Jahān-i dānish /
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Sharaf al-Din Mas'ūdi (6th/12th cent.) was a philosopher, astronomer, mathematician and logician. A native of Marw, he spent a large part of his life in Bukhara and Samarqand, Transoxiana. In Bukhara he had a number of debates with the philosopher and theologian Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī (d. 606/1210), described in the latter's Munāẓarāt jarat fī bilād Mā warāʾ al-nahr . From among his philosophical works, his critical notes to Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt deserve special mention. In the sciences, he wrote a work on astronomy and geography called al-Kifāya fī ʿilm al-hayʾa . In the introduction to this work he explains that he composed it at the request of a friend and that it is based on the works of others, among then Ibn al-Haytham (d. ca. 432/1040-41) and Kushyār b. Labbān (fl. late 4th/10th cent.). Afterwards, he translated it into Persian-this time without mentioning his sources-calling it Jahāni- dānish , published in this volume.
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1 online resource. :
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Humāyūn-nāma : Tārīkh-i manẓūm, Nīma-yi nukhust - mujallad-i yakum u duwum /
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The author of this epic poem, Ḥakīm Zajjājī (alive in 676/1277), was a glassmaker who also had a talent for poetry. At some point, for reasons that remain unexplained, his life took a turn for the worse. He lost all his friends, and his wife became estranged from him. It is in this period of emotional distress that he decided to break with his previous life and move to the Charandāb district of Tabriz. This district was home to the famous house of Juwaynī, whose members held high administrative offices under the Saljūqs, the Khwārazmshāhs and Īl Khānids. Zajjājī hoped to attract the attention of this family with his masnavi, in order for them to get him out of his miserable situation. For twenty years he worked on this versified history of Islam from its earliest times until his own day. Edition of part one, part two having been published seven years earlier by the same scholar.
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1 online resource. :
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Majālis /
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Rashīd al-Dīn Hamadānī (d. 718/1319) came from a Jewish family in Hamadan. His grandfather had been a courtier of Hūlāgū Khān (r. 1256-65) while his father was a court pharmacist. Rashīd al-Dīn converted to Islam when he was about 30 years old. Trained as a physician, he started his career under the Il-khanid Abāqā Khān (r. 1265-82), rising to the rank of vizier under Ghāzān (r. 1295-1304), Öljeitü (r. 1304-16) and Abū Saʿīd Bahādur Khān (r. 1316-35) who had him executed in 718/1319. Rashīd al-Dīn is the author of the first world history ever, the Jāmiʿ al-tawārīkh . Besides he also wrote a considerable number of texts on many different subjects. As a promotor of learning, Rashīd al-Dīn founded a cultural complex called the Rabʿ-i Rashīdī. Among the people invited there was the author of the present series of lectures on Sufism. Held seasonally between 712/1312 and 718/1318, these lectures survive thanks to an attentive student.
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Kitāb al-mabāḥith wal-shukūk : Nukhushtīn taʿlīqa bar al-Ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt, hamrāh bih Kitāb ʿUyūn al-masāʾil-i Fārābī wa Risāla-yi l-Asmāʾ al-mufrada-yi Kindī /...
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The Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt of Avicenna (d. 428/1037) is the most influential philosophical compendium in the history of the Islamic world. Being his last major work, written towards the end of his life, the Ishārāt contains what Avicenna considered to be the gist of all there was to know in logic and philosophy. It is different from his other works in that it represents the ultimate stage of development of his philosophical method, transcending the familiar Aristotelian aporetic method of his earlier days, to culminate in an elliptical kind of discourse in which, by the use of pointers or hints, the maximum is asserted with a minimum of means. The commentary by Sharaf al-Dīn Masʿūdī (d. before 605/1208) published here in facsimile is the earliest to survive. Focussing on a limited number of questions, it is not a running commentary. Two other philosophical texts by al-Fārābī (d. 339/950) and al-Kindī (d. after 247/861) accompany it.
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1 online resource. :
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Tuḥfat al-mulūk /
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In the Persianate world, wisdom literature has a long history, dating back to pre-Islamic times. After the advent of Islam, this type of literature, often enriched with Islamic, Greek, or Indian elements, was continued in various forms, be it in poetry, prose, or in a mixture of both. Some of these works would address themselves to a wider urban audience while others were primarily directed at kings and their immediate political entourage. Saʿdī's (d.691/1291-92) Rose Garden ( Gulistān ) is an example of the former, Niẓām al-Mulk's (d. 485/1092) Epistle on Rulership ( Siyāsat-nāma ) of the latter. A hybrid form is constituted by Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) highly influential Nasirean Ethics ( Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī ). Judging by its title, the work published here in a new edition would seem to be for kings only. But, compiled in the 6th/12th century, it is actually an account of the wisdom of kings that, written for a general audience.
