Arab geographer
Name:	Shams al-Din al-Ansari al-Dimashqi شمس الدين الأنصاري الدمشقي
Title:	al-Dimashqi
Birth:	1256 CE
Death:	1327 CE
Ethnicity:	Arab
Region:	Greater Syria
Main interests:	History and Geography

Sheikh Shams al-Din al-Ansari al-Dimashqi or simply al-Dimashqi (Arabic: شمس الدين الأنصاري الدمشقي‎) (1256-1327) was a medieval Arab geographer, completing his main work in 1300. Born in Damascus—as his name "Dimashqi" implies—he mostly wrote of his native land, the Greater Syria (Bilad ash-Sham), upon the complete withdrawal of the Crusaders. He became a contemporary of the Mamluk sultan Baibars, the general who led the Muslims in war against the Crusaders. His work is of value in connection with the Crusader Chronicles. He died while in Safad, in 1327.^[1]

Al-Dimaski's writings on Syria were published in St. Petersburg in 1866 by M.A.F Mehren, and this edition was later used for the English translation by Guy le Strange in 1890.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] Bibliography

• leStrange, Guy (1890), Palestine Under the Moslems: A Description of Syria and the Holy Land from A.D. 650 to 1500, Committee of the Palestine Exploration Fund, http://www.archive.org/details/palestineundermo00lestuoft , London,

[edit] External links

• August Ferdinand M. Mehren (1862): Syrien og Palestina, Studie efter en arabisk Geograph (Shams al-Dîn Dimashḳî).
• August Ferdinand Mehren (ed) (1866): Cosmographie de Chems-ed-Din Abou Abdallah Mohammed ed-Dimichqui