Al-Tha'alibi

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Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bakhazari (1896), by Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935)

Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Thaʿālibī (أبو منصور الثعالبي، عبد الملك بن محمد بن إسماعيل) (961–1038), was a writer famous for his

anthologies and collections of epigrams. As a writer of prose and verse in his own right, distinction between his and the work of others is sometimes lacking, as was the practice of writers of the time.[1]

Life

Al-Thaʿālibī was born in

Masʿūd of Ghazna (d. 1040) and other members of his court such as Abū Naṣr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Zayd, Abū al-Ḥasan Musāfir ibn al-Ḥasan, and Abū al-Fatḥ al-ḥasan ibn Ībrāhīm al-Ṣaymarī.[4]
: 34–38 

Al-Thaʿālibī gained fame as a composer of both Arabic prose and verse, writing in most verse genres of his culture, and developing literary and philological scholarship. His most famed, however, for his two anthologies of roughly contemporary Arabic verse, much of which would otherwise have been lost: the Yatīmat al-dahr and its sequel the Tatimmat at Yatīma.[4]: 38–40 

Works

Al-Thaʿālibī has twenty-nine known works.

Kitāb Yatīmat
al-dahr
fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr

This is al-Thaʿālibī's best known work and contains valuable extracts from the poetry of his own and earlier times;

Mawṣil, Egypt, Maghrib); Iraq; Western Iran (al-Jabal, Fārs, Jurjān, and Ṭabaristān); and Eastern Iran (Khurāsān and Transoxania). Composition began in 384/994.[4]: 61  No satisfactory edition exists.[4]: xvii–xix  The Yatīmat and its sequel the Tatimmat have been characterised as 'our main, if not the sole, source about literary activity' in al-Tha'ālibī's time.[6]

Tatimmat al-Yatīmah ('completion of the Yatīma')

The Tatimmat al-Yatīmah was a sequel to the Yatīmat al-dahr. It follows the same geographical structure as its precursor (with an extra, fifth, book collecting miscellaneous poets whom Thaʿālibī had missed) and added poems and poets which al-Thaʿālibī had not been able to include in the Yatīmat. Like the Yatīma, it survives in a second edition revised by al-Thaʿālibī, published in or after 424/1032.

  • The best edition is Ahmad Shawqi Radwan, 'Thaʿālibī's “Tatimmat al-Yatīmah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972).[4]: xvii–xix 
  • The most widely available edition, prior to the digitisation of Radwan's edition, was ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, Tatimmat Yatīmat al-dahr, fi maḥāsin ahl al-ʻaṣr (تتمة يتيمة الدهر في محاسن أهل العصر), in Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʻaṣr maʻ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris (يتيمة الدهر في شعراء أهل العصر مع التتمة والفهارس), ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah (دار الكتب العلمية), 1983), vol. 5 (index vol. 6). Machine-readable text.
  • An earlier edition is Tatimmat ʾal-yatīmah, ed. by ʻAbbas ʾIqbal, 2 vols (Tihran, 1353 AH [1934]) [based on Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Arabe, 3308].

Other works

  • Aḥsan mā samiʿtu ('the best I ever heard'), an anthology of poetry and prose, including 535 poems averaging 2.26 lines each, apparently abridged from a collection called Aḥāsin al-maḥāsin (the best of the best).[7]
    • Al-Thaʿālibī, Aḥsan mā samiʿtu, ed. by Muḥammad Ṣādiq ʿAnbar (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Maḥmūdiyyah, n.d. [1925]).
  • Kitāb Fiqh ul-Lugha; lexicographical dictionary arranged by semantic subject. (Paris, 1861), (Cairo, 1867), (Beirut, 1885 - incomplete).[8][9]
  • Zād safar al-mulūk
    • Zād safar al-mulūk: A Handbook on Travel by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038), ed. by Ramzi Baalbaki and Bilal Orfali, Bibliotheca Islamica, 52 (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2011),
      ISBN 978-3-87997-692-8
      .
  • Al-Iqtibās min al-Qurʾān (
    Arabic
    : الاقتباس من القرآن الكريم, 'quoting from the generous Qurʾān', literally 'taking hot coals from the generous Qurʾān'), on the cultural and literary influence of the Qurʾān.
  • Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt
  • Kitāb Lata'if al-ma'arif (tr. 'Book of curious and entertaining information' Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Edinburgh University Press, 1968).
  • Kitāb al-Kināya wa-l-taʿrīd aw al-Nihāya fī fann al-kināya (ed. F. al-Ḥawwār, Baghdad & Köln: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 2006).
  • Ghurar akhbār mulūk al-Furs wa-siyarihim, an Arabic chronicle of pre-Islamic Iranian dynasties, dedicated to al-Nasr(brother of Mahmud of Ghazni).[10]
  • Ādāb al-mulūk or Sirāj al-mulūk, a
    mirror for princes
    .

Notes

  1. ^ a b Thatcher 1911.
  2. ^ "Abu Manşūr Tha'ālibī". Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  3. ^ "Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour 'Abd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaùîl al-Tha'alibi, historien et philologue arabe de la Perse (A.h.350-430)". 1979.
  4. ^
    ISBN 9789004316294
    .
  5. doi:10.1017/S0041977X17000982
    .
  6. ^ Ahmad Shawqi Radwan, 'Thaʿālibī's “Tatimmat al-Yatīmah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972), p. 77.
  7. ISBN 978-90-04-34996-4
  8. ^ Thatcher 1911, p. 716.
  9. ^ Thatcher 1911, p. 716 notes: For his other works see Brockelmann 1898, pp. 284–286
  10. ISBN 9780415749688
    .

References

External links and further reading

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