This is a list of encyclopedias in the Arabic language.
The Arabic word for encyclopedia is mawsūʿah (موسوعة). It is derived from the word wāsiʿ (واسع), which means "wide".
The early Arabic compilations of knowledge in the Middle Ages included many comprehensive works, and much development of what would become known as the scientific method, historical method, and citation. The first Arab encyclopedist was Ibn Qutaybah (828–889), who wrote a number of books organizing the knowledge of his day, most importantly 'Uyun Al-Akhbar (Quintessential Reports). [1] About 960 AD, the Brethren of Purity of Basra were engaged in their Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity , which may be a unique example of a classical Arabic encyclopedia written by a group rather than a solitary scholar. [1] Other notable works include Abu Bakr al-Razi's encyclopedia of science, the Mutazilite al-Kindi's prolific output of 270 books, and Ibn Sina's The Canon of Medicine , which was a standard reference work for centuries. Also notable are works of universal history (or sociology) from the Asharites, al-Tabri, al-Masudi, al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings , Ibn Rustah, Ali ibn al-Athir, and Ibn Khaldun's Muqadimmah .
Following the conquests of much of the Arab world by the Ottoman Empire, few Arabic encyclopedias were published until the 1950s. Modern Arabic encyclopedias include the online Marefa project. In 2006, the Arab League proposed the creation of a new online encyclopedia in Arabic. [2]
Abū Ḥanīfa Aḥmad ibn Dāwūd Dīnawarī was an Islamic Golden Age polymath: astronomer, agriculturist, botanist, metallurgist, geographer, mathematician, and historian.
Al-Maqrīzī was a medieval Egyptian historian and biographer during the Mamluk era, known for his interest in the Fatimid era, and the earlier periods of Egyptian history. He is recognized as the most influential historian of premodern Egypt.
Al-Asmaʿi, or Asmai was an Arab philologist and one of three leading Arabic grammarians of the Basra school. Celebrated at the court of the Abbasid caliph, Hārūn al-Rashīd, as polymath and prolific author on philology, poetry, genealogy, and natural science, he pioneered zoology studies in animal-human anatomical science. He compiled an important poetry anthology, the Asma'iyyat, and was credited with composing an epic on the life of Antarah ibn Shaddad. A protégé of Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi and Abu 'Amr ibn al-'Ala', he was a contemporary and rival of Abū ʿUbaidah and Sibawayhi also of the Basran school.
Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Rabbih was an Arab writer and poet widely known as the author of al-ʿIqd al-Farīd.
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh ibn Muslim ibn Qutayba al-Dīnawarī al-Marwazī better known simply as Ibn Qutaybah was an Islamic scholar of Persian descent. He served as a judge during the Abbasid Caliphate, but was best known for his contributions to Arabic literature. He was an Athari theologian and polymath who wrote on diverse subjects, such as Qur'anic exegesis, hadith, theology, philosophy, law and jurisprudence, grammar, philology, history, astronomy, agriculture and botany.
The Brethren of Purity were a secret society of Muslim philosophers in Basra, Iraq, in the 9th or 10th century CE.
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity also variously known as the Epistles of the Brethren of Sincerity, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Epistles of the Brethren of Purity and Loyal Friends is an Islamic encyclopedia in 52 treatises (rasā'il) written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE. It had a great influence on later intellectual leading lights of the Muslim world, such as Ibn Arabi, and was transmitted as far abroad within the Muslim world as al-Andalus.
Dinavar was a major town between the 7th and 10th centuries, located to the northeast of Kermanshah in western Iran. The ruins of the town is now located near Shir Khan, in Dinavar District, Sahneh County, Kermanshah Province.
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 al-Andalus, 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.
al-ʿIqd al-Farīd is an anthology attempting to encompass 'all that a well-informed person had to know in order to pass in society as a cultured and refined individual', composed by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (860–940), an Arab writer and poet from Córdoba in Al-Andalus.
Qutayla ukht al-Nadr was a seventh-century CE Arab woman of the Quraysh tribe, noted as one of the earliest attested Arabic-language poets on account of her famous elegy for Nadr ibn al-Harith.
Ḥamza ibn al-Ḥasan ibn al-Mū'addib al-Iṣbahānī Abū ‘Abd Allāh, commonly known as Ḥamza al-Iṣfahānī or Hamza Esfahani, was a Persian philologist and historian, who wrote in Arabic during the 'Abbasid and Buyid eras. He spent most of his life in his native town, Isfahan, and visited Baghdad at least three times during his lifetime. He had contact with many important scholars and historians, among them al-Tabari and Ibn Durayd. He wrote a history of Isfahan, a famous chronology of pre-Islamic and Islamic dynasties known as Taʾrīk̲h̲ sinī mulūk al-arḍ wa ’l-anbiyāʾ, and some other works on lexicography and poetry.
The first Grammarians of Baṣra lived during the seventh century in Al-Baṣrah. The town, which developed out of a military encampment, with buildings being constructed circa 638 AD, became the intellectual hub for grammarians, linguists, poets, philologists, genealogists, traditionists, zoologists, meteorologists, and above all exegetes of Qur’ānic tafsir and Ḥadīth, from across the Islamic world. These scholars of the Islamic Golden Age were pioneers of literary style and the sciences of Arabic grammar in the broadest sense. Their teachings and writings became the canon of the Arabic language. Shortly after the Basran school's foundation, a rival school was established at al-Kūfah circa 670, by philologists known as the Grammarians of Kūfah. Intense competition arose between the two schools, and public disputations and adjudications between scholars were often held at the behest of the caliphal courts. Later many scholars moved to the court at Baghdad, where a third school developed which blended many ideological and theological characteristics of the two. Many language scholars carried great influence and political power as court companions, tutors, etc., to the caliphs, and many were retained on substantial pensions.
Abū Yūsuf Ya‘qūb Ibn as-Sikkīt was a Persian philologist tutor to the son of the Abbasid caliph Al-Mutawakkil and a great grammarian and scholar of poetry of the al-Kūfah school. He was punished on the orders of the caliph and died between 857 and 861.
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāḥ ibn Muḥammad ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī (1052–1127), also spelled Ibn Assīd or Abenasid, was an Andalusian grammarian and philosopher. He is the earliest Islamic philosopher from the West whose works have survived.
Abu ʾl-Ḥasan al-Naḍr ibn Shumayl ibn Kharasha al-Māzinī al-Tamīmī was an Arab scholar and poet from central Asia active in Iraq.
Muḥammad ibn Tamīm ibn Tamām al-Tamīmī more commonly known as Abu al-Arab was a 10th-century Arab Muslim historian, poet, traditionist and faqih of the Maliki school. His most celebrated work is Tabaqat 'Ulama Ifriqiya which include numerous scholars of his time.
Wicked Game is an Egyptian crime thriller released in 1991. It stars Salah Zulfikar and is directed by Henry Barakat.
Yacoub Yusef Al-Subaie, also spelled Yaqoub Yusef Al Subaie, was a Kuwaiti poet. He began writing poetry in the 1960s, with his best-known works including "O Sun of Holidays Prevails Over Kuwait" and "We Are All for Kuwait and Kuwait Is Ours."