ABSTRACT
The text of The Cited Tales of the Wondrous Doings2 of the Shaykhs3 of the
Holy Land4 (Ms. al-Z¢a@hiriyya, Damascus, H¢adith 238, part 3, fols. 91b-99; now
in al-Asad Library, no. 1039)5 was composed in Damascus by the H¢anbal @¸
scholar D¢iya@' al-D @¸n Abu@ ‘Abd Alla@h Muh¢ammad b. ‘Abd al-Wa@h¢id al-Maqdis @¸
(569/1173-643/1245). The author, whose parents emigrated from the
Palestinian village of Jamma@‘ @¸l to Damascus a few years before his birth, grew
up in the predominantly H¢anbal @¸ neighborhood of al-S¢a@lih ¢iyya, where he
established a madrasa for the study of h ¢ad @¸th. He is often quoted in chronicles
and biographical dictionaries of historians of the late Ayyubid and Mamluk
1 The text was made available to me by Benjamin Z. Kedar in 1989, when I was preparing my Master’s thesis. He has guided and encouraged my work ever since. My late teacher, Hava Lazarus-Yafeh, read the text with me then, and the hours I spent with her were some of the most enjoyable learning experiences I have had. Etan Kohlberg, Butrus Abu Manneh and Sharif Kanaana patiently reread parts of the text with me. Shaun Marmon and Michael Cook commented upon my English translation and introduction. I am indebted to them all. 2 The term kara@ma@t (kara@ma literally — God’s grace) is used for wondrous deeds
performed by holy men (awliya@), as opposed to mu‘jiza@t, miracles which prophets perform in order to prove the divine origin of their message. See Ignaz Goldziher, Muslim Studies, ed. and trans. E.R. Barber and Samuel M. Stern (London, 1971), 2:336; Christopher S. Taylor, In the Vicinity of the Righteous: Ziya@ra and the Veneration of Saints in Late Medieval Egypt (Leiden, 1998), pp. 128-29. 3 Shaykh may be translated as “elder” or “religious teacher,” or “holy man,” depending
on context. I will use the Arabic word. 4 In the Qur’a@n Al-Ard ¢ al-Muqaddasa — the holy land — designates the land ordained
for the people of Moses (sura 5:21). The term was in use in early Muslim texts for Palestine, or parts of it, until dropped in favor of al-Sha@m: see Shlomo D. Goitein, “The Sanctity of Jerusalem and Palestine in Early Islam,” in his Studies in Islamic Religious and Political Institutions (Leiden, 1968), pp. 143-48. In the crusading period it evokes the theme of the pollution of Muslim sacred space by the Franks and its purification by Saladin’s reconquest: Carole Hillenbrand, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Edinburgh, 1999), pp. 297-301. 5 Fihrist Makht ¢ut ¢a@t Da @r al-Kutub al-Z ¢a@hiriyya: al-Maja@mi‘, ed. Ya@s @¸n M. al-Sawwa@s
(Damascus, 1984).
