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.

Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758 1838), the most distinguished French orientalist of his time, is considered the father of Arab scholarship in Europe. He had a lifelong interest in a little-known religious community, the Druze, which emerged in the eleventh century as an Ismaili schismatic movement. De Sacy's monumental study was begun in the 1790s, when he translated some of the Druze scriptures from Arabic to French. Such was his commitment to learning more about the Druze that he waited forty years before publishing this two-volume work in 1838, as he hoped to uncover further source material. It offers pioneering insight into the religious system founded by Hamza ibn-'Ali ibn-Ahmad during the reign of the caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Volume 1 looks at the early history and doctrines of the Ismaili movement before expanding on the reign of al-Hakim (996 1021).

Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy (1758 1838), the most distinguished French orientalist of his time, is considered the father of Arab scholarship in Europe. He had a lifelong interest in a little-known religious community, the Druze, which emerged in the eleventh century as an Ismaili schismatic movement. De Sacy's monumental study was begun in the 1790s, when he translated some of the Druze scriptures from Arabic to French. Such was his commitment to learning more about the Druze that he waited forty years before publishing this two-volume work in 1838, as he hoped to uncover further source material. It offers pioneering insight into the religious system founded by Hamza ibn-'Ali ibn-Ahmad during the reign of the caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah. Volume 2 thoroughly examines the Druze hierarchical structures and doctrines, from moral duties to civil law.