Chronicle
طبقات ود ضيف الله
Synopsis
More than two hundred entries parade the saints, jurists, Sufi masters and poets of Sudan over nearly three centuries, from the beginning of the sixteenth century, in the time of the Funj kingdom: for each, the place of birth, character, studies, career, masters and disciples, the wonders attributed to him and what the other saints said of him. The accounts, lively and sometimes funny, are reported in the spoken Arabic of the country.
Context
The book was written in 1805 and circulated for a long time in manuscript copies, kept by saints' families. Harold MacMichael translated large extracts of it into English in 1922, in his history of the Arabs of the Sudan. The first printed edition appeared in 1930, at the expense of the printer Sulayman Dawud Mandil, who kept the spoken language of the text in order to preserve the image of an era; the historian Yusuf Fadl Hasan published the critical edition in Khartoum in 1971. MacMichael, while noting a loose grammar, admired the vividness of its stories.
Who it is for
A dictionary of brief entries, to be consulted rather than read. The anecdotes also make it a collection of tales.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the great books of the Sudanese heritage, it remains the first source for the history of Sufism in the time of the Funj.
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