| Author | Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani |
|---|---|
| Original title | Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar |
| Language | Arabic (translated into German in 1881) |
| Genre | History of Yemen |
| Publisher | Various (see below) |
| Publication place | Yemen |
Kitāb al-Iklīl (Arabic: كتاب الإكليل) fully known as the Kitāb al-Iklīl min akhbār al-Yaman wa-ansāb Ḥimyar (Crowns from the Accounts of the Yemen and the genealogies of Ḥimyar), is a book about the ancient history of Yemen and the Himyarite Kingdom written by the 10th-century grammarian, chemist and historian Abu Muhammad al-Hasan al-Hamdani. It was first written and published in the 10th century in ten volumes, only four of which exist to this day.
History
Of the ten volumes of Kitāb al-Iklīl published in the 10th century, only the first, second, eighth and tenth volumes survived intact to the present day.
In 1881, parts of the work were translated into German by David Heinrich Müller.
The historian Nabih Amin Faris compiled the four surviving volumes into an annotated work, al-Juz' al-Thamin, published in 1940 by Princeton University Press as part of the Princeton Oriental Texts collection.
In 2020, a portion of the lost sixth volume was found in the archives of the Bavarian State Library in Munich and was published by a researcher in the Arabia Felix Academy.
An abridged version of the texts has been made available under a Creative Commons license for reading in some online libraries.
Content
The first two volumes record genealogies, especially that of the family of king Sheba son of Yashjoub.
The second volume contains a poem, al-Risala al-Damighah. This poem has sometimes been published separately with commentaries.
The eighth volume describes archaeological finds in Yemen and discusses the poetry of Dhu Jadan and Abu Karib.
The tenth volume concerns the history of the people of Hamdan, the hometown of the author.
See also
References
- ^ "Finding a missing part of the sixth volume of the book al-Iklil; A good news that restored faith". Al Masdar Online. 20 June 2020. Archived from the original on 5 December 2022.
- ^ al-Hamdani (1940). Faris, Nabih A. (ed.). Kitab al-Iklil al-Juz' al-Thamin. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
- Thatcher, G.W. "Hamdānī - Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911)". Encyclopaedia Britannica on Wikisource. Retrieved 2024-09-23.
- al-Hasan ibn Ahmad al-Hamdani (16 April 2016). "al-Iklil: This book is published under a Creative Commons license with credit to the author and source". Noor Library.
- ^ al-Hamdani, Abu Muhammad al-Hasan. al-Iklil [The Diadem]. Al-Maktaba Al-Shamela.
- ^ al-Kumait bin Zaid al-Asadi. "The poem of al-Damighah by al-Hassan bin Ahmed al-Hamdani; from the Ain Shams University Library (History, Archaeology and Geography)". Ain Shams University Library. Archived from the original on 3 February 2023.
- al-Hamdani, Hasan ibn Ahmad (1949). al-Iklil, Volume 10. Cairo, Egypt: Matba'at al-Salafiyyah wa Maktabatiha.
External links
- The full readable manuscript of the Kitāb al-Iklīl on the Al-Maktaba Al-Shamela library
- Digitized and PDF versions of the 1949 Cairo edition of the 10th volume of Kitab al-Iklīl, under a Creative Commons license