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.
Shihab al-Din al-Nuwayri(1279-1333) was an Egyptian scholar and
civil servant in the Mamluk Empire. His nine-thousand-page,
thirty-three-volume encyclopedia, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts
of Erudition, is one of the most important medieval collections of
Arabic literature and Islamic thought.
Elias Muhanna(editor/translator) is the Manning Assistant Professor
of Comparative Literature at Brown University and the author of The
World in a Book- Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition.
A scholar of classical Arabic literature and Islamic intellectual
history, he has written for TheNew York Times, TheNew Yorker, The
Nation, andForeign Policy, and he runs the blogQifa Nabki, about
the contemporary Middle East. Born in Lebanon, he now lives in
Providence, Rhode Island.
One of NPR’s Best Books of the Year
One of The Guardian’s Best Books of the Year
“Sparkling . . . Marvelous . . . Wondrous . . . A monument of
classical Islamic learning . . . Muhanna renders what might
have been a rather baroque text in elegant prose. . . . The
text opens a window into a lively and eclectic world of
scholarship, a realm of humanist scribes and poetry-spouting
polymaths. . . . Reading this compendium is like exploring a
cabinet of curiosities, each section home to uncanny and startling
mirabilia. . . . The pleasure of The Ultimate Ambition lies in
exploring its bewildering scope, a range emblematic of the broad
imaginations and curiosities of the 14th-century Islamic world.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“This bizarre, fascinating book . . . illustrate[s] the sprawlingly
heterodox reality of the early centuries of Islam, so different
from the crude puritanical myths purveyed by modern-day jihadis. .
. . Reading it is like stumbling into a cavernous attic full of
unimaginably strange artifacts, some of them unforgettable. . . .
The book is full of strange myths and nostrums that hint at what
mattered to people in the fourteenth century: sex, money, power,
perfume. . . . From the alleged self-fellation of monkeys to the
many lovely Bedouin words for the night sky . . . nothing seems to
escape Nuwayri’s taxonomic ambitions.” —The New York Review of
Books
“This energetic primer to a staggeringly rich moment in
time might end up being an indispensable addition to your
library. . . . [It] is a celebration of knowledge for its own sake.
. . . For feeding your curiosity, it handily succeeds.”
—NPR.org
“Ultimate Ambition lives up to its bold title—its eclectic,
protean entries cover lunar cults, the sugary drinks in the
sultan’s buttery, and how to attract your dream woman by burying a
crow’s head.” —The Paris Review Daily
“[It] spills over with insatiable curiosity at its most
irrepressible: an elixir for dark days.” —Marina Warner, The
Guardian, “Best Books of the Year”
“A reader-friendly translation . . . with an extensive introduction
and explanatory notes . . . There seems no reason why Al-Nuwayri’s
vast compendium of useful, useless and curious knowledge should
remain the province of scholars alone.” —Al-Ahram Weekly
“A fascinating peek at the minds of our ancestors. You can see how
man’s understanding of the world has changed drastically in some
ways and remained startlingly constant in others. Plus the book is
just plain fun to read.” —A. J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling
author of The Know-It-All and The Year of Living Biblically
“A smart, exhilarating selection from a vast work. The scholarship
is solid but unobtrusive, and the style, clear and flavorful,
draws the reader in. Al-Nuwayri’s encyclopedia, somewhat like
Vincent of Beauvais’s a hundred years before him, delights as
it moves between learned tradition, jaw-dropping anecdote, and
elegant (and elegantly translated) poetry. Dip in, and a
distant world, endlessly colorful, comes to sparkling life.”
—Andras P. Hamori, Princeton University
“From the structure of the heavens to the curious anatomy of the
hippopotamus, with stops to view everything from book-keeping to
aphrodisiacs, this charming fourteenth-century encyclopedia gives a
glimpse of the entire world as seen by a very learned Egyptian
summing up the powerful tradition of medieval Islamic scholarship
known in his time. Elias Muhanna’s very readable translation allows
the reader to gain a rounded experience of a deeply interesting
bygone world.” —Roy P. Mottahedeh, Harvard University
“Finally, thanks to Elias Muhanna’s expert translation, editing,
and explanatory notes, we have access to a real encyclopedia to
place alongside Borges’s mythical Chinese text. An extraordinary
work, The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition strives for
nothing less than an orderly, total account of the world, and
Al-Nuwayri’s unique accomplishment in the encyclopedic tradition is
not to suggest that wonder is to be found in the many oddities,
rarities, and exceptions of the given world, but to show how,
beneath these features, there is a deeper and more marvelous
order.” —Elliott Colla, Georgetown University
“This engaging volume lets you dip into the world of a
fourteenth-century Egyptian encyclopedist who knew about the
endless rain in England, the skillfulness of artists in China, how
a woman can get away with claiming to be a prophetess, why a
bureaucrat should never commit the size of the army to writing, and
anything else worth knowing.” —Michael Cook, Princeton
University
“This delightful volume offers readers of English the first
opportunity to sample the vast and varied literature of Arabic
encyclopedism. Under Elias Muhanna’s expert guidance you will
encounter advice and information strangely foreign and occasionally
familiar, drawn from al-Nuwayri’s 14th-century perspective on
history and politics, medicine and the natural world.” —Ann Blair,
Harvard University
“A veritable Wikipedia of its time . . . The erudition and breadth
of the book is staggering, and it is a positively entertaining
collection. . . . A valuable addition to the library of those who
are interested in medieval miscellany [and] a corrective to
narratives that might isolate the Islamic world from the wider
cosmos of medieval thinking.” —Publishers Weekly
“Fascinating . . . This condensed, abbreviated English-language
rendition more than does justice to the Arabic text. . . . [A]
clear, accessible translation . . . with copious notes and
suggested further readings.” —Library Journal
“In a time like ours, when one of the world’s great religions and
cultures is under attack in the west, it might feel like a civic
duty to learn more about the texture and history of Islamic
tradition, but don’t read this book only for that reason. Read it
because it is profoundly poetic and filled with sublime passages of
the most extraordinary delicacy. For instance, ‘The enmity between
the wolf and the sheep is so great that if some bowstrings are
plucked together—one made from the intestines of a wolf, and
several others from the intestines of a sheep—they will not make
any sound.’ Or, ‘The night is divided into twelve hours, each with
its own name given to it by the Bedouin Arabs: Sunset, dusk,
darkness, blackness, the enfeebling hour, midnight, the heart of
the night, the disgracing hour, the foretokens of morning, the
first dawn, the second dawn, the widespread dawn.’ An accessible,
delightful, and stirring record of 14th-century Islamic thought.”
—Jeff Deutsch, Seminary Co-op Bookstore
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