Al-Bayan wa'l-i?rab ?amma fi ar? Mi?r min al-a?rab is an influential treatise on the Arab and Berber groups that inhabited the Egyptian countryside in the late medieval period. The work brings together al-Maqrizi's life-long preoccupation with the history of Egypt and his parallel interest in the history of the Arabs, pitting the lineage-based ideology of Arab rebels against the Mamluk elite of manumitted slaves.