The Sultan's Anthologist - Ibn Abi Hagalah and His Work

Born in Tlemcen and educated in Damascus, the fourteenth-century Arab litterateur Ibn Abī Ḥaǧalah (725-776/1325-1375) spent most of his adult life in Mamluk Cairo. His best-known works are Sukkardān as-sulṭān (The Sultan’s Sugar Box) and Dīwān aṣ-ṣabābah (The Register of Passionate Love), two anthologies that he dedicated to his patron, the Mamluk Sultan Ḥasan, during the latter’s second reign (755-762/1354-1361). A prolific author and master of the maqāmāt genre, Ibn Abī Ḥaǧalah also penned numerous other prose works, many of which are lost or still unedited. An acclaimed poet during his own time, he mainly composed panegyric and religious poetry. Even though he is one of the most important litterateurs of the Mamluk era, his work has so far received little scholarly attention.