Wikipedia's first sentence called it “medieval egyptian writer and mathematician born in a village in the nile delta”. Today it says “voluminous administrative encyclopedia ṣubḥ al-aʿshá”.
Measured, not asserted. Every count, date and revision on this page was taken from Wikipedia's own history and checked against the live article. The words quoted are theirs.
Machine-checked against the full current article on 2026-08-03.
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The opening as it read in 2015
Shihab al-Din abu 'l-Abbas Ahmad ben Ali ben Ahmad Abd Allah al-Qalqashandi (1355 or 1356 – 1418) was a medieval Egyptian writer and mathematician . Born in a village in the Nile Delta , al-Qalqashandi was scribe of the scroll ( katib al-darj ) in the Mamluk chancery in Cairo . He is the author of Subh al-a 'sha , completed in fourteen volumes in 1412, "one of the final expressions of the genre of Arabic administrative literature". The Subh al-a 'sha included a section on cryptology . This information was attributed to Ibn al-Durayhim who lived from 1312 to 1361, but whose writings on cryptology have been lost. The list of ciphers in this work included both substitution and transposition , and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter. Also traced to Ibn al-Durayhim is an exposition on and worked example of cryptanalysis, including the use of tables of letter frequencies and sets of letters which can not occur together in one word.1
This is Wikipedia's own text, saved in our repository. Their copy of it is revision 660173425.
The opening as it stood in 2010
Shihab al-Din abu 'l-Abbas Ahmad ben Ali ben Ahmad Abd Allah al-Qalqashandi (1355 or 1356 – 1418) was a medieval Egyptian writer and mathematician born in a village in the Nile Delta . He is the author of Subh al-a 'sha , a fourteen volume encyclopedia in Arabic , which included a section on cryptology . This information was attributed to Taj ad-Din Ali ibn ad-Duraihim ben Muhammad ath-Tha 'alibi al-Mausili who lived from 1312 to 1361, but whose writings on cryptology have been lost. The list of ciphers in this work included both substitution and transposition , and for the first time, a cipher with multiple substitutions for each plaintext letter. Also traced to Ibn al-Duraihim is an exposition on and worked example of cryptanalysis, including the use of tables of letter frequencies and sets of letters which can not occur together in one word.
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 369381906.
The opening as it stood in 2020 7 passages from the previous snapshot no longer appear
Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh al-Qalqashandī al-Fazari or al-Qalqashandī (Arabic شهاب الدين أحمد بن علي بن أحمد القلقشندي) (1355 or 1356 – 1418), was a medieval Egyptian encyclopedist , polymath and mathematician .A native of the Nile Delta , he became a Scribe of the Scroll ( Katib al-Darj ), or clerk of the Mamluk chancery in Cairo , Egypt .His magnum opus is the voluminous administrative encyclopedia Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshá .
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 957286899.
The opening as it stood on October 6, 2023
Egyptian polymath and mathematician (1355/56–1418) Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh al-Fazārī al-Shāfiʿī better known by the epithet al-Qalqashandī ( ; 1355 or 1356 – 1418), was a medieval Egyptian encyclopedist , polymath and mathematician . A native of the Nile Delta , he became a Scribe of the Scroll ( Katib al-Darj ), or clerk of the Mamluk chancery in Cairo , Egypt . His magnum opus is the voluminous administrative encyclopedia Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshá .
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1171605526.
The opening as it stood in 2025
Egyptian polymath and mathematician (1355/56–1418) Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh al-Fazārī al-Shāfiʿī better known by the epithet al-Qalqashandī ( Arabic : شهاب الدين أحمد بن علي بن أحمد القلقشندي ; 1355 or 1356 – 1418), was a medieval Arab Egyptian encyclopedist , polymath and mathematician . A native of the Nile Delta , he became a Scribe of the Scroll ( Katib al-Darj ), or clerk of the Mamluk chancery in Cairo , Egypt . His magnum opus is the voluminous administrative encyclopedia Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshá .
Red text was written in or rewritten since the previous snapshot. Their copy is revision 1292501926. This is our newest snapshot; the live article may have moved again since.
Today
Wikipedia's first sentence called it “medieval egyptian writer and mathematician born in a village in the nile delta”. Today it says “voluminous administrative encyclopedia ṣubḥ al-aʿshá”. Read the current article and compare.
2010
2015
2020
Oct '23
2025
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What Wikipedia says this is
Every article opens by defining its subject. This one was redefined since 2010, and today's defining sentence is their current revision.
Then
medieval egyptian writer and mathematician born in a village in the nile delta
Struck red text is no longer in the article; dotted amber text was rewritten. Every revision id links to Wikipedia's copy; the text shown is our own saved copy. Data: /data. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA; quoted for the record; not affiliated with Wikipedia.
