Al-Bayān wa'l-iʿrāb ʿammā fī arḍ Miṣr min al-aʿrāb is an influential treatise on the Arab and Berber groups that inhabited the Egyptian countryside in the late medieval period. The work brings together al-Maqrīzī's life-long preoccupation with the history of Egypt and his parallel interest in the history of the Arabs, pitting the lineage-based ideology of Arab rebels against the Mamluk elite of manumitted slaves. Over the past century, the Bayān has been repeatedly deployed in public debates about the Arab identity of Egypt. This book offers a critical study of the treatise in its fifteenth century context, an academic edition, and a first translation into English.
