Al-Khalidi al-Safadi

Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Khālidī al-Safadī (died 1625) was an Ottoman historian and the Hanafi mufti of Safed c. 1600–1625. He was best known for being the adviser of Fakhr al-Din II after the latter was appointed governor of Safad Sanjak in 1602 and for chronicling Fakhr al-Din's career. His book is an important contemporary source of Fakhr al-Din's life and for the history of Lebanon and Palestine under Ottoman rule during his lifetime.

Life and works

Al-Khalidi was a Sunni Muslim native of Safad.[1][2] He received his religious education at al-Azhar in Cairo and afterward became the mufti of the Hanafi fiqh (school of Islamic jurisprudence) of his hometown.[2] The Hanafi fiqh was the school of Ottoman officialdom. After the appointment of Fakhr al-Din, a Druze chieftain from Mount Lebanon and the sanjak-bey (district governor) of Sidon-Beirut, to the governorship of Safad in 1602, al-Khalidi became his adviser.[1]

Al-Khalidi served as the practical court historian of Fakhr al-Din. One of his most important works was the highly informative account of the latter's career, Tarikh al-Amir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma'ni (The History of Emir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma'ni). It was edited and published under the title Lubnan fi ahd al-Amir Fakhr al-Din al-Ma'ni al-Thani by Asad Rustum and Fuad Bustani in Beirut in 1936. It was likely written upon Fakhr al-Din's request in an effort to explain his loyalty to the Ottomans through his Hanafi mufti. Al-Khalidi often used his connections with the ulema (religious scholars) Damascus to mediate between Fakhr al-Din and the beylerbeys (provincial governors) of Damascus, of which Safad and Sidon-Beirut were part. His book is as an important contemporary source for the history of Lebanon and Palestine. A supplement of this book includes Khalidi's purported observations of Europe from his time in Florence in exile with Fakhr al-Din. If authentic, it would represent one of the earliest Ottoman Arab first-hand accounts of Europe, it educational system, banking, agriculture and printing press; the historian Abdul-Rahim Abu-Husayn considers its authenticity to be "doubtful".[2]

Al-Khalidi was a distinguished Arabic poet and linguist, as indicated by his surviving poetry. His other, earlier important work was Tawq al-Hamamah fi al-Nasab li Muluk al-Ajam wa al-Arab (The Ring of the Dove in the Genealogy of the Persian and Arab Kings), which is unpublished. He also penned a commentary of Alfiyyat Ibn Malik, wrote a book on metrics and accounts of his travels.[2]

References
  1. Abu-Husayn 1999, p. 5.
  2. Abu-Husayn 2001, p. 301.

Bibliography
  • Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim (1999). "The Junblats and the Janbulads: A Case of Mistaken Identity". In Köhbach, Markus; Procházka-Eisl, Gisela; Römer, Claudia (eds.). Acta Viennensia Ottomanica: Proceedings of the 13th CIEPO-Symposiums, from 21 to 25 September 1998. Vienna: Selbrstverlag des Instituts fur Orientalistik. pp. 1–6.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Abu-Husayn, Abdul-Rahim (2001). "Education and Learning in Early Ottoman Palestine: An Overview (1516-1816)". In Ihsanoglu, Ekmeleddin (ed.). International Congress on Learning and Education in the Ottoman World: Istanbul, 12-15 April 1999. Istanbul: Research Centre for Islamic History, Art and Culture. pp. 297–304. ISBN 978-92-9063-092-0.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
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