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Risālat ithbāt al-ʿaql al-mujarrad-i khwāja-yi Nasīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī va shurūḥ-i ān /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of scholarly works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. In the brief Arabic treatise that is the subject of this publication, Ṭūsī proves that there is a separate intellect in which all contingent being is semperternally represented, unchanging, as a kind of 'interface' between God and the human mind ( dhihn ). Even though this treatise is extremely short, it certainly had an impact, as is clear from the variety of critical reactions in the commentaries and glosses published alongside it in this volume.
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Commentary on the Jumal on Logic by Khūnajī /
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Ibn Wāṣil (d. 1298), perhaps better known today as a historian and an emissary to the court of King Manfred in southern Italy, was also an eminent logician. The present work is a critical edition of his main work in the field, a commentary on his teacher Khūnajī's (d. 1248) handbook al-Jumal. The work helped consolidate the logic of the "later scholars" (such as Khūnajī). It also shows that commentators did much more than merely explain the original work and instead regularly discussed and assessed received views. Ibn Wāṣil's work was an influential contribution to a particularly dynamic chapter in the history of Arabic logic.
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The present work is a critical edition of a commentary by Ibn Wāṣil (d.1298) on his teacher Khūnajī's (d.1248) handbook on logic al-Jumal. The work was an influential contribution to a particularly dynamic chapter in the history of Arabic logic. :
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Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004516663
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Arabic Astronomy in Sanskrit : Al-Birjandī on Tadhkira II, Chapter 11 and its Sanskrit Translation /
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This book provides the first presentation of the bilingual textual material that illustrates the transmission of Islamic astronomy to scientists of the Indian Sanskritic tradition. It includes editions of the chapter of the Tadhkira in which the mid-thirteenth century Persian astronomer, Nasīr al-dīn al-ṭūsī discussed the new solutions that he devised to overcome certain technical problems in the lunar and planetary models of Ptolemaic astronomy and of the learned commentary composed by al-Birjandī in the early sixteenth century together with the Sanskrit translation of both made by Nayanasukha at Jaipur in 1729. An English translation of the Arabic texts and a commentary discussing their technical meanings and the deviations from them in the Sanskrit version together with a glossary of the Arabic and Sanskrit technical vocabulary conclude the volume.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
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Ibrāhīm Ibn Sinān. Logique et Géométrie au Xe siècle /
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Ibrāhīm Ibn Sinān was one of the most famous scientists of the tenth century. His specialities were geometry, logic and philosophy of mathematics. In this volume, three new hypotheses are presented. The first one concerns the existence and the development of philosophy of mathematics in Arabic, independently of traditional metaphysics and philosophy. It is mainly concerned with the logic of discovery and the logic of proof. The second hypothesis concerns the development of a new chapter in mathematics devoted to geometrical transformations. The close connection between astronomy and mathematics, used to develop this last chapter, is discussed in the third hypothesis. The book presents a critical edition done for the first time and based on all available manuscripts, French translations, and long historical and mathematical commentaries.
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Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004453135
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Rawḍat al-munajjimīn /
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In the first centuries of Islam, Arabic gradually replaced Middle Persian to become the language of the new religion and the administration of Iran. Works in Middle Persian were translated into Arabic and Persian authors also started writing directly in Arabic. From the fifth/eleventh century onward, there arose a need for works in New Persian, either translated from Arabic or composed in New Persian straightaway. The work published in this volume is a product of that period. Not much is known about the life of its author, Shahmardān b. Abi ʼl-Khayr. A resident of Gurgān and Astarābād, he was a scholar who also worked as a secretary and financial officer. In astronomy, he was a student of Abu ʼl-Ḥasan Nasawī (fl. 2nd quart. 5th/11th cent.). Shahmardān's work is an accessible, popularized compilation of the works of others, among them Abū Maʿshar (d. 272/886), Kushyār b. Labbān (fl. late 4th/10th cent.), and Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048)
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Rāshīkāt al-Hind : Tanāsub nazd-i Hindiyān /
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Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī (d. after 442/1050) is one of the greatest scholars in the history of Islam. A native of Kāth, capital of Khwārazm, he wrote on subjects ranging from mathematics, geography, astronomy and natural science to history, linguistics and ethnography. He was a student of, among others, the astronomer-mathematicians Kushyār b. Labbān (fl. 390/1000) and Abū Maḥmūd al-Khujandī (d. 390/1000). He also met and corresponded with Avicenna (d. 428/1037). As was common for a scholar of his rank in those days, he spent his life in the entourage of powerful rulers, in Khwārazm, Khurāsān, and Sidjistān. It was at the court of Maḥmūd b. Sebüktigin (d. 421/1030) and his sucessors in Ghazna that he accompanied Maḥmūd on his campaigns to north-west India. It is there that he got acquainted with Indian methods in the arithmetic of proportions and ratios, the subject of this book. Arabic text with a Persian translation by the editor.
