Abstract

ABSTRACT

The letters investigated in this thesis are the composition of a first-class man-of-letters and rhetorician whose competence at politics and statesmanship is equally remarkable. This figure is Diya’ Al- Din Ibn ’l- Athir who belongs to the Arab Shaibani family of Ibun’l- Athir who lived in Mousl and its peripheries and occupied a primacy of place during the transitional period between the sixth and the seventh centuries of Hijra- the twentieth and the thirteenth centuries A.D., particularly in the Atabeg administrations of Mosul, Aleppo and Damascus.
In fact, those letters have not been previously studied to reveal their historical significance and the few attempts at that were rather incomplete for they failed to place them within their historical framework. It is our conviction that these letters harbour a paramount historical significance that would come to surface in reading them between the lines as the reader would observe from our treatment of this lengthy compositions thronghout our thesis. As is the case with so many theses tackling subtle topics, the first who paid due attention to these letters were the orientalists beginning with Margoliouth and ending with C.Calhen besides some other Arab scholars such as Anis Al-Maqdisi who investigated those letters for their relevance to the Ayyubid period as a matter of course as he started the recension of some towards the completion of all. Be it what it may, all these efforts remain rudementary standing at the threshold of a much more perfect and thorough work. Thus the need for an objective, interpretive and precise investigation of these letters has been frequently stressed for the scholarship on this period and region (the upper Euphates, region and Syria) still lacks so many details particularly as it is set off against the profusion of references on this period and region.