Encyclopaedias, Arabic

The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three

The Encyclopaedia of Islam Three Edited by

Kate Fleet, Gudrun Krämer, Denis Matringe, John Nawas, and Everett Rowson With Roger ALLEN, Edith AMBROS, Thomas BAUER, Sheila BLAIR, Jonathan BLOOM, Ruth DAVIS, Eve FEUILLEBOIS-PIERUNEK, Maribel FIERRO, Konrad HIRSCHLER, Alexander KNYSH, Corinne LEFÈVRE, Roman LOIMEIER, Andrew NEWMAN, Merle RICKLEFS, Ayman SHIHADEH, Susan SPECTORSKY, and Gotthard STROHMAIER

Leiden  • boston 2015

list of abbreviations

a. Pe ri od i cal s AI = Annales Islamologiques AIUON = Annali dell’ Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli AKM = Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgen­landes AMEL = Arabic and Middle Eastern Literatures AO = Acta Orientalia AO Hung. = Acta Orientalia (Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae) ArO = Archiv Orientální AS = Asiatische Studien ASJ = Arab Studies Journal ASP = Arabic Sciences and Philosophy ASQ = Arab Studies Quarterly BASOR = Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research BEA = Bulletin des Études Arabes BEFEO = Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient BEO = Bulletin d’Études Orientales de l’Institut Français de Damas BIE = Bulletin de l’Institut d’Égypte BIFAO = Bulletin de l’Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale du Caire BKI = Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde BMGS = Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies BO = Bibliotheca Orientalis BrisMES = British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies BSOAS = Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies BZ = Byzantinische Zeitschrift CAJ = Central Asiatic Journal DOP = Dumbarton Oaks Papers EW = East and West IBLA = Revue de l’Institut des Belles Lettres Arabes, Tunis IC = Islamic Culture IHQ = Indian Historical Quarterly IJAHS = International Journal of African Historical Studies IJMES = International Journal of Middle East Studies ILS = Islamic Law and Society IOS = Israel Oriental Studies IQ = The Islamic Quarterly

vi JA = Journal Asiatique JAIS = Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies JAL = Journal of Arabic Literature JAOS = Journal of the American Oriental Society JARCE = Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt JAS = Journal of Asian Studies JESHO = Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient JIS = Journal of Islamic Studies JMBRAS = Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society JNES = Journal of Near Eastern Studies JOS = Journal of Ottoman Studies JQR = Jewish Quarterly Review JRAS = Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society JSAI = Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam JSEAH = Journal of Southeast Asian History JSS = Journal of Semitic Studies MEA = Middle Eastern Affairs MEJ = Middle East Journal MEL = Middle Eastern Literatures MES = Middle East Studies MFOB = Mélanges de la Faculté Orientale de l’Université St. Joseph de Beyrouth MIDEO = Mélanges de l’Institut Dominicain d’Études Orientales du Caire MME = Manuscripts of the Middle East MMIA = Majallat al-Majma al-Ilmi al-Arabi, Damascus MO = Le Monde Oriental MOG = Mitteilungen zur Osmanischen Geschichte MSR = Mamluk Studies Review MW = The Muslim World OC = Oriens Christianus OLZ = Orientalistische Literaturzeitung OM = Oriente Moderno QSA = Quaderni di Studi Arabi REI = Revue des Études Islamiques REJ = Revue des Études Juives REMMM = Revue des Mondes Musulmans et de la Méditerranée RHR = Revue de l’Histoire des Religions RIMA = Revue de l’Institut des Manuscrits Arabes RMM = Revue du Monde Musulman RO = Rocznik Orientalistyczny ROC = Revue de l’Orient Chrétien RSO = Rivista degli Studi Orientali SI = Studia Islamica (France) SIk = Studia Islamika (Indonesia) SIr = Studia Iranica TBG = Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen VKI = Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land en Volkenkunde WI = Die Welt des Islams WO = Welt des Orients WZKM = Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes ZAL = Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik ZDMG = Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft