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Al-Ifāda fī tarīkh al-aʾimma al-sāda /
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As is well known, the main difference between the Imāmiyya and Zaydiyya branches in Shīʿī Islam is to do with the fact that the Zaydiyya-named so after their first leader Zayd b.ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn (d. 122/740)-did not unconditionally condemn the first three caliphs before ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib, while to the Imāmiyya branch, all Sunnīs were infidels. But even though the Zaydīs did not consider Sunnīs generally as infidels, they regarded rebellion against Sunnī rule -unlawful to them-as a religious duty for all. The Imāmīs on the other hand, while radical in doctrine, did not have a militant attitude comparable to that of the Zaydīs. Geographically, the Zaydīs divided into a Yemeni and an Iranian branch, concentrated along the shores of the Caspian sea. The present work contains the biographies of 15 Zaydī imams, some from the Caspian, the author-Abū Ṭālib Hārūnī (d. 424/1033)-being a Zaydī scholar from that region.
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Rasāʾil-i Fārsi-yi Jurjānī : Rasāʾil-i kalāmī, taʾlīf ḥudūd-i qarn-i nuhum-i hijrī /
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From the time that ʿAlī b. Mūsā al-Riḍā (d. 203/818) was designated to be the successor of al-Maʾmūn b. Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 218/833) and then murdered shortly after that, various Shīʿa groups have been at odds with whoever opposed their claim to leadership in Islam. The author of the Persian dissertations contained in the present volume, the otherwise unknown Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn b. Sadīd al-Dīn Jurjānī (ca. 9th/15th cent.), clearly issues from this polemic tradition. Reading his work, it is clear that Jurjānī had a full command of all the theological registers to be played upon in a traditional sectarian debate. This is especially the case for the first treatise in this collection, in which he opposes such movements as the Ashʿarīs, the Ḥanbalīs, the Ismāʿīlīs, and the Sufis. The treatises that follow, too, are all about religious dogma ( ʿaqāʾid ), with some of them showing clear signs of thematic, not to say temporal, association.
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Sharḥ al-Taʿarruf li-madhhab al-taṣawwuf /
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The Kitāb al-taʿarruf li-madhhab al-taṣawwuf by Abū Bakr b. Isḥāq al-Kalābādhī (d. 380-85/990-995) is one of the most famous early manuals on Sufism. Written in Bukhara under the strongly orthodox Samanids, it consists of four parts: an explanation of the term ṣūfī and a listing of famous Sufis with a typology of their writings, an exposition of the Sufī creed and its conformity with orthodox Islam, an explanation of the spiritual path of the Sufi with accompanying terminology, and a description of Sufi conduct and of their special relation with God. The work saw four commentaries, the present one by Ismāʿīl Mustamlī Būkhārī (d. 434/1043) being one of them. Starting each time with a brief quotation from the original Arabic, the commentary in Persian. This is a facsimile edition of a manuscript from the Bhīravī collection in the National Archives of Pakistan, dated 473/1081. The manuscript is incomplete, with about half of the commentary missing.
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"Nuskhah bargardān bih qaṭʻ-i aṣl-i nuskhah-i khaṭṭī bih shumārah-i 207.1959. M. N. Mūzih-i Millī-i Pākistān (Karāchī), kitābat-i 473 H." :
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Sullam al-samawāt /
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In the Persianate world, encyclopaedias have a long history. Arabic works by Persian authors aside (like Ibn Farīghūn's Jāmiʿ al-ʿulūm , 4th/10th century), the earliest encyclopaedia in Persian is Avicenna's (d. 428/1037) philosophical Dānishnāma-yi ʿAlāʾī . Fakhr al-Dīn Rāzī's (d. 606/1210) Jāmiʿ al-'ulūm on the other hand, is an encyclopaedia on everything there was to know at the time. Philosophical encyclopaedias would usually divide into logic, physics and metaphysics, more general encyclopaedias into the pre-Islamic and Islamic sciences, also called the rational ( ʿaqlī ) and traditional ( naqlī ) sciences, even if a strict separation was not always maintained. In addition, there were also specialized encyclopaedias like Ibn Ḥusayn Jurjānī's medical Dhākhira-yi Khwārazmshāhī (early 6th/12th century). The content of encyclopaedias often being dependent on the author's interests and intellectual horizon, no universal format exists. The present work by Abū Qāsim Kāzarūnī (fl. early 11th/17th century) is an example of a very personal encyclopaedia, treating of religion, philosophy, and literature.
