الفرياني

الفرياني

Shams al-Din Muhammad al-Firyani of the Maghreb — a wandering preacher who frequented al-Maqrizi in Cairo, recited histories and prophetic reports from memory, claimed Shafi'i allegiance after Malikism, and held the judgeship of Nablus — then withdrew in 848 to the impregnable Hamida mountains of the Holy Land, whose heights had fields, springs and vines and a folk so secure that none below the sultan could war on them, and there proclaimed himself the Mahdi — some said the Qahtani — and his cause flourished ¹.