list of abbreviations

list of abbreviations ZGAIW = Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften ZS = Zeitschrift für Semitistik b. O the r ANRW = Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt BGA = Bibliotheca Geographorum Arabicorum BNF = Bibliothèque nationale de France CERMOC = Centre d’Études et de Recherches sur le Moyen-Orient Contemporain CHAL = Cambridge History of Arabic Literature CHE = Cambridge History of Egypt CHIn = Cambridge History of India CHIr = Cambridge History of Iran Dozy = R. Dozy, Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, Leiden 1881 (repr. Leiden and Paris 1927) EAL= Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature EI1 = Encyclopaedia of Islam, 1st ed., Leiden 1913–38 EI2 = Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Leiden 1954–2004 EI3 = Encyclopaedia of Islam Three, Leiden 2007– EIr = Encyclopaedia Iranica EJ1= Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1st ed., Jerusalem [New York 1971–92] EQ = Encyclopaedia of the Qurn ERE = Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics GAL = C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, 2nd ed., Leiden 1943–49 GALS = C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur, Supplementbände I–III, Leiden 1937–42 GAP = Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, Wies­baden 1982– GAS = F. Sezgin, Geschichte des Arabischen Schrifttums, Leiden 1967– GMS = Gibb Memorial Series GOW = F. Babinger, Die Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen und ihre Werke, Leipzig 1927 HO = Handbuch der Orientalistik IA = Islâm Ansiklopedisi IFAO = Institut Français d’Archeologie Orien­tale JE = Jewish Encyclopaedia Lane = E. W. Lane, Arabic-English Lexicon RCEA = Répertoire Chronologique d’Épigraphie Arabe TAVO = Tübinger Atlas des Vorderen Orients TDVIA=Türkiye Diyanet Vakfi Islâm Ansiklopedisi UEAI = Union Européenne des Arabisants et Islamisants van Ess, TG = J. van Ess, Theologie und Gesell­schaft WKAS = Wörterbuch der Klassischen Arabischen Sprache, Wiesbaden 1957–

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Encyclopaedias, Arabic Arabic-language encyclopaedias are attested in the classical Arabic-Islamic intellectual tradition from its very beginnings. They assume various forms and encompass materials profane and sacred, speculative and traditional, entertaining and edifying. A subset of the broad field of compilatory literature—which includes anthologies, dictionaries, textbooks, manuals, and other types of compendia—­ encyclopaedic works similarly depend upon the selection, organisation, and transmission of authoritative knowledge from previous centuries. Not easily defined as a literary genre, the encyclopaedia is typically associated with features such as thematic and disciplinary heterogeneity, a systematic organisational framework, and, often, a didactic or reference function. The term “encyclopaedia” is of recent origin, appearing first in Latin in the late fifteenth century. Initially, it did not designate a literary genre or type of book but rather an ideal of education stressing the unity of all knowledge. The humanists who coined the term believed that it derived from an ancient Greek word meaning the “circle of learning” (enkuklopaideia); it is now known that this word was a corruption of the Greek phrase enkuklios paideia, meaning “general knowledge” or a “well rounded education.” It was not until the eighteenth century that the term “encyclopaedia” became associated with the bulky but easily navigated reference works of multidisciplinary scope that define it in modern usage. Just as in the pre-Enlightenment European context, there is no single word for “encyclopaedia” in classical Arabic literature. The terms dirat al-marif and mawsa, which are used in modern par-

