The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition.

• Author: Ghersetti, Antonella
• Position: Book review

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition. By ELIAS MUHANNA. Princeton: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2018. Pp. xiii + 214. $39.95.

"This is a small book about a very large book," Elias Muhanna writes by way of introduction. I would add that Nihayat al-arab fi funun al-adab (The ultimate ambition in the arts of erudition) is not only a large book, but a real monument of Mamluk literature and a good example of its encyclopedictrend. It is the magnum opus, indeed the only work, of the Egyptian Shihab al-Din Ahmad b. 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwayri (d. 733/1333), an influential public servant of the bureaucratic apparatus of the Mamluk empire, who decided, after many years in his position in Egypt and Syria, to devote himself to the composition of this monumental enterprise. This compendium of his cultural and professional experience, which the author intended to leave for future generations, was in fact conceived, as Muhanna notes, as a "project of self-edification" (p. 24). His ability as a copyist (al-Nuwayri was also held in high esteem as a calligrapher) and his exceptional speed of writing allowed him to pen the entire work in a relatively short time and produce multiple copies of it.

Nihayat al-arab has a complex organization. It is divided into five large sections (funun): the universe; man; animals; plants; and (universal) history, the largest and most important. Each section is itself divided into five parts, each consisting of a varying number of chapters. This meticulous--but not always transparent--arrangement shows a "zeal of taxonomy" (p. 31) that is somewhat puzzling within the literary tradition to which the text belongs and can be taken as a sign of the generic hybridity that is one of its major features, as Muhanna appropriately affirms. Tackling this gigantic work (over two million words in thirty-one volumes) is an enterprise that would discourage many, not only on account of its size but also because of the broad spectrum of themes it deals with. Indeed, likely by dint of size and wealth of information, scholars have until now mostly mined it in search of specific information, neglecting to study its overall structure and internal organization. Muhanna's volume, in contrast, is focused on the work in its entirety, and conceived as a lens through which to "shed light on a tradition of Arabic encyclopedism [...] that witnessed its fullest flowering in Egypt and Syria during the thirteenth through...