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The kaleidoscopic political changes during the years covered by this volume include the rise and fall of the Crusader states, the expansion of the Mongol empire, the rise of the Mamluk sultanate and of its ultimate conquerors, the Ottomans. To all of these Professor Holt is a clear and skilful guide. He principally utilises, and to some extent reinterprets, the medieval Arabic sources, to present a picture which differs in important respects from the conventional western-orientated view.

This work is an annotated translation of the Funj Chronicle, the only full-length Arabic account of the Nilotic Sudan from 910/1504-5 to 1288/1871, produced by a succession of nineteenth-century Sudanese writers. The earlier part is based on a king-list of the Funj dynasty of Sinnār. From the mid-twelfth/eighteenth century an increasingly detailed narrative describes the rule of Hamaj regents, the conquest by Muḥammad 'Alī Pasha's forces and the first half-century of Turco-Egyptian government. The translator's Introduction discusses the textual history, structure and authorship of the Chronicle, while four Appendixes provide supplementary materials. This is a major source for Sudanese history, to which non-readers of Arabic have previously had access only through the summary translation in Harold MacMichael's History of the Arabs in the Sudan (Cambridge, 1992)