[A RARE BULAQ EDITION: A CONCISE HISTORY OF CALIPHS] كتاب مختصر أخبار الخلفاء / Kitâb mukhtasar akhbâr al-khulefâ’ [i.e., A concise history of the caliphs]

IBN AL-SA'I ALI IBN ANJAB IBN UTHMAN IBN ABDULLAH ABU TALIB, TAJ AL-DIN (1197-1275/6).

Matba'ah al-Amîrîyah - Bulaq, Bulaq, Cairo, AH 1309 [CE 1892].

Contemporary brown calf lettered gilt on spine with blind tooled decorative elements, marbled boards. Cr. 8vo. (18,5 x 13 cm). In Arabic. 104 p. Slight toning on pages, first and last pages are loosely inserted; a piece is missing from the spine; corners bumped; an old label trace on the spine. Overall, a good copy.

Uncommon first edition of this early biographical work on the caliphs, covering their lives from the early Islamic period to the last Abbasid caliph, al-Mu’tasim, who was killed during the Mongol invasion. It constitutes the only abridged volume from Ibn al-Sa’î’s twenty-five-volume corpus to have been printed at the renowned Bulaq Press. Some sources, however, note that the work attributed to Ibn al-Sa’î may not be genuinely his. (al-ʿAzzâwî).

Ibn al-Sa’î is thought to have finished his corpus in AH 656 [CE 1258], at the time of the Mongol invasion. The “Mukhtaṣar”, which formed its ninth volume, was the only part to be printed at the renowned Bulaq Press centuries later.

As of March 2026, OCLC locates four copies in the North American libraries: 13490057 & 1227684739.