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Aristotelian Meteorology in Syriac : Barhebraeus, Butyrum Sapientiae, Books of Mineralogy and Meteorology /
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This volume contains an edition, together with a translation and a commentary, of those parts relating to Aristotle's Meteorologica in Barhebraeus' Butyrum sapientiae (Cream of Wisdom) , the major philosophical work of the thirteenth-century Syriac prelate and polymath. Butyrum sapientiae , though based mainly on Ibn Sīnā's Kitāb al-šifāʾ (Book of Healing) , draws on a number of other sources. The detailed analysis of the text provided in this volume casts some important light on the manner in which Greek science and philosophy were transmitted in the Orient and as such will be of interest to scholars both of the Classical and Islamic world. The philological analysis of the text will be of interest to scholars of Syriac language and culture.
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Includes bibliographical references and index. :
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Majmū'a-yi āthār-i Ḥusām al-Dīn-i Khūʾī /
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In every age and culture, royal courts have always attracted a multitude of scholars, artists and other folk seeking patronage and protection. In the Islamic world, one of these courts was that of the emirs of the Saljuqs of Rūm in Kastamonu in northern Anatolia. In the year 680/1282, Quṭb al-Dīn Shīrāzī (d. 709-1309), a student of Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) who lived in Anatolia for years, dedicated his Ikhtiyārāt to the emir of Kastamonu, Muẓaffar al-Dīn Yavlaq Arslan (d. 691/1292). This same Muẓaffar also had a secretary in his service by the name of Ḥusām al-Dīn Khūʾī (alive in 709/1309-10), a refugee from Khūy near Tabriz in Iran. Ḥusām al-Dīn is the author of a number of works, six of which are published here for the very first time: four manuals on the art of the secretary, one Arabic-Persian glossary for use at the chancellery, and finally a collection of his poetry.
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Al-Mukhtaṣar min Kitāb al-siyāq li-tārīkh-i Nīsābūr /
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In the Islamic middle ages, urban histories were for the most part not the kind of chronicle that one might think, covering the political, economic, or cultural history of a particular city over a certain time. Instead, they were a kind of 'who's who' directory of names of a city's prominent inhabitants, mostly from as far back as information would be available until the lifetime of the author. In the case of the city of Nishapur, which saw its greatest blossoming between the ninth and thirteenth centuries, there is al-Ḥākim al-Nīshāpūrī's (d. 405/1014) foundational Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr , an Arabic work-now lost-on which many later biographers relied. Al-Ḥākim's work was continued by ʿAbd al-Ghāfir al-Fārisī (d. 529/1134) in his al-Siyāq li-Taʾrīkh Nīsābūr . The text published here is described as a partial summary of al-Fārisī's work, although Frye in his The Histories of Nishapur (p. 10) still regarded it as a fragment of the Siyāq itself.
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Zīj-i Yamīnī /
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In Islamic science, a zīj is an astronomical handbook made up of tables and text. Between the 2nd/8th and 13th/19th centuries, over 200 such works were written, many of them lost. Famous zīj are al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʾ by al-Battānī (ca 300/900), al-Qānūn al-Masʿūdī by al-Bīrūnī (421/1030), and Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī's (d. 672/1274) Zīj-i Īlkhānī . The Zīj-i Yamīnī published in facsimile here was compiled in Ghazna in 511/1156 by a certain Muḥammad al-Ḥaqāʾiqī and dedicated to the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh b. Masʿūd b. Maḥmūd (reg. 511-552/1117-1157). It is the third oldest zīj in Persian, after the Zīj-i mufrad of Muḥammad b. Ayyūb Ṭabarī (485/1092) and the Persian translation of Kūshyār b. Labbān Gīlānī's (fl. ca. 390/1000) Arabic al-Zīj al-jāmiʿ by Muḥammad b. ʿUmar Munajjim-i Tabrīzī in 483/1090. Al-Ḥaqāʾiqī based himself on the works of others, notably al-Battānī's al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʿ , whose data he then recalculated for the city of Ghazna where necessary. Good example of early scientific Persian.
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Al-Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa /
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Naṣīr al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274) was an influential philosopher, theologian, mathematician and astronomer, besides being the first director of the famous observatory at Marāghah near Tabriz as well as a man of politics. The author of a large number of works, he is especially famous for such treatises as his Tajrīd al-iʿtiqād on theology; the Zīj-i Īlkhānī on astronomy; the Ḥall mushkilāt al-Ishārāt ; his influential commentary on Avicenna's (428/1037) Kitāb al-ishārāt wal-tanbīhāt on philosophy and logic; and his Akhlāq-i Nāṣirī on ethics. Another famous work is his Tadhkira fī ʿilm al-hayʾa published here. As stated by the editor, this is one of the most important and influential astronomical works written in the pre-modern Islamic world. It belongs to the second phase of Ṭūsī's academic career and constitutes a synthesis between two earlier works by him, written when he was still working for the Nizārī Ismailis. Arabic text and apparatus, Persian introduction translated from the English edition.
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