The World in a Book : Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition / Elias Muhanna.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Muhanna, Elias, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Encyclopedias and dictionaries, Arabic--History and criticism.

Encyclopedias and dictionaries, Arabic.

Nuwayrī, Aḥmad ibn ʻAbd al-Wahhāb, 1279-1333. Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (214 pages) : illustrations, tables

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations, Transliteration, and Dates

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE. Encyclopedism in the Mamluk Empire

CHAPTER TWO. Structures of Knowledge

CHAPTER THREE. Sources of Knowledge

CHAPTER FOUR. Encyclopedism and Empire

CHAPTER FIVE. Working Methods

CHAPTER SIX. The Reception of the Ultimate Ambition

Appendix A. The Contents of the Ultimate Ambition

Appendix B. A Guide to the Ultimate Ambition's Editions and Chapter Word Counts

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)-- Harvard University, 2012.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 159-208) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Mai 2019)

ISBN:

9781400887859

1400887852

OCLC:

1128172041