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A native of Baghdad, Abd-Allatif (1162–1231) was a versatile scholar and scientist of vast erudition. This prolific author travelled widely throughout the Muslim world and wrote an account of Egypt at a time when the country was rarely visited by Europeans. The book covers matters ranging from natural history and medicine to culture and domestic economy. It also includes a vivid description of the terrible famine that Abd-Allatif witnessed in 1200 and 1201 when the Nile failed to flood. The text was widely known in Europe at the end of the eighteenth century thanks to Latin and German translations. Orientalist Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) translated and edited this version, first published in French in 1810. Complementing this invaluable account are excerpts from several other Arab writers, a detailed biography of Abd-Allatif, and a general overview of the provinces and villages of Egypt in the fourteenth century.
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