Encyclopedias from the Islamic culture
With the encyclopedias from the Islamic cultural area , general and special as well as systematic and alphabetical reference works emerged very early .
Important Arabic encyclopedias
In the 9th century , the teacher Ibn Qutaiba wrote a ten-volume work, the Kitab uyun al-achbar ("Book on the Sources of History"), which is considered the first Arabic encyclopedia.
Abu Abdallah Muhammad al-Khwarizmi's Mafatich al-ulum ("Key to the Sciences" "The Keys to the Sciences") from the 10th century provides a systematic overview of the branches of science.
In the second half of the 10th century, a highly controversial work appeared in the bookshops of Baghdad to this day: the Rasa'il ichwan as-safa 'wa chillan al-wafa , an encyclopedic work of 52 epistles covering a wide range of subjects , from music to magic, and which could not be assigned to any religious or philosophical direction. The authors called themselves Ichwan as-Safa ("Brothers of Purity") and probably came from Basra .
The monumental (Kitab) Ash-Shifa ( "healing of the soul from error"; Latin title Sufficientia ) of the physician and philosopher Ibn Sina (Latinized Avicenna , about 980 - 1037 ) deals with the logic, physics in four parts, of which Ibn Sina the flora and fauna also fall, mathematics and metaphysics.
The most important systematically ordered work is Miftah es-seadet we missbah es-sijadet fi mewsuat el-ulum (German: "The key of happiness and the lantern of dominion in the objects of science") by Mola Ahmed Ben Mustafa (also known as Tasch Köpri-sade ; † JdH 1032, i.e. 1622)
In alphabetical order is the Keschf es-sunun to esmail Kutub velfunun (German: "Revealed books and science") by Hajji Chalfa (real name: Mustafa Ben Abdollah Katib Tschelebi ; † JdH 1068, d. I. 1657)
literature
- As-Safa (Safa), I (k) hwan: humans and animals before the king of the jinn. From the writings of the Louder Brothers of Basra . ed. u. trans. v. Alma Giese, approx. 200 p. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990. Court hearing about the problem of whether people are allowed to act as rulers over animals.
- Hans Hinrich Biesterfeldt : Arabic-Islamic encyclopaedias: forms and functions . In: Christel Meier (Ed.): The Encyclopedia in Change from the High Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age . Fink, Munich 2002. ISBN 3-7705-3426-3 . Pp. 43-84.