Al-Atharibi

Hamdan ibn ʿAbd al-Rahim al-Atharibi (died 1147) was a 12th-century Muslim chronicler and poet that lived in the Levant under Crusader and Muslim rule. Living through a turbulent period in the history of Syria, his experiences aligned with major events.

Life
Al-Atharibi was born around 1067 in Ma‘ratha al-Atharib, near modern Ma‘arat al-Atarib, located in the vicinity of Aleppo, in modern-day Syria. Later, he and his father settled in al-Atharib, situated between Aleppo and Antioch. He spent the majority of his life in the al-Jazr district, a fertile area vividly depicted in his poetry. This area became a contested border-zone between Muslim Aleppo and Frankish Antioch, and al-Athraibi, as described by Ibn al-'Adim, constantly shifted between the Islamic and Frankish regimes throughout his life.

Despite a few journeys to regional courts, al-Athraibi remained a local talent, providing a unique perspective on the dynamic historical events and geographical context of his time. He made himself a remarkable career both under Frankish and Muslim rulers.

Al-Atharibi's childhood witnessed the arrival of the Seljuk Turks under Alp Arslan in 1071. His young adulthood saw the resurgence of Selju power under Malik-Shah (1086), and the establishment of Seljuk prince Ridwan in Aleppo in the 1090s. At about thirty, he witnessed the Crusader siege of Antioch in 1097–8. As the Artuqids and ‘Imad al-Din Zengi took control of Aleppo in the 1110s and 1128, al-Atharibi, in his middle age and sixties respectively, experienced the shifting dynamics of northern Syria.

He died in 1147 at the age of eighty, before the unsuccessful Second Crusade reached Syria later the same year.

Survival of works
Al-Atharibi's historical account detailing the Franks who ventured into Islamic lands, akin to William of Tyre's Historia Orientalium Principum—a Frankish attempt to chronicle the history of the Muslim East—has not survived. Only fragments of Al-Atharibi's work are preserved, as later works contain excerpts and quotations from it.