World in a Book
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€59.99
A01=Elias Muhanna
Abbasid Caliphate
Al-Andalus
Allusion
Anecdote
Arabic
Arabic literature
Arabs
Asceticism
Author_Elias Muhanna
Bedouin
Biographical dictionary
Book
Bureaucrat
Caliphate
Calligraphy
Cambridge University Press
Career
Category=DS
Category=DSM
Category=QDTK
Category=QRAX
Category=QRP
Classical Arabic
Clime
Common Era
Copying
Copyist
Editing
Edition (book)
Egyptians
Elijah
Elisha
Encyclopedia
Encyclopedism
Epistle
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Erudition
Etymology
Euphemism
Historiography
Intellectual history
Investiture
Islam
Jurist
Leiden
Leiden University
Literature
Madrasa
Manuscript
Metonymy
Monograph
Muslim world
Narrative
Ornithomancy
People of the Ditch
Philosopher
Physiognomy
Pliny the Elder
Poetry
Primary source
Princeton University Press
Prose
Proverb
Publication
Quantity
Quran
Religious Science
Rhetoric
Rubrication
Ruler
Table of contents
Textbook
The Other Hand
Treatise
Umayyad Caliphate
Writing
Zajal
Product details
- ISBN 9780691175560
- Weight: 510g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 05 Dec 2017
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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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.
