商品簡介
For the first time in English, a catalog of the world through fourteenth-century Arab eyes—a kind ofSchott's Miscellany for the Islamic Golden Age
An astonishing record of the knowledge of a civilization, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition catalogs everything known to exist from the perspective of a fourteenth-century Egyptian scholar and litterateur. More than 9,000 pages and thirty volumes—here abridged to one volume, and translated into English for the first time—it contains entries on everything from medieval moon-worshipping cults, sexual aphrodisiacs, and the substance of clouds, to how to get the smell of alcohol off one's breath, the deliciousness of cheese made from buffalo milk, and the nesting habits of flamingos.
Similar works by Western authors, including Pliny's Natural History, have been available in English for centuries. This groundbreaking translation of a remarkable Arabic text—expertly abridged and annotated—offers a look at the world through the highly literary and impressively knowledgeable societies of the classical Islamic world. Meticulously arranged and delightfully eclectic, it is a compendium to be treasured—a true monument of erudition.
作者簡介
Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri (1272–1332) was an Egyptian historian of the Islamic Golden Age and a civil servant. Best known for his 9,000-page, 33-volume encyclopedia,The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition, he wrote on topics ranging from anatomy to zoology and chronicled the Mongol conquest of Syria.
Elias Muhanna (editor/translator) is the Manning Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University and director of the Digital Islamic Humanities Project. He has written for theNew York Times, the New Yorker, the Nation, and Foreign Policy and has a large following on his blog,Qifa Nabki, about the contemporary Middle East. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, he now lives in Providence, Rhode Island.
