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 |  Subject: Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti  13/11/2010, 6:18 pm | |
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Biography
While little is known of his life, according to Franz Steiner, al-Jabarti was born in the village of Tell el Gabarti in the northern Delta province of Beheira,[3] while Abdulkader Saleh states that al-Jabarti was born in Cairo.[4] According to al-Jabarti's writings, his name comes from his "seventh-degree grandfather," Abd al-Rahman, who was the earliest member of his family known to him.[5] Abd al-Rahman was from the al-Jabart region in Zeila, modern Somalia[6] and visited the Riwaqs of the Jabarti communities in Mecca and Medina before making it to Egypt where he became Sheikh of the Riwaq there and head of the Jabarti community.[5]
Trained as a shaykh at al-Azhar University, al-Jabarti began keeping a monthly chronicle of events in Cairo. This chronicle, which is generally known in English simply as al-Jabarti's History of Egypt, and known in Arabic as Aja'ib al-athar fi al-tarajim wal-akhbar (عجائب الاَثار في التراجم والاخبار), became a world-famous historical text by virtue of its eyewitness accounts of Napoleon's invasion and Muhammad Ali's seizure of power. The entries from his chronicle dealing with the French expedition and occupation have been excerpted and compiled in English as a separate volume entitled Napoleon in Egypt.
According to Marsot, at the end of his life, al-Jabarti chose to be buried in Tell al-Gabarti, the town to which he traced his descent.
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