The World of Murtada al-Zabidi (1732-1791): Life, Networks and Writings.

• Author: Varisco, Daniel Martin
• Position: Book review

The World of Murtada al-Zabidi (1732-1791): Life, Networks and Writings. By STEFAN REICHMUTH. Exeter: GIBB MEMORIAL TRUST, 2009. Pp. xxiii + 398. $100.

"To crown a bride with a dictionary might be regarded as a rather bold metaphor," suggests Stefan Reichmuth in his new volume about the eighteenth-century author of Taj al-'arus (The Bridal Crown), a text that might be best characterized as the mother of all Arabic lexicons. For the serious scholar of Arabic there are few sources as important as Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi's lexicon, compiled in Egypt before Napoleon's invasion and the oft-reputed onset of modern Orientalism. Edward Lane cited it frequently in his undyingly serviceable Arabic-English lexicon. Stefan Reichmuth of Ruhr University in Bochum has now brought this eminent and prolific Muslim scholar into the historical spotlight he deserves. The reader is introduced to the Muslim humanist scholar of the twelfth/eighteenth century and his significant corpus, one overshadowed by the lexicon. This is an extraordinary research project, which not only probes al-Zabidi's unpublished diaries and notes for biographical data, but illustrates the intellectual environment of Cairo during the late Mamluk era and provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative survey of al-Zabidi's scholarly and personal networks. In particular, al-Zabidi's contribution to hadith studies and his Sufi network will be of interest to a variety of scholars.

The first chapter traces the early history of al-Zabidi, from his birth in India to his youthful emigration to the Hijaz and Yemen, the latter only occupying a formative period of five years. Like his famous grandfather, Muhammad Qadiri (d. 1732), al-Zabidi was a Naqshbandi, adding to his self-description as a Husayni sharif, belonging to the Hanafi madhhab and a specialist in the disciplines of prophetic tradition, lexicography, and genealogy (p. 2). Reichmuth documents the scholar's teachers in India, Yemen, and, for his later sojourn, Cairo, as well as his students, including 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti. It should be noted that al-Zabidi was a prolific traveler in Egypt and Palestine, seeking manuscripts and recording his observations. During his almost forty years as resident in Egypt he received visitors from all over the Islamic world, including sons of the Moroccan sultan Mawlay Muhammad b. 'Abdallah. Indeed, it seems al-Zabidi was adept at cultivating relationship with important political figures and...