The world in a book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic encyclopedic tradition

Author
Muhanna, Elias
Publisher
Princeton University Press
Year
2018
Language
English
Call Number
AE2.N8 M84 2018
ISBN
9780691175560
Reference Only
Off
Number of Pages
214
Library of Congress Subject Heading
Encyclopedias and dictionaries, Arabic -- History and criticism
Library of Congress Subject Heading 2
Nuwayrī, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb, 1279-1333. Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab
Abstract

Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri was a fourteenth-century Egyptian polymath and the author of one of the greatest encyclopedias of the medieval Islamic world-a thirty-one-volume work entitled The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition. A storehouse of knowledge, this enormous book brought together materials on nearly every conceivable subject, from cosmology, zoology, and botany to philosophy, poetry, ethics, statecraft, and history. Composed in Cairo during the golden age of Islamic encyclopedic activity, the Ultimate Ambition was one of hundreds of large-scale compendia, literary anthologies, dictionaries, and chronicles produced at this time-an effort that was instrumental in organizing the archive of medieval Islamic thought. In the first study of this landmark work in a European language, Elias Muhanna explores its structure and contents, sources and influences, and reception and impact in the Islamic world and Europe. He sheds new light on the rise of encyclopedic literature in the learned cities of the Mamluk Empire and situates this intellectual movement alongside other encyclopedic traditions in the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods. He also uncovers al-Nuwayri's world: a scene of bustling colleges, imperial chanceries, crowded libraries, and religious politics. Based on award-winning scholarship, The World in a Book opens up new areas in the comparative study of encyclopedic production and the transmission of knowledge.