encyclopaedias, arabic lance, did not emerge until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, respectively, nor was there a professional category encompassing authors of Arabic encyclopaedic texts, as one encounters, for example, with the author of a dictionary (viz., lughaw, lexicographer). Nonetheless, the salience of encyclopaedism as an educational ideal and a standard of broad-based erudition has long been recognised as a defining feature of mediaeval Islamic scholarly discourses. This ideal finds its fullest expression in the concept of adab, which, by the third/ ninth century, had come to denote both a standard of polite or correct behaviour and a repertoire of poetic, anecdotal, proverbial, and philological materials, the study of which was essential to the formation of a cultured individual. Fed by the springs of ancient Arabian poetry and lore as well as the literary and philosophical heritage of the Iranian, Indian, and Hellenistic worlds, the literature of adab was central to the high culture of the Islamic empire, especially in the scribal milieux of its chanceries. The study, quotation, and emulation of texts from this repertoire would remain, over the centuries, a cultural shibboleth that granted entry to the ranks of the literati (udab, sing. adb) and scholars (ulam, sing. lim). Perhaps most emblematic of adab’s encyclopaedic character is the towering figure of al-Ji (d. 255/868–9 ), whose oeuvre displays enormous topical breadth and diversity. Of his extant works, the Kitb al-ayawn (“The book of animals”) comes closest to what we might call an encyclopaedia, in spite of its author’s signature digressions that blend the treatment of his zoological theme with long excurses on other philosophical, historical, and sociological topics. More system-

encyclopaedias, arabic atic in form and programmatic in content are the works of al-Ji’s contemporary Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/998), especially his Uyn al-akhbr (“Choice reports”), which inaugurated a tradition of adab encyclopaedias that aimed to provide an overview of the topics that any aspirant to a certain status of cultural literacy would be expected to know. These works are usually organised into several chapters, each dealing with a specific theme and containing an assortment of materials, including snippets of poetry, edifying prose narratives and reports about famous historical figures, Prophetic traditions, Qurnic quotations, proverbs, anecdotal material, rare words and other philological curiosities, materia medica, quotations attributed to Greek and Persian sages, and practical philosophical and scientific writings. The Uyn al-akhbr contains ten chapters, on sovereignty, war, rulership, traits and morals, knowledge, piety, friends, achieving one’s ends, food, and women. A few decades later, al-Iqd al-fard (“The unique necklace”) by the Andalusian courtier and poet Ibn Abd Rabbih (d. 328/940) was almost double the length of the Uyn and was more finely distributed into twentyfive chapters. Following these two seminal texts, adab encyclopaedias proliferated throughout the Islamic world. Some of the best known include al-Rghib al-Ifahn’s (d. first half of fifth/eleventh century) Muart al-udab wa-muwart al-shuar wa-l-bulagh (“Apt quotables of the literati and conversations of poets and eloquent men”), al-b’s (d. 421/1030) Nathr al-durr (“Scattering of pearls”), Ibn Abd al-Barr’s (d. 463/1071) Bahjat al-majlis wa-uns al-mujlis (“The beauty of literary gatherings and the intimacy of the littérateur”), al-Zamakhshar’s (d. 538/1144) Rab al-abrr wa-nu al-akhbr (“Springtime of

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the pious and the texts of reports”), and al-Ibshh’s (d. after 850/1446) al-Mustaraf f kull fann mustaraf (“The exquisite elements of every art considered elegant”). Similarly encyclopaedic in their outlook are works devoted to the classification of the sciences, which began to appear in profusion in the fourth/tenth century. Generically distinct from and less voluminous than the adab encyclopaedias, these texts are heterogeneous in form and character and range from systematic curricula of the disciplines, such as al-Frb’s (d. 339/950) I al-ulm (“The enumeration of the sciences”), Ibn Farghn’s (fl. fourth/tenth century) Jawmi al-ulm (“The summaries of the sciences”), and Ab ayyn al-Tawd’s (d. 414/1023) Risla f l-ulm (“Epistle on the sciences”), to dictionaries of technical terms such as al-Khwrazm’s (fl. 366/976) Maft al-ulm (“The keys of the sciences”), and to programmes for the integration of the rational and religious sciences, such as Ab l-asan al-mir’s (d. 381/992) al-Ilm bi-manqib al-Islm (“Proclamation of the virtues of Islam”), Ab Al Miskawayh’s (d. 421/1030) Tartb al-sadt wa-manzil al-ulm (“The classification of happiness and the stations of the sciences”), and Ibn azm’s (d. 456/1064) Martib al-ulm (“Ranks of the sciences”). There are also bibliographical works that catalogue the basic texts of various disciplines, such as Ibn al-Akfn’s (d. 749/1348) Irshd al-qid il asn l-maqid (“The aspirant’s guide to the most sublime destinations”) and Amad b. Muaf shköprüzde’s (d. 968/1561) Mift al-sada wa-mib al-siyda (“The key to happiness and the lamp of mastery”). These treatises may be thought of as encyclopaedic insofar as they outline a framework for a philosophical education

