205 34 Anecdotes about Conversion in Twelſth-Century Syria Shams al-Dīn al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348), Ibn Rajab (d. 795/1393), and D . iyāʾ al-Dīn al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) Daniella Talmon-Heller Titles: al-Dhahabī, Siyar Aʿlām al-Nubalāʾ (e biographies of distinguished men); Ibn Rajab, Dhayl T . abaqāt al-H . anābila (An addendum to the biographical dictionary of H . anbalīs [lit. “to the generations of H . anbalīs”]); al-Maqdisī, al-H . ikāyāt al-Muqtabasa fī Karāmāt Mashāyikh al- Ard . al-Muqaddasa (e cited tales of the wondrous doings of the shaykhs of the Holy Land) Genre: Didactic and entertaining literature (biography) Language: Arabic 1. THE CONVERSION OF A PERSIAN CLERK Introduction Al-Dhahabī’s Biographies of Distinguished Men is a voluminous encyclopedic com- pilation of essays on noteworthy Muslims from the age of the Prophet until the time of the author, arranged by generation. It is of great value for modern research on the social and cultural history of the Islamic world, especially of the religious elite and its worldview and discourse. e entry dedicated to the H . anbalī h . adīth expert ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Maqdisī (d. 600/1204) is quite typically based on the citation of students and colleagues of the shaykh and constructed as a series of anecdotes about, or by, the biographee. ʿAbd al-Ghanī, who was born in a village in central Palestine (then under Frankish rule), studied in Baghdad, and spent most of his life in Damascus, narrates this Hurvitz-Conversion to Islam.indd 205 13/10/20 4:59 PM University of California Press * * * N OT F OR S ALE * * * Review copy only © University of California Press/The Regents of the University of California 2021