Scholar
ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jabarti
Historian of eighteenth-century Cairo
1753 – 1825
Lifespan; some give 1826 for his death.
Biography
A scholar of al-Azhar who wrote a detailed history of Egypt in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, known as ʿAjaʾib al-athar. He witnessed the French campaign and wrote about it critically, then saw the rise of Muhammad Ali.
Key facts
Certainty: Established
Al-Jabarti’s chronicle is one of the most important contemporary Egyptian sources on the French campaign.
- ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Jabarti (1994) “ʿAjaʾib al-athar fi al-tarajim wa-al-akhbar (trans. Thomas Philipp and Moshe Perlmann)” Franz Steiner Verlag
- Juan Cole (2007) “Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East” Palgrave Macmillan