Al-Maqrizi was “hands-down the shaykh (chief or dean) of the historians of his generation,” if not of the entire fifteenth-century Mamluk history writing, which was one of the richest and most elaborate Islamic historical traditions.This is not so only because of the volume of his historical writing or the variety of topics he covered. It is also because his was an exhaustive, structured, and principled historical project with clear ethical messages pursued in an intellectual milieu replete with history writing that seems by and large to have accepted a non-committal chronicling function.In contrast, al-Maqrizi consciously and unabashedly wrote history in a personal, sentimental, and moralizing fashion. He allowed his biases, beliefs, feelings, and political and religious views to inform both his narrative and the reader who might be interested in identifying the motives behind what he/she is reading. He even explicitly addressed his reader whenever he was presenting a contentious issue or a controversial interpretation, such as when he defended the genealogy of the Fatimids, to ask for his/her unbiased weighing of the evidence before forming an opinion. That he was obsessively focused on Egypt or that his message appears to have been unduly pessimistic or puritanical does not diminish the power and uniqueness of his project. On the contrary, they add to it certain distinctive traits, such as an uncompromising ethical stand, pronounced love of country, and melancholy, which are otherwise rarely expressed in the chronicles of the time. Such qualities make the study of al-Maqrizi and his historical oeuvre all the more fascinating and timely.

Al-Maqrizi was also one of the very few eminent scholars of his age who could be termed a “professional” historian, essentially devoting himself to history writing. Unlike the work of other comparable ulama/historians such as Ibn Hajar, al-‘Ayni, or, later, al-Sakhawi, whose main scholarly output was in fiqh, hadith, or tafsir and who wrote history on the side as it were, al-Maqrizi’s oeuvre is primarily historical, even when his topic is related to religion. In that he resembles his master Ibn Khaldun, his student Ibn Taghri-Birdi, and the trio of lesser-known and socially modest contemporary historians, Ibn Duqmaq, Ibn al-Furat, and al-Awhadi, whose output is almost exclusively historical.