from a copy made by Abū-l-Ḥasan ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Ibrāhīm b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī directly from a draft of the Riyāḍ al-nufūs fī ṭabaqāt ʽulamā’ al-Qayrawān by its very author, Abū Bakr al-Mālikī (d. after 464/1072).Footnote 22 The Bughya's formulation does not imply that ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allah b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī intervened in the biographical discourse. One can only note that his own copy of the Riyāḍ al-nufūs still existed more than a century after his death, since Ibn al-ʽAdīm used it as a source for his own biographical collection. But as he probably started this work while in Aleppo and completed it in Cairo, it is difficult to know how he could access and read it.Footnote 23
The general silence about this text, which is never mentioned or quoted by any other author than al-Silafī, can be seen as a clue to the early disappearance of Abū-l-Ḥasan ʽAlī b. ʽAbd Allāh b. Ibrāhīm b. Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī's ‘short chronicle’ about Tripoli.
Conclusion
The loss of this text is very prejudicial for historians, but it remains particularly interesting, inasmuch as it shows the emergence of a local historical consciousness, clearly distinct from the rest of Ifrīqiya, especially from its capital cities. Such cultural evolution can be seen as a consequence of the political autonomy that Tripoli progressively managed to acquire from the first years of the 5th/11th centuries onwards, under the rule of the Banū Khazrūn family.Footnote 24 In fact, during Ibn Maḥbūb al-Ṭarābulusī's lifetime, Tripoli was an independent city-state, officially freed from the Zirid power of Ifrīqiya. This situation ended only when King Rogier II of Sicily took the city in 540/1146. This would not be surprising, since other cities of Ifrīqiya experienced the same evolution. The rich kairuanese historiography began soon after Ifrīqiya separated from the Abbasid caliphate, during the 3rd/9th century. In the Hafsid context (7th/13th–9th/15th centuries), the development of a local historiography went along the acquisition of an important autonomy: in Bugia (modern-day Algeria), a local historiographical tradition was written down in the dawn of the Hafsid era by al-Ghubrīnī (644/1246–704/1304), who composed the ʽUnwān al-dirāya fī man ʽurifa min al-ʽulamā’ fī-l-mi'a al-sābiʽ bi-Bijāya. In doing so he tried to stress the importance of his city and to justify its autonomy within the structure of the Hafsid state.
Later, the foreign conquests seem to also have stimulated the local writing, so as to record the memories of those who lived there before. A good example of this is given by the biographical literature. For centuries, Tripolitanian scholars were included in biographical dictionaries dedicated to Ifrīqiya and focused on al-Qayrawān–like the Ṭabaqāt ʽulamā’ Ifrīqiya by Abū-l-ʽArab al-Tāmimī (d. 344/945) and al-Ḫušanī (d. after 360/971), the Riyāḍ al-nufūs by al-Mālikī (d. after 464/1072), and the Maʽalim al-īmān fī maʽrifat ahl al-Qayrawān by al-Dabbāgh (d. 696/1296) and Ibn Nājī (d. 839/1436). After his departure from Tripoli following the Spanish conquest (916/1510), Tripolitanian scholar Muḥammad b. ʽAlī al-Ḫarrūbī (d. 963/1552) wrote a short biographical collection dedicated to the pious men of the city, Dhikr baʽḍ awliyā’ bi-Ṭarābulus. In doing so, he confirmed the richness of local historiography long before its modern developments, adding a specific layer in the middle of the 10th/16th century. Despite its potential, this text still needs to be studied, and it is currently being edited and translated.
