Ibn al-Tiqtaqa

Ṣafī al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn al-Ṭabāṭabā (; 1262–1309), also known as Ibn al-Tiqtaqa, was a historian and naqib of Alids in Ḥilla.

He was a direct descendant of Ḥasan ibn Ali ibn Abi Ṭalib. According to E.G. Browne's English version of Mīrzā Muhammad b. ‛Abudi’l-Wahhāb-i—Qazwīni's edition of ‛Alā-ad-Dīn ‛Ata Malik-i-Juwaynī's Ta’rīhh-i-Jahān Gushā (London 1912, Luzac, p.ix), Ibn al-Tiqtaqā's name was Safiyu’d-Din Muhammad ibn ‛Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Tabātabā.

Around 1302 he wrote a popular compendium of Islamic history called al-Fakhri.

According to the political scientist Vasileios Syros, the philosophy of ibn al-Ṭabāṭabā can be compared to that of Niccolò Machiavelli.

References

• Encyclopedia of Islam, vol. ii, (Leiden 1927, Brill), pp. 423–4.
• Note by Professor H. A. R. Gibb, in Arnold J. Toynbee's A Study of History