Ibn Tawq

Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad (1430–1509), called Ibn Ṭawq, was a Muslim notary and diarist from Damascus.

Ibn Ṭawq was born in 1430^[1] into a peasant family from the village of Jayrūd outside Damascus. He also held land in the predominantly Christian village of Maʿlūlā.^[2] In Damascus, he lived near the Qaṣab Mosque [ar] in the quarter of Sūq Ṣārūjā just north of the Bāb al-Salāma gate to Old Damascus. His mother's family was from Damascus.^[3] In 1498, he moved to Maʿlūlā, where he stayed for at least a year and a half whie his wife remained in Damascus.^[4]

Ibn Ṭawq belonged to the middle class, owned an orchard and several female slaves.^[3][5] He was a court clerk (kātib) and notary (shāhid).^[3][4] He adhered to the Shāfiʿī school of law, but did not hesitate to seek justice from a Ḥanbalī judge.^[2] He was just prominent enough to make it into the biographical dictionary of Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī, who describes him as a shaykh, imām (prayer leader), ʿālim (scholar) and muḥaddith (traditionist).^[3]

Ibn Ṭawq was married twice. With his first wife, he had a son and two daughters. His second wife, who belonged to a prominent family, had a daughter from a previous marriage. At one point he divorced and remarried her on account of an oath he took. They had five daughters who died in childhood and one son.^[6]

Ibn Ṭawq died in 1509.^[1]

Ibn Ṭawq is known almost entirely for and through his Arabic diary, which he entitled Taʿlīq ("summary report").^[1] The surviving portion of the diary covers the period from late 1480 to late 1501 with almost daily reports. Ibn Ṭawq also treated the diary as a sort of personal archive. According to Boaz Shoshan, there is "no comparable source for the pre-Ottoman era in terms of the density" of information than the Taʿlīq.^[1] It is the only surviving diary from Mamlūk Sultanate.^[3]