Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi

Muwaffaq ad-Din Abu Muhammad ibn Yusuf Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi , or Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi for short ( Arabic عبد اللطيف البغدادي, DMG ʿAbd al-Laṭīf al-Baġdādī ; * 1163 in Baghdad ; † 1231 ibid) was an Arab traveler, polymath , historian and physician .

Life

He studied grammar, law and Arabic tradition in his hometown . At the age of 26, he traveled from 1189 to 1190 to Mosul , Damascus and Palestine , where he met Sultan Saladin , who also came from Mesopotamia . There he got to know various Persian and Arab scholars and their knowledge, about which he wrote. He continued his journey to Jerusalem , where he spent some time and was in contact with Saladin. Another trip via Damascus took him to Cairo , where he spent a few years and undertook small trips within Egypt. He saw and described the Great Sphinx of Giza still undamaged, albeit buried. He returned to Jerusalem around 1206 and Damascus in 1208. From there he traveled to Aleppo after a few years and from there around 1223 to Erzincan (Arzinjan, Erzindhan) in Armenia on the upper reaches of the Euphrates in today's Turkey . There he stayed at the court of the Mengücek ruler Ala al-Din Da'udşah ('Ala' al-Din Da'udshah). When Sultan Ala ad-Din Kaikobad I ('Ala' al-Din Kay-Qubadh I), the prince of the Sultanate of the Rum Seljuks , besieged Erzincan in 1228, and Da'udshah and his city submitted, al-Latif left Urban and countryside. He made several trips within Syria and returned to Baghdad around 1229/1230, where he died.

plant

Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi acquired a comprehensive knowledge of the sciences of the time through contacts with other scholars on his travels and left behind an enormous work on almost the entire knowledge of his time, especially in the fields of philology , philosophy , grammar , law , Arabic tradition, medicine , mathematics . The French Antoine Isaac, Baron Silvestre de Sacy , the founder of modern Arabic studies , has his most famous work in Europe, Al-Ifada wa'l-I'tibar (Al-Ifadah Wa'l-I'Tibar, The Eastern Key ) short travel description of Egypt, translated under the name Relation de l'Égypte .

literature

• Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi: Relation de l'Egypte par Abd-Allatif . Impr. Impériale, Paris 1810 ( limited preview in the Google book search - Arabic: كتاب الإفادة والاعتبار . Translated by Silvestre de Sacy ).
• Angelika Neuwirth : Abd Al-Latif Al-Bagdadi's adaptation of the book Lambda of Aristotelian Metaphysics . Dissertation, Göttingen 1972.
• Hans-Jürgen Thies: The diabetes tractate ʿAbd al-Latīf al-Bagdādīs. Investigations on the history of the disease in Arabic medicine. (Medical dissertation Bonn: Oriental seminar of the university) Bonn 1971 (= Otto Spies (Hrsg.): Bonner orientalistische Studien, new series , volume 21).
• John A. & Ivy E. Videan, Zand & Kamal Hafuth (translators): The Eastern Key by Kitab "Al-Ifadah Wa'l-I'Tibar" of Abd Al-Latif Al-Baghdadi . Allen and Unwin, London 1965

Web links

• Literature by and about Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi in the catalog of the German National Library