Al-Tha'alibi

Abū Manṣūr ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismāʿīl al-Thaʿālibī () (961–1038), was an Arab writer famous for his anthologies and collections of epigrams. As a writer of prose and verse in his own right, distinction between his and the work of others is sometimes lacking, as was the practice of writers of the time.

Life

Al-Thaʿālibī was born in Nishapur and was based there throughout his life. Of Arab ethnicity, his nickname means 'furrier' or 'tailor who works with fox fur', and medieval biographers speculated that this was his job or his father's, but there is no convincing evidence for either proposition. The only hint as to al-Thaʿālibī's education is a claim that he was taught by Abū Bakr al-Khwārizmi (who was certainly a source for al-Thaʿālibī's poetry anthologies). Likewise, despite his great prowess, there are only hints that al-Thaʿālibī was himself a teacher. Al-Thaʿālibī travelled widely beyond Nishapur, however: autobiographical information scattered in his works shows that he spent time in Bukhārā, Jurjān, Isfarāʾīn, Jurjāniyya, Ghazna, and Herat. The numerous dedicatees of his works indicate the circles in which al-Thaʿālibī moved and the range of his acquaintances; they included Abū al-Fāḍl ʿUbaydallāh ibn Aḥmad al-Mīkālī (d. 1044/1055), Qābus ibn Wushmgīr (d. 1012), Sebüktegin (d. 1021), Abū Sahl al-Ḥamdūnī (d. after c. 1040), and both Masʿūd of Ghazna (d. 1040) and other members of his court such as Abū Naṣr Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Zayd, Abū al-Ḥasan Musāfir ibn al-Ḥasan, and Abū al-Fatḥ al-ḥasan ibn Ībrāhīm al-Ṣaymarī.

Al-Thaʿālibī gained fame as a composer of both Arabic prose and verse, writing in most verse genres of his culture, and developing literary and philological scholarship. His most famed, however, for his two anthologies of roughly contemporary Arabic verse, much of which would otherwise have been lost: the Yatīmat al-dahr and its sequel the Tatimmat at Yatīma.

Works

Al-Thaʿālibī has twenty-nine known works.

Kitāb Yatīmat al-dahr fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿaṣr

This is al-Thaʿālibī's best known work and contains valuable extracts from the poetry of his own and earlier times; its title means 'The Matchless Pearl of the Age on the Fine Qualities of Contemporary Men'. In its surviving form — a second edition revised by al-Thaʿālibī — it quotes 470 poets in four volumes, organised geographically. The four volumes cover, in this order, Syria and the west (Mawṣil, Egypt, Maghrib); Iraq; Western Iran (al-Jabal, Fārs, Jurjān, and Ṭabaristān); and Eastern Iran (Khurāsān and Transoxania). Composition began in 384/994. No satisfactory edition exists. The Yatīmat and its sequel the Tatimmat have been characterised as 'our main, if not the sole, source about literary activity' in al-Tha'ālibī's time.

• Ê¿Abd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ThaʿālibÄ«, YatÄ«mat al-dahr fÄ« shuÊ¿arāʼ ahl al-Ê¿aá¹£r (), 4 vols (Damascus: [al-Maá¹­baÊ¿ah al-ḤifnÄ«yah] , 1302 AH [1885 CE]), vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4. The most widely used edition, with a Persian interlinear translation.
• Muḥammad MuḥyÄ« al-DÄ«n ‘Abd al-ḤamÄ«d (ed.), , 4 vols (Cairo 1956), vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4. Bilāl UrfahʹlÄ« concludes that this is the most accurate edition, and 'offers a preliminary basis of studying the Yātima, even if some points will have to be changed according to what a critical edition might reveal'.
• Ê»Abd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ThaʻālibÄ«, YatÄ«mat al-dahr fÄ« maḥāsin ahl al-Ê»aá¹£r maÊ» al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris (), ed. by MufÄ«d Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (BayrÅ«t: Dār al-Kutub al-Ê»IlmÄ«yah (), 1983), vols 1-4 (index vol. 6). This includes the original work, as well as its sequel (Tatimma): Machine-readable text.
• Manuscript facsimile from the Thomas Fisher Arabic Collection.

