WĀQIDĪ [Abū ‘Abdallah Mahommed ibn ‘Umar ul-Wāqidī] (747-823), Arabian historian, was born at Medina, where he became a corn-dealer but was compelled to flee from his creditors (owing largely to his generosity) to Bagdad. Here the Barmecide vizier Yaḥyā b. Khālid (see Barmecides) gave him means and made him cadi in the western district of the city. In 819 he was transferred to Rosafa (Rusāfa) on the east side. His greatest work is the Kitāb ul-Maghāzi, or history of Mahomet’s campaigns.
The first third of the Kitāb ul-Maghāzi (one leaf missing) was published by A. von Kremer from a Damascus MS. (Calcutta, 1856). Sprenger in his Leben Muhammad’s used a British Museum MS. containing the first half, all but one leaf. J. Wellhausen published an abridged German translation from another British Museum MS. under the title Muhammad in Medina (Berlin, 1882).
Ascribed to Wāqidī, but probably written at the time of the Crusades to incite the Moslems against the Christians, are several works on the conquests of Islam. One of the best known is the Futūḥ ush-Shām, edited by W. Nassau Lees (Calcutta, 1854–1862; Cairo, 1865). M. J. de Goeje, in his Mémoires sur la conquête de la Syrie (Leiden, 1900), holds that this work is founded on that of Abu Hudhaifa ul-Bukhārī, which in turn is an edition of the real Wāqidī.