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rooted in the traditions of Arab and Iranian Hellenism. However, unlike Ibn Qutayba’s Uyn al-akhbr and its descendants—which were both literary ­ reflections of the educational ideal of adab and manuals for the would-be adb—these treatises did not provide the actual content of a philosophical education. The first compendium to assume both the structure and content of a philosophical summa was the Rasil Ikhwn al-af (“The epistles of the Sincere Brethren”), a collection of about fifty letters organised into four themes: the “mathematical sciences” (plus geography, logic, and ethics); the “corporeal and natural sciences”; the “sciences of the soul and of the intellect”; and the “nomic, divine, and legal sciences.” The origin of the collection remains obscure, despite significant scholarly interest. It is generally accepted that the Sincere Brethren were a group of Isml Sh figures involved in the composition and circulation of this epistolary encyclopaedia in the early to middle fourth/tenth century. The authors’ intellectual formation was strongly influenced by Neoplatonic and neo-Pythagorean thought, but the collection reveals other traditions as well, such as gnosticism, hermeticism, and Isml doctrine. Although the Ikhwn al-af’s remarkable work circulated widely, it did not exert much influence on the future of the Arabic philosophical encyclopaedic tradition, which was dominated by Ibn Sn (Avicenna, d. 428/1037) and his commentators. Most multi-topic compendia in this field were organised on the tri-partite basis of the Corpus Aristotelicum, beginning with logic and proceeding to physics and metaphysics (with the mathematical quadrivium of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music usually treated

encyclopaedias, arabic between the second and third divisions). Though not the first text to follow this classical scheme, Ibn Sn’s philosophical summa, the Kitb al-shif (“The book of healing”), helped establish it as the basic paradigm for philosophical encyclopaedias for the next several centuries; see, for example, the Hidyat al-ikma (“The guide to wisdom”) by Athr al-Dn al-Abhar (d. between 660/1263 and 663/1265) and al-Jadd f l-ikma (“The new wisdom”) by Ibn Kammna (d. 683/1284). Ibn Sn also composed a shorter compendium, the Kitb al-najt (“The book of salvation”)— which was addressed to a more novice audience than his Shif—and one of the most influential medical encyclopaedias of the Middle Ages, the Qnn f l-ibb (“The canon of medicine”). This last text belongs to an immense field of works that might be termed singlesubject encyclopaedias, which provided a comprehensive treatment of a given topic or discipline. They include historicalgeographical works such as al-Masd’s (d. 345/956) Murj al-dhahab (“Meadows of gold”) and Yqt al-Rm’s (d. 626/1229) Mujam al-buldn (“The compendium of countries”), scribal manuals in the tradition of Ibn Qutayba’s Adab al-ktib (“The scribe’s practice”) and Qudma b. Jafar’s (d. early fourth/tenth c.) Kitb al-kharj wa-inat al-kitba (“The book of the land tax and the art of secretaryship”), and theological summae such as al-Ghazl’s (d. 505/1111) Iy ulm al-dn (“Revival of the religious sciences”). The seventh/ thirteenth and eighth/fourteenth centuries saw the production of several important cosmographical encyclopaedias, foremost among them al-Qazwn’s (d. 682/1283) Ajib al-makhlqt (“The wonders of created beings”), but also including Ibn Ab l-awfir’s (d. 701/1301) Badi al-akwn f

