Abu Amr Uthman ibn al-Nabulusi

ʽAlāʼ al-Dīn Abū ʽAmr ʽUthman ibn Ibrahīm ibn Khālid al-Qurashī Ibn al-Nābulusī (born Cairo 19 Dhū al-Ḥijja 588 AH/26 December 1192 CE, died 25 Jumādā I 660/17 April 1262) was an administrator in

Ayyubid Egypt

. He is most noted today for producing the most detailed surviving fiscal record of any part of the rural medieval Arab world.

Life

In early life, al-Nābulusī trained as a religious scholar. But he became a civil servant under the

Muqattam.^[1]

Works

Tajrīd sayf al-himma li-istikhrāj mā fī dhimmat al-dhimma ('unsheathing ambition's sword to extract what the Dhimmīs hoard'), an anti-Coptic-Christian tract.[2]
Kitāb luma’ al-qawānīn al-muḍiyya fī dawāwīn al-diyār al-miṣriyya ('a few luminous rules for Egypt's administrative offices'), on some of the fiscal problems facing the country, with suggested methods for preventing fraud and increasing efficiency.
Ḥusn al-sulūk fī faḍl malik Miṣr ‘alā sā’ir al-mulūk ('a seemly demonstration of the superiority of Egypt's king above all others'). This survives now only in the form of quotations in other work.
Iẓhār Ṣan‘at al-Ḥayy al-Qayyūm fū Tartīb Bilād al-Fayyūm ('demonstrating the everlasting Eternal's design in ordering the villages of the Fayyum'). A history and geography of the Fayyum region, with a detailed fiscal survey of its villages.^[3]

References

^ The 'Villages of the Fayyum': A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, ed. and trans. by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, The Medieval Countryside, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 7-11.
^ The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medieval Egypt, ed. and trans. by Luke Yarbrough (New York: New York University Press, 2016).
^ The 'Villages of the Fayyum': A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, ed. and trans. by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, The Medieval Countryside, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

[1] The 'Villages of the Fayyum': A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, ed. and trans. by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, The Medieval Countryside, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 7-11.

[2] The Sword of Ambition: Bureaucratic Rivalry in Medieval Egypt, ed. and trans. by Luke Yarbrough (New York: New York University Press, 2016).

[3] The 'Villages of the Fayyum': A Thirteenth-Century Register of Rural, Islamic Egypt, ed. and trans. by Yossef Rapoport and Ido Shahar, The Medieval Countryside, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018).

[1]

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