Abū Muḥammad ʿAbdallāh b. Muḥammad al-Madīnī al-Balawī was an Egyptian historian and minor traditionist, possibly of Imāmī affiliation. His dates are unknown. Citing internal evidence in Sīrat Aḥmad b. Ṭūlūn , the text for which al-Balawī is best known, Shayyal argues plausibly that he flourished in the late fourth/tenth century, suggesting that he wrote for a member of the short-lived Ikhshīdid dynasty of Egypt (r. 323-58/935-69). The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 385/995) is the chief source of later biographical entries (