A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in Who's Who , or deceased people only, in the Dictionary of National Biography ). Others are specialized, in that they cover important names in a subject field, such as architecture or engineering.
Tarif Khalidi claimed the genre of biographical dictionaries is a "unique product of Arab Muslim culture". [1]
The earliest extant example of the biographical dictionary dates from 9th-century Iraq, and by the 16th-century it was a firmly established and well-respected form of historical writing. [2] They contain more social data for a large segment of the population than that found in any other pre-industrial society. The earliest biographical dictionaries initially focused on the lives of the prophets of Islam and their companions, with one of the earliest examples being The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi, and then began documenting the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world. [3] The largest known biographical dictionary ever produced is called History of Damascus authored by a Muslim historian Ibn Asakir. [4]
When it comes to the numbers of individuals, American scholar of Islam Richard Bulliet argues that "a brief look at Brockelmann's Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur is sufficient to convince anyone that the number of individual biographies extant must run into the hundreds of thousands and most likely into the millions." [5]
The term Moor, derived from the ancient Mauri, is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim inhabitants of the Maghreb, the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages.
A hagiography is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies might consist of a biography or vita, a description of the saint's deeds or miracles, an account of the saint's martyrdom, or be a combination of these.
Al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya, commonly shortened to Sīrah and translated as prophetic biography, are the traditional Muslim biographies of Islamic prophet Muhammad from which, in addition to the Quran and Hadiths, most historical information about his life and the early period of Islam is derived.
Ibn Khaldun was an Arab sociologist, philosopher, and historian widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and considered by many to be the father of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography studies.
Arabic literature is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Theodemir or Theudimer was a Visigothic comes (count) prominent in the southeast of Carthaginensis during the last decades of the Visigothic kingdom and for several years after the Moorish conquest. He ruled seven cities in southeastern Spain, mentioned in the Treaty of Orihuela that was preserved by the Andalusian historian Ibn Adarí in the thirteenth century: Orihuela, Valentila, Alicante, Mula, Bigastro, Eyya, and Lorca.
Abu Ubaida, Obaida, or UbaydahMa’mar ibn ul-Muthanna-Abu al-Mukhtar Firas b. Khindif was an early Muslim scholar of Arabic philology. Abu Ubaida was a controversial figure; later scholar Ibn Qutaybah remarked that Abu Ubaida "hated Arabs," though his contemporaries still considered him perhaps the most well-rounded scholar of his age. Whether or not Abu Ubaida was truly a supporter of the Shu'ubiyya is a matter of debate.
An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture.
Shams ad-Dīn adh-Dhahabī, also known as Shams ad-Dīn Abū ʿAbdillāh Muḥammad ibn Aḥmad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Qāymāẓ ibn ʿAbdillāh at-Turkumānī al-Fāriqī ad-Dimashqī was an Islamic historian and Hadith expert.
ʾAḥmad ibn Yaḥyā ibn Jābir al-Balādhurī was a 9th-century Muslim historian. One of the eminent Middle Eastern historians of his age, he spent most of his life in Baghdad and enjoyed great influence at the court of the caliph al-Mutawakkil. He travelled in Syria and Iraq, compiling information for his major works.
Abū ‘Abd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Sa‘d ibn Manī‘ al-Baṣrī al-Hāshimī or simply Ibn Sa'd and nicknamed Scribe of Waqidi, was a scholar and Arabian biographer. Ibn Sa'd was born in 784/785 CE and died on 16 February 845 CE. Ibn Sa'd was from Basra, but lived mostly in Baghdad, hence the nisba al-Basri and al-Baghdadi respectively. He is said to have died at the age of 62 in Baghdad and was buried in the cemetery of the Syrian gate.
Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad ibn Abd-Allah al-Hakim al-Nishapuri, also known as Ibn al-Bayyiʿ, was a Persian Sunni scholar and the leading traditionist of his age, frequently referred to as the "Imam of the Muhaddithin" or the "Muhaddith of Khorasan." He is widely renowned for his expertise in Hadith criticism, and regarded as the Sheikh of Hadith masters at his time. Al-Daraqutni, considered Al-Hakim to be superior in the science of Hadith than Ibn Manda.
Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world history, recorded history begins with the accounts of the ancient world around the 4th millennium BC, and it coincides with the invention of writing. For some geographic regions or cultures, written history is limited to a relatively recent period in human history because of the limited use of written records. Moreover, human cultures do not always record all of the information which is considered relevant by later historians, such as the full impact of natural disasters or the names of individuals. Recorded history for particular types of information is therefore limited based on the types of records kept. Because of this, recorded history in different contexts may refer to different periods of time depending on the topic.
A biography, or simply bio, is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death; it portrays a person's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (résumé), a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various aspects of their life, including intimate details of experience, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.
Between the 9th and 14th centuries, the Muslim world developed many advanced economic concepts, techniques and usages. These ranged from areas of production, investment, finance, economic development, taxation, property use such as Hawala: an early informal value transfer system, Islamic trusts, known as waqf, systems of contract relied upon by merchants, a widely circulated common currency, cheques, promissory notes, early contracts, bills of exchange, and forms of commercial partnership such as mufawada.
The historicity of Muhammad refers to the study of Muhammad as a historical figure and critical examination of sources upon which traditional accounts are based.
Ṣāʿid al-Andalusī, in full Abū al-Qāsim Ṣāʿid ibn Abū al-Walīd Aḥmad ibn Abd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṣāʿid ibn ʿUthmān al-Taghlibi al-Qūrtūbi, was an Arab qadi of Toledo in Muslim Spain, who wrote on the history of science, philosophy and thought. He was a mathematician and scientist with a special interest in astronomy and compiled a famous biographic encyclopedia of science that quickly became popular in the empire and the Islamic East.
Tarif Khalidi is a Palestinian historian who now holds the Shaykh Zayid Chair in Islamic and Arabic Studies at the American University of Beirut in Lebanon.
The Abbasid Revolution, also called the Movement of the Men of the Black Raiment, was the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate, the second of the four major Caliphates in Islamic history, by the third, the Abbasid Caliphate. Coming to power three decades after the death of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and immediately after the Rashidun Caliphate, the Umayyads were an Arab Empire ruling over a population which was overwhelmingly non-Arab. Non-Arabs were treated as second-class citizens regardless of whether or not they converted to Islam, and this discontent cutting across faiths and ethnicities ultimately led to the Umayyads' overthrow. The Abbasid family claimed to have descended from al-Abbas, an uncle of Muhammad.
Manāqib is a genre in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian literature, broadly encompassing "biographical works of a laudatory nature", "in which the merits, virtues and remarkable deeds of the individual concerned are given prominence" and particularly hagiographies. The principal goal of such works "is to offer to the reader a moral portrait and information on the noble actions of the individuals who constitute their subject or on the superior merits of a certain group". Such texts are valuable sources for the socio-political and religious history of early and medieval Islam.