Sharḥ-i akhbār u abyāt u amthāl-i ʿArabi-yi Kalīla wa Dimna : Dū sharḥ az Faḍlallāh ʿUthmān b. Muḥammad al-Isfizārī wa muʾallifī nā shinākhta /
:
Throughout history, Indian culture has had the interest of the Persians. At the time of the Sasanids (3rd-7th cent. CE) for instance, Sanskrit works on astronomy were translated into Pehlavi. Centuries later, in the early ʿAbbāsid period, a number of astronomers with a Persian background used information from these very same sources in writing their own books in Arabic. Besides scientific works, spiritual and ethical texts were also translated. An example is the famous collection of animal fables called Kalila and Dimna , which go back to the lost Sanskrit Pañcatantra . An equally lost Middle Persian translation of this work was rendered into Arabic several times, but the translation by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. ca. 139/757) proved most influential and formed the basis of the famous Persian translation by Naṣrallāh Munshī (6th/12th cent.). On this latter translation, two Persian commentaries from the 7th/13th century survive. A critical edition of both is offered in this volume.
:
1 online resource. :
9789004402751
9789646781559
Sullam al-samawāt /
:
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.
:
1 online resource. :
9789004404939
9789648700305