MAQQARĪ, or MAḲḲARĪ [ Abū-l-‛Abbās Aḥmad ibn Maḥommed ul-Maqqarī ] (c. 1591–1632), Arabian historian, was born at Tlemcen in Algeria and studied at Fez and Marrakesh, where he remained engaged in literary work until he made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1618. In the following year he settled in Cairo. In 1620 he visited Jerusalem and Damascus, and during the next six years made the pilgrimage five times. In 1628 he was again in Damascus, where he gave a course of lectures on Bukhārī’s collection of Traditions, spoke much of the glories of Moslem Spain, and received the impulse to write his work on this subject later. In the same year he returned to Cairo, where he spent a year in writing his history. He was just making preparations to settle definitely in Damascus when he died in 1632.
His great work, The Breath of Perfume from the Branch of Green Andalusia and Memorials of its Vizier Lisān ud-Dīn ibn ul-Khatīb, consists of two parts. The first is a compilation from many authors on the description and history of Moslem Spain; it was published by Wright, Krehl, Dozy and Dugat as Analectes sur l’histoire et la littérature des Arabes d’Espagne (Leiden, 1855–1861), and in an abridged English translation by P. de Gayangos (London, 1840–1843). The whole work has been published at Būlāq (1863) and Cairo (1885).
For other works of Maqqarī see C. Brockelmann’s Gesch. der arabischen Litteratur (Berlin, 1902), ii. 297. (G. W. T.)