Tatimmat al-Yatīmah ('completion of the Yatīma<nowiki>'</nowiki>)

The Tatimmat al-Yatīmah was a sequel to the Yatīmat al-dahr. It follows the same geographical structure as its precursor (with an extra, fifth, book collecting miscellaneous poets whom Thaʿālibī had missed) and added poems and poets which al-Thaʿālibī had not been able to include in the Yatīmat. Like the Yatīma, it survives in a second edition revised by al-Thaʿālibī, published in or after 424/1032.

• The best edition is Ahmad Shawqi Radwan, 'ThaʿālibÄ«'s “Tatimmat al-YatÄ«mah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972).
• The most widely available edition, prior to the digitisation of Radwan's edition, was Ê»Abd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ThaʻālibÄ«, Tatimmat YatÄ«mat al-dahr, fi maḥāsin ahl al-Ê»aá¹£r (), in YatÄ«mat al-dahr fÄ« maḥāsin ahl al-Ê»aá¹£r maÊ» al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris (), ed. by MufÄ«d Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (BayrÅ«t: Dār al-Kutub al-Ê»IlmÄ«yah (), 1983), vol. 5 (index vol. 6). Machine-readable text.
• An earlier edition is Tatimmat ʾal-yatÄ«mah, ed. by Ê»Abbas ʾIqbal, 2 vols (Tihran, 1353 AH [1934]) [based on Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Fonds Arabe, 3308].

Other works

• Aḥsan mā samiÊ¿tu ('the best I ever heard'), an anthology of poetry and prose, including 535 poems averaging 2.26 lines each, apparently abridged from a collection called Aḥāsin al-maḥāsin (the best of the best).
• Al-ThaʿālibÄ«, Aḥsan mā samiÊ¿tu, ed. by Muḥammad Ṣādiq Ê¿Anbar (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-MaḥmÅ«diyyah, n.d. [1925]).
• Kitāb Fiqh ul-Lugha; lexicographical dictionary arranged by semantic subject. (Paris, 1861), (Cairo, 1867), (Beirut, 1885 - incomplete).
• Zād safar al-mulÅ«k
• Zād safar al-mulÅ«k: A Handbook on Travel by AbÅ« Manṣūr al-ThaʿālibÄ« (d. 429/1038), ed. by Ramzi Baalbaki and Bilal Orfali, Bibliotheca Islamica, 52 (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2011), .
• Al-Iqtibās min al-Qurʾān (, 'quoting from the generous Qurʾān', literally 'taking hot coals from the generous Qurʾān'), on the cultural and literary influence of the Qurʾān.
• Ed. by I. M. al-á¹¢affār (Baghdad: Dār al-Ḥurriyya li-l-Ṭibāʿa, 1975).
• Ed. by I. M. al-á¹¢affār and M. M. Bahjat, 2 vols (al-Manṣūra: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1992) [repr. Cairo: Dār al-Wafāʾ, 1998).
• Ed. by I. M. al-á¹¢affār (Ê¿Ammān: Jidārā li-l-Kitāb al-Ê¿AlamÄ«, 2008).
• Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiÊ¿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbÄ«hāt
• [https://www.academia.edu/13118335 The Book of Noble Character: Critical Edition of Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiÊ¿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbÄ«hāt Attributed to AbÅ« Manṣūr al-ThaʿālibÄ« (d. 429/1039)], ed. by Bilal Orfali and Ramzi Baalbaki, Islamic History and Civilisation: Studies and Texts, 120 (Leiden: Brill, 2015), .
• Kitāb Lata'if al-ma'arif (tr. 'Book of curious and entertaining information' Clifford Edmund Bosworth, Edinburgh University Press, 1968).
• Kitāb al-Kināya wa-l-taÊ¿rÄ«d aw al-Nihāya fÄ« fann al-kināya (ed. F. al-Ḥawwār, Baghdad & Köln: ManshÅ«rāt al-Jamal, 2006).
• Ghurar akhbār mulÅ«k al-Furs wa-siyarihim, an Arabic chronicle of pre-Islamic Iranian dynasties, dedicated to al-Nasr(brother of Mahmud of Ghazni).
• Ādāb al-mulÅ«k or Sirāj al-mulÅ«k, a mirror for princes.

Notes

References

External links and further reading

• UrfahʹlÄ«, Bilāl, The Anthologist's Art: Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi and his Yatimat al-dahr, Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), .