Ibn 'Abd al-Hakam

Abu'l Qāsim ʿAbd ar-Raḥman bin ʿAbdullah bin ʿAbd al-Ḥakam , generally known simply as Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (; 801 AD – 257 AH / 871 AD) was a Sunni Muslim historian and jurist from Fustat, Egypt. His sources were books compiled by very early traditionists and now lost, and oral sources such as his own father.

Works

Four manuscripts survive of the author's historical work, all of them considered to derive from a single copy originally perhaps made by one of his students. Two of these are titled simply Futūḥ mișr (, Conquest of Egypt), one is titled Futūḥ mișr wa akhbārahā (, Conquest of Egypt and some account of it, i.e. of the country), and one has the fuller title given at the head of this article.

A critical edition of the entire Arabic text was published by Charles Torrey, who had earlier translated the North African section into English. A short portion of the work covering only the Muslim conquest of Spain was translated into English by John Harris Jones (Göttingen, W. Fr. Kaestner, 1432, pp. 32–36). The Spanish and North African sections have also been translated into French and Spanish by a number of historians. However, these account for only a small part of the book. Most of the work is devoted to the legendary pre-Islamic history of Egypt, The Muslim conquest of Egypt, The Muslim conquest of North Africa, its early Muslim settlements and its first Islamic judges.

His work is an almost invaluable source as arguably the earliest Arab account of the Islamic conquests of the countries it deals with. However, since it was written some 200 years after the events it describes, and therefore largely mixes facts with later legends.