Historians are very interested in understanding environmental and climate conditions from the past. However, sources that can shed light on this information are hard to find, so being able to access over 20 years of records from a medieval writer is a gold mine of details.
A team of scholars from Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg in Germany created a project to examine the weather reports of Šihab ad-D ın Ahmad Ibn Tawq (d. 1509), a notary who lived in the suburbs of Damascus. Between December 1480 and June 1501, he meticulously kept a private journal detailing everyday events involving himself, his family, his business, and the community around him. Ibn Tawq’s journal has been lauded as an incredible source for social history, but it also provides valuable insights into environmental history.
Advertisement
The team created a dataset of over 7038 entries that focus significantly on weather and climate-related topics, as well as descriptions of phenology for cultivated plants and environmental events such as floods, earthquakes, and the plague. Most of these entries take place in and around Damascus, with daily entries sometimes including hourly observations, often linked to Muslim prayer times or hourglass references.
A facsimile of a page from the diary of Ibn Tawq, a Damascene notary. The entry dated Shawwāl 9, 885 AH (12.12.1480 AD) describes among other things the end of autumn and the beginning of the winter season.
According to Li Guo, a historian who was not part of the project, this aspect of the journal is invaluable: “For the student of environment and natural history, Ibn Ṭawq’s meticulous observations of climate variation and flora and fauna in the vicinity of Damascus stand out as one of the most consistent records of its kind. Attention to the environment and climate variation (solar and lunar eclipses, new moons, earthquakes, the position of the sun, migratory locusts, flooding rivers, etc.) has long been a hallmark of the Syrian historians. Ibn Ṭawq’s documentation achieves a new standard in this arena.”
Advertisement
For example, here are a series of entries starting on December 6, 1496:
On Tuesday night, from the beginning to the end of the night, it rained in silence.
December 7th
…then the clouds (layered clouds) thickened during the night and it rained.
December 8th
There were clouds and clear skies until the end of the day.
On Thursday night there were clouds and clear skies and it was warm until the end of the night.
December 9th
During the day there were clear skies and clouds.
December 10th
At the beginning of the day it was cloudy.
Some of the entries are more eventful, such as this one from November 25, 1497:
Just before noon there was a little earthquake and I felt it for about a moment, as the ground beneath me shifted. My wife told me that our roof was cracking. We quickly went barefoot to the garden. We have people from inside as well as outside of the city asking about it. They said: “we didn’t know anything about it.” But our neighbors’ family an-Nabulsi felt it.
Advertisement
The Chronicle of Ibn Tawq – over 7000 Climate and Environmental Records from Damascus, Syria, AD 1481 to 1501 can be accessed from the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg with Ibn Tawq’s entries translated into German. Please see their:
Historians are very interested in understanding environmental and climate conditions from the past. However, sources that can shed light on this information are hard to find, so being able to access over 20 years of records from a medieval writer is a gold mine of details.
A team of scholars from Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg in Germany created a project to examine the weather reports of Šihab ad-D ın Ahmad Ibn Tawq (d. 1509), a notary who lived in the suburbs of Damascus. Between December 1480 and June 1501, he meticulously kept a private journal detailing everyday events involving himself, his family, his business, and the community around him. Ibn Tawq’s journal has been lauded as an incredible source for social history, but it also provides valuable insights into environmental history.
The team created a dataset of over 7038 entries that focus significantly on weather and climate-related topics, as well as descriptions of phenology for cultivated plants and environmental events such as floods, earthquakes, and the plague. Most of these entries take place in and around Damascus, with daily entries sometimes including hourly observations, often linked to Muslim prayer times or hourglass references.
According to Li Guo, a historian who was not part of the project, this aspect of the journal is invaluable: “For the student of environment and natural history, Ibn Ṭawq’s meticulous observations of climate variation and flora and fauna in the vicinity of Damascus stand out as one of the most consistent records of its kind. Attention to the environment and climate variation (solar and lunar eclipses, new moons, earthquakes, the position of the sun, migratory locusts, flooding rivers, etc.) has long been a hallmark of the Syrian historians. Ibn Ṭawq’s documentation achieves a new standard in this arena.”
For example, here are a series of entries starting on December 6, 1496:
On Tuesday night, from the beginning to the end of the night, it rained in silence.
December 7th
…then the clouds (layered clouds) thickened during the night and it rained.
December 8th
There were clouds and clear skies until the end of the day.
On Thursday night there were clouds and clear skies and it was warm until the end of the night.
December 9th
During the day there were clear skies and clouds.
December 10th
At the beginning of the day it was cloudy.
Some of the entries are more eventful, such as this one from November 25, 1497:
Just before noon there was a little earthquake and I felt it for about a moment, as the ground beneath me shifted. My wife told me that our roof was cracking. We quickly went barefoot to the garden. We have people from inside as well as outside of the city asking about it. They said: “we didn’t know anything about it.” But our neighbors’ family an-Nabulsi felt it.
The Chronicle of Ibn Tawq – over 7000 Climate and Environmental Records from Damascus, Syria, AD 1481 to 1501 can be accessed from the Albert-Ludwigs-University Freiburg with Ibn Tawq’s entries translated into German. Please see their:
Introduction
Dataset
See also: Assessing the Medieval Climate Anomaly in the Middle East: The potential of Arabic documentary sources
See also: Li Guo’s review of Al-Taʿlīq: Yawmīyāt Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq
Top Image: Reception of a Venetian Delegation in Damascus in 1511 – painting now on display at the Louvre – Wikimedia Commons.
Related Posts
Subscribe to Medievalverse