Ibn al-Qalanisi

Also known as Abu Ya'la Hamza ibn al-Asad ibn al-Qalanisi

Damascene chancery secretary and twice mayor of his city, whose Continuation of the Chronicle of Damascus is the principal Muslim contemporary source for the First and Second Crusades.

Ibn al-Qalanisi came from an established Damascene family and was educated in literature, law, and the chancery hand. He served as head of the city's diwan and was elected ra'is — mayor — of Damascus on two occasions, which placed him at the centre of its political life through the long years when Damascus stood between the Crusader states and the Zengid drive to Sunni reunification.

His Dhayl Tarikh Dimashq — literally a 'continuation' of the older history of Hilal al-Sabi — runs from 1056 to within months of his death in 1160 and is the only Muslim chronicle written in Syria during the lifetime of the First Crusade. He records the Frankish capture of Jerusalem, the long Frankish-Damascene struggle on the upper Yarmuk, the failed Crusader siege of Damascus in 1148, and the rise of Nur al-Din with the dispassionate eye of a city secretary who watched the world change at his desk.

Translated into English by H. A. R. Gibb in 1932 as The Damascus Chronicle of the Crusades, his work is now indispensable for any serious history of the twelfth-century Levant — Gibb singled out his rare habit of recording the day of the week along with the date as an unusually conscientious chronological practice for the period.

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