The Book of Gifts and Rarities is an Arabic history of wealth and ostentation from the 6th to 11th centuries. It was written in Egypt by an official of the Fatimid Caliphate sometime after 1071. The surviving form of the work is not complete and contains no attribution. It has been ascribed to a certain Al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd Aḥmad ibn al-Zubayr, but this is not universally accepted.
The Book of Gifts and Rarities is strictly anonymous as it stands and its authorship contested.
The text's first editor, Muḥammad Ḥamīdallāh, identified the author as al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd Abū l-Ḥusayn Aḥmad ibn al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd ibn al-Zubayr. This name is known only from some citations by al-Ghūzūli, although Ḥamīdallāh argued that he was identical to the Muhadhdhab ibn al-Zubayr whose poetry is cited in al-Maqrīzī's Khiṭaṭ. No al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd ibn al-Zubayr is mentioned in any of the biographical dictionaries that cover the 11th century.
In her doctoral dissertation, Ghāda al-Ḥijjāwī al-Qaddūmī tentatively identified Ḥamīdallāh's Ibn al-Zubayr, on the basis of his name and title, as the elder brother of the great-great-grandfather of the judge Aḥmad ibn al-Zubayr, who died in 1166 or 1167.[1] The latter is mentioned in the biographical dictionary of Ibn Khallikān. He belonged to a family of judges (qāḍīs) with the hereditary honorific (laqab) al-Qāḍī al-Rashīd. The other parts of his Arabic name are his kunya Abū l-Ḥusayn ('father of al-Ḥusayn') and his nasab, Ibn al-Zubayr, referring to the name of an ancestor. His given name was Aḥmad. He must have been the eldest son, since he gave his eldest son the same name as his father (al-Ḥusayn).[2]
Shākir Muṣṭafā identifies al-Ghūzūli's Ibn al-Zubayr with the 12th-century judge and al-Maqrīzī's with his brother, a poet who died in 1166. Neither could be the author of an 11th-century text. In a more recent work, al-Qaddūmī rejects Ḥamīdallāh's hypothesis and treats the text as anonymous.
The author can be approximately dated by internal references in the text. In 1052 or 1053, he witnessed at Tinnīs the transshipment of gifts sent by the Byzantine emperor Constantine IX and bound for Cairo and the court of the Fatimid caliph al-Mustanṣir. At Tinnīs in 1070, he was told by Khaṭīr al-Mulk Muḥammad, son of the vizier al-Yāzurī, about a gift sent to al-Mustanṣir by King . The latest event in which he mentions himself is a meeting in Damietta in 1071.
The author thus lived in Egypt between 1053 and 1071 and was probably a Fatimid official. Ḥamīdallāh thought he was an official already in 1052–1053, having previously the Buyid emir Abū Kālījār (1024–1048) in Iraq. Clifford Bosworth surmises he was probably a Shīʿī who fled to the Fatimids after the arrival of the Sunnī Seljuks in Iraq. Al-Qaddūmī originally thought that he was probably a young man, perhaps even a teenager, in 1052.
The Book of Gifts and Rarities does not survive complete. It is known from one extensive manuscript now in the library of Afyonkarahisar in Turkey. This is not a complete text, but consists of excerpts gathered by Shihāb al-Dīn al-Awḥadī in the 15th century. The manuscript itself is an autograph by Ibn Duqmāq, who died in 1406. It may once have belonged to the Ottoman vizier Gedik Ahmed Pasha (1473–1482). The titlepage, added later, mistakes al-Awḥadī for the author. Both al-Maqrīzī in his Khiṭaṭ and Ittiʿāẓ al-Hunafā and al-Ghūzūli's Maṭāliʿ quote excerpts not included in al-Awḥadī's compendium.
The title is a matter of confusion. At the end of the sole surviving copy, al-Awḥadī calls the book he compiled from Kitāb al-Hadāyā waʾl-tuḥaf, 'Book of Gifts and Rarities'. The title on the titlepage, added by a librarian, is Kitāb al-Dhakhāʾir waʾl-tuḥaf, 'Book of Treasures and Rarities'. It is not original, but is taken from al-Maqrīzī. In her dissertation, al-Qaddūmī accepts the full title as given by al-Ghūzūli (Kitāb al-ʿAjāʾib waʾl-ṭuraf waʾl-hadāyā waʾl-tuḥaf, 'Book of Wonders, Curiosities, Gifts and Rarities'), which the latter usually abbreviates to al-ʿAjāʾib waʾl-ṭuraf.
The first edition of the Book of Gifts and Rarities was published as the first volume in Kuwait's "Arab Heritage" series in 1999 under the title Kitāb adh-dhakhāʾir waʾt-tuḥaf.[3] An English translation was published in 1996 under the title Book of Gifts and Rarities.[4]
The Book of Gifts and Rarities is a history of wealth that covers gift exchanges between rulers, lavish and costly celebrations, inheritances and treasure troves. It was divided into twelve chapters, subdivided into 414 paragraphs. The version of al-Awḥadī, however, twice combines two chapters into a single chapter (chapters 5 and 10), making a total of ten chapters. Their titles are:
The Book covers mainly the Abbasid, Buyid and Fatimid dynasties. The earlier Rightly-Guided Caliphs and the Umayyads receive less coverage, and that mostly related to war booty. The whole work projects a gradual increase in luxury among Muslim rulers. The Fatimids have been lumped into the final chapter by al-Awḥadī. The earliest episode recounted in the surviving version of the text is the gifts sent to the rulers of China, India and Tibet by the Sasanian king Khosrow I (531–579). The latest episode is dated 1071. Geographically, its scope stretches from al-Andalus in the west to Sind in the east.
The author was an eyewitness to some of what he records, but most was taken from written sources. He cites 21 different written authorities as well as some eyewitnesses and, in a few cases, hearsay.
The Book is the most important source for two famous pearls of great size, al-Yatīma (Orphan) and al-ʿAẓīma (Enormous).