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Monday 15 March 2021

Shihabaddin Ahmad al-Budayri "Daily Events of Damascus ash-Sham from 1154 to 1176 (1741-1763)"

 
The great work of Irina Smilyanskaya "Daily Events of Damascus ash-Sham from 1154 to 1176 (1741-1763)" has been published at last.

The colossal work of our wonderful colleague Irina Smilyanskaya "Daily Events of Damascus ash-Sham from 1154 to 1176 (1741-1763)" has been published quite recently. She devoted more than thirty years of her life to working on it.

Irina Smilanskaya not only translated this amazing literary masterpiece, but also compiled comments on it. She wrote two articles about this unique chronicle as well.

The chronicle was written by an 18th century Damascus artisan. The barber Ahmad al-Budayri composed a valuable work on the common Syrian urban culture. It has the characteristic features of “the early modern history” that anticipated partly the ideology of the 19th century Arab Renaissance (Nahda). Life realities, religious and cultural nuances, language features of this book, all created special difficulties for translation. Irina Smilanskaya conducted a deep and detailed analysis of all the controversial issues based on a huge number of sources.

The translation was the last work of Ms. Smilanskaya. She had worked on it until the day of her death in November 2019.

Nowadays her outstanding work has been published, and any reader may appreciate it.