Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and LiteratureArbuthnot, F. F.
History
Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature
Arbuthnot, F. F.
Arabian Peninsula -- History; Arabic literature -- History and criticism
During the eleventh century of the Hijrah (A.D. 1592-1689) there lived
Mustafa bin Abdullah Katib Jelaby, otherwise known as Haji Khalfa, and
commonly called Mustafa Haji Khalfa, a man of science as a Turkish
historian and geographer, but an Arabic encyclopaedist and
bibliographer. He was the compiler of a work containing many thousands
of titles of Arab, Persian, and Turkish books, with the names of their
authors. Fluegel edited this great work under the title of 'Lexicon
Enciclopaedicum et Bibliographicum,' with a Latin translation in seven
bulky volumes, and it is an extremely valuable work of reference, put
together with the most astonishing and persevering care, and consulted
by all who desire information on Arabic, Persian, and Turkish
literature. This was printed by the Oriental Translation Fund between
A.D. 1835 and 1850, and will always remain as one of the most valuable
works printed by that most useful society, whose extinction must ever
be regretted by all Orientalists and persons interested in Oriental
literature. Haji Khalfa wrote another interesting work, giving a
detailed account of the maritime wars of the Turks in the
Mediterranean and Black Sea and on the Danube, which has been
translated by Mr. James Mitchell. The date of Haji Khalfa's death is
uncertain. He is known to have been alive in A.D. 1622, and still in
1652, and he is supposed to have died in A.D. 1657.
The works of Abul Khair, previously mentioned, and of Haji Khalfa,
embody a mass of information, and constitute the top of the pyramid of
encyclopaedical and biographical works, after which nothing worthy of
mention has been written on these subjects. The basis of this pyramid
had been already laid by An-Nadim, the author of the 'Fihrist,' who
flourished A.D. 987, and by Ibn Khallikan, who died A.D. 1282.
During this century (A.D. 1592-1689) of the most sanguinary wars,
revolutions and dethronements, the condition of Arab literature in the
Ottoman Empire was neither progressive nor satisfactory. Nevertheless,
the study of the sciences, and especially the linguistic and juridical
branches of them, were fostered not only in Constantinople, but also
in Syria and Egypt, in consequence of the institution of the body of
Ulema, established by Muhammad II., the Conqueror (A.D. 1451-1481),
and improved by Sulaiman I., the Law-giver (A.D. 1520-1566), which
sheltered the cultivation of science from the storms of war within the
inviolable precincts of religion.
Mention may be made of Muhammad-Al-Amin, the learned philologist and
lawyer of Damascus, who was born in that town about the middle of the
eleventh and died the beginning of the twelfth century of the Hijrah,
and produced a dozen respectable works, the principal of which bears
the title of 'The Biographies of the Celebrated Men of the Eleventh
Century,' A.H. He gives an account of a couple of hundred scholars,
who represented in Egypt and in Syria the last rays of the setting sun
of Arabian literature.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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