The World in a Book
Princeton University Press (Verlag)
978-0-691-17556-0 (ISBN)
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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.
Elias Muhanna is the Manning Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the editor and translator of an abridged version of al-Nuwayri's The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition (Penguin) and the editor of The Digital Humanities and Islamic & Middle East Studies.
List of Figures and Tables ix
Acknowledgments xi
Abbreviations, Transliteration, and Dates xiii
Introduction 1
1 Encyclopedism in the Mamluk Empire 5
Definitions 7
Encyclopedias and Encyclopedism 11
Al-Nuwayri among His Contemporaries 13
The Age of Encyclopedias and the Mongol Conquests 16
Scribal Culture and Practice 19
The Deserts of Adab 23
Conclusion 27
2 Structures of Knowledge 29
The Shape of the Ultimate Ambition 30
Cross-References and Thematic Modularity 33
Mapping the Contents of the Ultimate Ambition 35
The Classical Adab Encyclopedia 38
Cosmography and Historiography 42
The Genesis of Encyclopedic Forms 49
3 Sources of Knowledge 56
The Scholarly Milieu 57
The Sources of the Ultimate Ambition 65
Adab and Antiquarianism 70
Copia and Contradiction 73
Conclusion 81
4 Encyclopedism and Empire 83
Scholars and Bureaucrats 83
Knowledge and the State 86
The Perfect Scribe 91
Al-Nuwayri
at the Bureau of the Privy Purse 95
Between the Chancery and the Financial Administration 98
Conclusion 103
5 Working Methods 105
A Master Copyist 106
The Art of Copying 108
The Ultimate Ambition's Autograph Manuscripts 112
Composition Schedule 114
Calligraphic Scripts 118
An Important Hadith Manuscript in al-Nuwayri's Hand? 118
Conclusion 121
6 The Reception of the Ultimate Ambition 123
The Islamic Reception 124
The European Reception 126
Epilogue 140
Appendix A. The Contents of the Ultimate Ambition 145
Appendix B. A Guide to the Ultimate Ambition's Editions and Chapter Word Counts 153
Notes 159
Bibliography 187
Index 209
| Erscheinungsdatum | 29.01.2018 |
|---|---|
| Zusatzinfo | 7 halftones. 4 line illus. 14 tables. |
| Verlagsort | New Jersey |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Maße | 152 x 235 mm |
| Gewicht | 510 g |
| Themenwelt | Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik | |
| Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft | |
| ISBN-10 | 0-691-17556-X / 069117556X |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0-691-17556-0 / 9780691175560 |
| Zustand | Neuware |
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