Year 1242 (MCCXLII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Julian calendar.
Ifriqiya, also known as al-Maghrib al-Adna, was a medieval historical region comprising today's Tunisia and eastern Algeria, and Tripolitania. It included all of what had previously been the Byzantine province of Africa Proconsularis and extended beyond it, but did not include the Mauretanias.
Isaac Israeli ben Solomon, also known as Isaac Israeli the Elder and Isaac Judaeus, was one of the foremost Jewish physicians and philosophers living in the Arab world of his time. He is regarded as the father of medieval Jewish Neoplatonism. His works, all written in Arabic and subsequently translated into Hebrew, Latin and Spanish, entered the medical curriculum of the early thirteenth-century universities in Medieval Europe and remained popular throughout the Middle Ages.
Abu'l-Barakāt Hibat Allah ibn Malkā al-Baghdādī was an Islamic philosopher, physician and physicist of Jewish descent from Baghdad, Iraq. Abu'l-Barakāt, an older contemporary of Maimonides, was originally known by his Hebrew birth name Baruch ben Malka and was given the name of Nathanel by his pupil Isaac ben Ezra before his conversion from Judaism to Islam later in his life.
Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿa Muʾaffaq al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Al-Qāsim Ibn Khalīfa al-Khazrajī, commonly referred to as Ibn Abi Usaibia, was an Arab physician from Syria in the 13th century CE. He compiled a biographical encyclopedia of notable physicians, from the Greeks, Romans and Indians up to the year 650AH/1252AD in the Islamic era.
‘Izz al-Dīn ‘Abu Hamīd ‘Abd al-Hamīd bin Hībat-Allah ibn Abi al-Hadīd al Mutazilī al-Mada'ini, also known as Ibn abi'l-Hadid, was a Shafe'i Mutazili scholar and writer during the Middle Ages. He studied under Abu'l-Khayr Musaddiq ibn Shabib al-Wasiti and is best known for his commentary on the Nahj al-Balagha, which he titled Sharh Nahj al-Balagha.
Abu Hafsa Yazid was a mawla, or servant, of the Umayyad Caliph Marwan ibn al-Hakkam. Yazid's full name is not known; Abu Hafsa means "father of Hafsa".
Abu al-Bayan ibn al-Mudawwar (1101–1184) was a Karaite Jew living in Cairo during the twelfth century. He served as court physician to the last Egyptian Fatimid caliphs and later to Saladin, who pensioned him when he was sixty-three years old. He was replaced in his former position by, among others, Maimonides.
'Alī ibn Yūsuf al-Qifṭī or Ali Ibn Yusuf the Qifti , he was Jamāl al-Dīn Abū al-Ḥasan 'Alī ibn Yūsuf ibn Ibrāhīm ibn 'Abd al-Wahid al-Shaybānī ; an Egyptian historian, biographer-encyclopedist, patron, and administrator-scholar under the Ayyubid rulers of Aleppo. His biographical dictionary Kitāb Ikhbār al-'Ulamā' bi Akhbār al-Ḥukamā, tr. 'History of Learned Men'; is an important source of Islamic biography. Much of his vast literary output is lost, including his histories of the Seljuks, Buyids and the Maghreb, and biographical dictionaries of philosophers and philologists. See below.
Abu 'l-Fadl Muhammad ibn Abi Abdallah al-Husayn ibn Muhammad al-Katib, commonly known after his father as Ibn al-'Amid was a Persian statesman who served as the vizier of the Buyid ruler Rukn al-Dawla for thirty years, from 940 until his death in 970. His son, Abu'l-Fath Ali ibn Muhammad, also called Ibn al-'Amid, succeeded him in his office.
Abū al‐Ṣalt Umayya ibn ʿAbd al‐ʿAzīz ibn Abī al‐Ṣalt al‐Dānī al‐Andalusī, known in Latin as Albuzale, was an Andalusian-Arab polymath who wrote about pharmacology, geometry, Aristotelian physics, and astronomy. His works on astronomical instruments were read both in the Islamic world and Europe. He also occasionally traveled to Palermo and worked in the court of Roger I of Sicily as a visiting physician. He became well known in Europe through translations of his works made in the Iberian Peninsula and in southern France. He is also credited with introducing Andalusian music to Tunis, which later led to the development of the Tunisian ma'luf.
Abu Bakr Ahmad bin `Amr ad-Dahhak bin Makhlad ash-Shaibani, widely known as Ibn Abi Asim, was an Iraqi Sunni scholar of the 9th century. He is most famous for his work in the field of hadith science.
Abū al-Makārim Hibat Allāh ibn Zayn al-Dīn ibn Jumayʿ was an Egyptian Jewish physician, chief physician at the court of Saladin.
Husam ad-Din Muhanna ibn Isa was the lord of Palmyra and amir al-ʿarab under the Mamluk Sultanate. He served between 1284 and his death, but was dismissed and reinstated four times during this period. As the chieftain of the Al Fadl, a clan of the Tayy tribe, which dominated the Syrian Desert, Muhanna wielded considerable influence among the Bedouin. He was described by historian Amalia Levanoni as "the eldest and most senior amir" of the Al Fadl during his era.
The Jarrahids were an Arab dynasty that intermittently ruled Palestine and controlled Transjordan and northern Arabia in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. They were described by historian Marius Canard (1888–1982) as a significant player in the Byzantine–Fatimid wars in Syria who "created for themselves, in their own best interests, a rule of duplicity, treason and pillage". They were the ruling family of the Tayy tribe, one of the three powerful tribes of Syria at the time; the other two were Kalb and Kilab.
Yahya ibn Abi Mansur, was a senior Persian official from the Banu al-Munajjim family, who served as an astronomer/astrologer at the court of Abbasid caliph al-Ma'mun. His Persian name was Bizist, son of Firuzan. Since his father Abu Mansur Aban was an astrologer in service of caliph al-Mansur, it can be concluded that Yahya spent his childhood in Baghdad. His first known position was as an astrologer for al-Fadl ibn Sahl, vizier of the caliph al-Ma'mun. After the assassination of al-Fadl, Yahya converted to Islam and adopted his Arabic name. He was also associated with the House of Wisdom and is mentioned as a teacher of the Banu Musa. He died near Aleppo in 830 CE.
Umāra ibn Abī al-Ḥasan al-Yamanī was a historian, jurist and poet of Yemen of great repute who was closely associated with the late Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt. He was executed by order of Saladin at Cairo on April 6, 1174 for his part in a conspiracy to restore Fatimid rule. His Tarikh al-Yaman is the earliest, and in respects the most important, history of Yemen from the Islamic era.
Abū Hilāl al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAbdallāh b. Sahl al-ʿAskarī, known also by the epithet al-adīb ('littérateur'), was an Arabic-language lexicographer and literatus of Persian origin, noted for composing a wide range of works enabling Persian-speakers like himself to develop refined and literary Arabic usage and so gain preferment under Arab rule. He is best known for his Kitāb al-ṣināʽatayn, Dīwān al-maʽāni, and the Jamharat al-amthāl. However, he composed at least twenty-five works, many of which survive at least in part.
