Abū Yaʿlā Ḥamza b. Asad al-Tamīmī, better known by his family name of Ibn al-Qalānisī (c. 465-555/1073-1160), was a Damascene official and littérateur. He is well known to modern historians for his chronicle Dhayl taʾrīkh Dimashq ("Continuation of the history of Damascus"), which constitutes one of the few sources available for the Muslim response to the Crusades of the late fifth/eleventh and early sixth/twelfth centuries. Yet despite this, actual knowledge about his life is sparse. Most of our information comes from the great