SIGNED SAYYID MUHAMMAD BIN SAYYID TALIB, OTTOMAN PROVINCES, POSSIBLY HEJAZ, DATED FRIDAY 22 RAMADAN AH 1013/11 FEBRUARY 1605 AD

Samhudi was a celebrated historian and jurist from Samhud in Egypt where he was born in 1440 AD. He went on hajj in 1465 AD and remained in Medina for the next forty years. He is considered the chief historian for the city of Medina. Another copy of this work is in the John Rylands Library (Persian MS 436) and according to the entry in the catalogue, the present work is the Persian translation by Shahab Shams 'Umar Dawlatabadi of Khulasat al-wafa fi akhbar dar al-mustafa. The translation is titled Akhbar-i hasina tarikh-i madina, as it appears in the introduction to the present work.

It is said that the original of Samhudi's copy of Akhbar-i hasina tarikh-i madina disappeared in the fire that destroyed most of the contents of the Prophet's mosque in 1481. Fortunately, Samhudi had made two abridged versions which survided (Francis E. PEters, Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land, Chichester, 1994, p.66). On his way to the Arabian Peninsula in 1814, the traveller John Lewis Burckhardt read Samhudi's history as his travel preparation.