encyclopaedias, arabic manfi al-ayawn (“Rarities of beings. On the medical properties of animals”), Jaml al-Dn al-Waw’s (d. 718/1318) Mabhij al-fikar wa-manhij al-ibar (“Delightful concepts and the paths to precepts”), Ibn al-Athr al-Jazar’s (fl. eighth/fourteenth century) Tufat al-ajib wa-urfat al-gharib (“Rarity of wonders and novelty of marvels”), and al-Damr’s (d. 808/1405) ayt al-ayawn (“The life of animals”). In addition to the proliferation of cosmographical texts, the Mamlk period in Egypt and Syria witnessed a wider efflorescence of large-scale compendia in several other fields, earning it the sobriquet Age of Encyclopaedias (ar al-mawst) among modern scholars. This was a time of voluminous biographical dictionaries, which listed the notables of various professions, regions, and legal schools. Ibn Manr’s (d. 711/1311–2 ) Lisn al-Arab (“The Arab tongue”), the largest lexicon in the history of the language before the eighteenth century, was composed at this time, and countless other textual behemoths—Qurn commentaries, adth collections, scholarly manuals and textbooks, commonplace books, literary ­anthologies—crowded the shelves of the thriving bookshops and madrasa libraries of Cairo and Damascus. Whether to refer to these works as encyclopaedias or some equivalent indigenous term or to place them in a different analytic category has been a matter of debate. On the one hand, the use of a single term obscures the diverse conventions informing the composition of works in various classical Arabic genres, as well as their distinct formal features, modes of arrangement, imagined readerships, and management of sources. On the other hand, most scholars recognize an encyclopaedic ethos common to much

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bookmaking and scholarly activity at this time, which affected even longstanding, venerable genres such as the adab anthology, the geographical compendium, and the scribal manual. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the encyclopaedic triumvirate of Shihb al-Dn al-Nuwayr (d. 733/1333), Ibn Falallh al-Umar (d. 749/1349), and Amad b. Al al-Qalqashand (d. 821/1418). Al-Nuwayr’s Nihyat al-arab f funn aladab (“The ultimate ambition in the arts of erudition”) styles itself as a work of adab but, in fact, embraces also cosmological, zoological, botanical, and historical materials in a thirty-three-volume summa that vastly overshadows other exemplary works in the same generic tradition. Al-Umar’s Maslik al-abr f mamlik al-amr (“The routes of insight into the civilised realms”) and al-Qalqashand’s ub al-ash f inat al-insh (“Dawn of the night-blind, on the art of epistolography”) similarly fall within circumscribed generic traditions but incorporate so much ancillary material from other disciplines and discourses as to make themselves sui generis. The Arabic encyclopaedic literature of the Ottoman period, particularly the tenth-twelfth/sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, has received little attention, with the exception of some works by major figures such as Katib Çelebi (jj Khalfa, d. 1067/1657), whose Kashf al-unn an asm l-kutub wa-l-funn (“The alleviator of conjectures about the names of books and subjects”) is a kind of bibliographical encyclopaedia, a guide to the universe of books surrounding the Ottoman bureaucrat and historian. Katib Çelebi wrote many other works as well, including anthologies and commonplace books reminiscent of Bah al-Dn al-mil’s (d. 1030/1621) Kshkl (“The beggar’s

enderuni fazl

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bowl”), an anthology—encyclopaedic in content, if not form—that has remained popular up to the present. In the modern period, the landmark Arabic encyclopaedias are the Dirat al-marif (“Encyclopaedia”) published in 1876 by Burus al-Bustn (d. 1882) and expanded by members of his family through 1898. In 1956, Fud Afrm al-Bustn (d. 1995) launched a new Dirat al-marif with entries composed, in the manner of modern reference works, by multiple specialist authors. Bibliography

Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt, Arabisch-islamische Enzyklopädien. Formen und Funktionen, in Christel Meier (ed.), Die Enzyklopädie im Wandel vom Hochmittelalter bis zur frühen Neuzeit (Munich 2002), 43–8 3; Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt, Medieval Arabic encyclopedias of science and philosophy, in Steven Harvey (ed.), The medieval Hebrew encyclopedias of science and philosophy (Dordrecht 2000), 77–9 8; Peter Binkley (ed.), Pre-modern encyclopaedic texts, Leiden 1997; Régis Blachère, Quelques réflexions sur les formes de l’encyclopédisme en Egypte et en Syrie du VIIIe/XIVe siècle à la fin du IXe/XVe siècle, BEO 23 (1970), 7–1 9; Clifford Edmund Bosworth, A pioneer Arabic encyclopedia of the sciences. Al Khwrizm’s Keys of the sciences, Isis 54/1 (1963), 97–1 11; Godefroid de Callataÿ, Ikhwan al-Safa. A brotherhood of idealists on the fringe of orthodox Islam, Oxford 2005; Gerhard Endress (ed.), Organizing knowledge. Encyclopaedic activities in the pre-eighteenth century Islamic world, Leiden 2006; Joseph Freiherr von Hammer-Purgstall, Über die Encyklopädie der Araber, Perser und Türken, Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Classe (Wien 1856–9), 7:205–3 2, 8:106–2 2, 9:1–4 4; Paul L. Heck, The construction of knowledge in Islamic civilization. Qudma b. Jafar and his Kitb al-kharj wa-inat al-kitba, Leiden 2002; Syrinx von Hees, Enzyklopädie als Spiegel des Weltbildes. Qazwns Wunder der Schöpfung. Eine Naturkunde des 13. Jahrhunderts, Wiesbaden 2002; Wolfhart P. Heinrichs, The classification of the sciences and the consolidation

of philology in classical Islam, in Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald (eds.), Centres of learning. Learning and location in pre-modern Europe and the Near East (Leiden 1995), 119–3 9; Hilary Kilpatrick, A genre in classical Arabic literature. The adab encyclopedia, in Robert Hillenbrand (ed.), Proceedings10th congress of the U.E.A.I., Edinburgh, 9–1 6 September 1980 (Edinburgh 1982), 34–4 2; Y. Tzvi Langermann, Ibn Kammna and the “new wisdom” of the thirteenth century, Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 15 (2005), 277–3 27; Elias I. Muhanna, Encyclopaedism in the Mamluk period. The composition of Shihb al-Dn al-Nuwayr’s (d. 1333) Nihyat al-arab f funn al-adab, Ph.D. diss., Harvard University 2012; Charles Pellat, Mawsa. 1. In Arabic, EI2; Charles Pellat, Les encyclopédies dans le monde Arabe, Cahiers d’histoire mondiale 9 (1966), 631–5 8; Yossef Rapoport and Emilie Savage-Smith (eds.), An eleventh-century Egyptian guide to the universe, Leiden 2014; Gaston Wiet, Les classiques du scribe égyptien au XVe siècle, SI 18 (1963), 41–8 0; Jan Just Witkam, De egyptische arts Ibn al-Akfn (gest. 749/1348) en zijn indeling van de wetenschappen, Leiden 1989. Elias I. Muhanna

Enderuni Fazl Enderuni Fazl (Fl Bey Endern, d. 1224/1809–10) was an Ottoman poet who was born in Akk (Acre), into an Arab family originally of Medina. His grandfather, Tahir (hir) Bey, was governor of both Akk and afad. Tahir Bey was able to maintain a semi-independent state in the area, but his domain was subjected to the Porte in 1090/1776–7 by Gazi Hasan (Ghz asan) Paa (d.1204– 1790). Tahir Bey was killed in the conflict with Gazi Hasan Paa, and his son, Enderuni Fazl’s father, was slain a year later. Subsequently, Fazl and his brother were brought to Istanbul, where they were