0021-1818_islam_98-1-2-i-259

Was al-Maqrizi’s Khitat Khaldunian History? 121
many topics. This is clear from the contexts of seven passages that al-Maqr\z\ directly
copied from the master’s dictation or the many recorded discussions he had
with Ibn Khaldun or with others in his circle of acolytes, which suggest that their
relationship lasted until the end of Ibn Khaldun’s life. 9 In one report about the funerary
khanqah for Sultan Barquq constructed by his son Faraj between 1400 and
1411, al-Maqr\z\ states that Ibn Khaldun more than once told him that a new city
would grow around the building. 10 This could not have happened before 1400
when the site was first selected for the khanqah, and Ibn Khaldun died in 1406
sometime before the area became further urbanized with the building of more funerary
institutions.
Moreover, these accounts and the twenty personal communications appended
to the extensive biography al-Maqr\z\ wrote of Ibn Khaldun shed some
light on the nature and depth of the relationship between the two men. 11 They
show that Ibn Khaldun represented an important source for al-Maqr\z\ on the history
of North Africa and al-Andalus and the biographies of its rulers, about which
he displays more than average knowledge for his time and class in the extensive
biographies he includes in his Durar and the attention he pays to the events in
these two regions in his contemporary history book al-Suluk li-ma^rifat duwal almuluk.
The stories also reveal the interest both men shared in the power of the
preternatural, especially when transmitted via prophecies, visions, and dreams,
as means of explaining the world no less important than observation and experience.
12 This has prompted al-Sakhaw\, who disliked both men, to comment on
their credulity by saying that al-Maqr\z\ endeared himself to Ibn Khaldun when
he read his future and predicted the time of his judgeship, which happened as
he predicted, and that was considered a marvel. 13 Robert Irwin, a more generous
commentator than al-Sakhaw\, tried to understand the impact of that system of
belief on the work of the two men and concluded that al-Maqr\z\ was more prone
to supernatural explanations than the more sober and empiricist Ibn Khaldun. 14
9 al-Maqr\z\, Durar, 1: 117, 121 (the biography of the sultan Abu Salim the Merinid), 1: 307, and 1:
375 (the biography of the sultan Abu l-^Abbas the Merinid); idem, al-Mawa^iz wa-l-i^tibar bi-dhikr
al-khitat wa-l-athar, Ayman Fu#ad Sayyid, ed., 4 vols. in 5 tomes (London: al-Furqan Foundation,
2002–2004), 1: 130, 3: 605–606, 4, 2: 921.
10 Ibid.
11 al-Maqr\z\, Durar, 2: 404–10.
12 See especially Al-Maqr\z\, Durar, 2: 409–10, where al-Maqr\z\ reports the stories of two
dreams told to Ibn Khaldun by the Merinid sultan Abu ^Inan Faris (r. 1348–58), then adds a comment
by Ibn Khaldun that, “the proof of a true dream is that the person would wake up right after
seeing it and would remember it.”
13 al-Sakhaw\, Daw’, 2: 24.
14 Irwin, “Al-Maqr\z\ and Ibn Khaldun,” 223–28.