‘Abd al-Latif b. Yusuf b. Muhammad b. ‘Ali Muwaffaq al-Din al-Baghdadi, a famous Arab encyclopedist, doctor and traveler, was born in 557/1162 in Baghdad. ‘Abd al-Latif is the author of a huge number of works on medicine, botany, Koranic sciences, jurisprudence, philosophy, law, theology, mathematics, philology, history, of which only a very small part has reached us. A prominent place among these works is occupied by the lost *History of Egypt*. In it, the scientist included both a general description of Egypt from various sources, and his own observations. In particular, in 597–598/1200–1202. ‘Abd al-Latif witnessed a terrible famine and epidemic caused by catastrophic crop failure due to the lack of water from the Nile in the irrigation systems. Al-Baghdadi also wrote an abbreviated version of this book, in which he included a description only of those phenomena and events that he himself observed. This work, which was commonly called al-Mukhtasar - *Abridged Book*, has the full title *Book of Notification and Consideration of Cases Seen and Events Witnessed on the Land of Egypt* (Kitab al-ifada wa-l-i'tibar fi al-umur al-mushahad wa-l-hawadis al-mu'ayana fi ard Misr), and, fortunately, its manuscript has survived to our time. The Russian translation is made from the original manuscript, a page-by-page facsimile of which is published in parallel with it. The manuscript is kept in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A copy of it is available in the British Museum (Arabic 960). The manuscript contains 133 pages measuring 20 by 25 cm, with 13 lines on each page. Another copy of the manuscript is kept in Rabat, Morocco. The published translation is provided with lists of professions of artisans, animals and plants, as well as indexes where all Arabic names, geographical names and terms are given in full, with all diacritics. The verses of the Koran are given in the translation of I.Yu.Krachkovsky.