The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition Dar al Taqwa Publications

The World in a Book: Al-Nuwayri and the Islamic Encyclopedic Tradition Dar al Taqwa PublicationsShihab al Din al Nuwayri was a fourteenth century Egyptian polymath and the author of one of the greatest encyclopedias of the medieval Islamic world a thirty one volume work entitled The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition. A storehouse of knowledge, this enormous book brought together materials on nearly every conceivable subject, from cosmology, zoology, and botany to philosophy, poetry, ethics, statecraft, and history. Composed in Cairo

Excerpted from Hamza Yusuf’s Introduction —

al-Ghazali cites the scriptural foundations in the Quran and hadith

Distracted and polluted by worldliness

He died in 1416/1996

a blend of the mystical and rational tendencies within Islam

Ḥabīb Muḥammad ibn Abdillāh al-Haddār (1340-1418ah / 1920-1997ce)

Awhad al-din Balyani (died 1287)

author of Hearts Turn)

has exercised a profound influence on Muslim intellectual history by exploring the mystical significance of the practices and beliefs of Islamic orthodoxy

and his popularity both as a military and religious figurehead

Imam Zaid Shakir has accompanied this text with an in-depth commentary based upon the Qur’an and Hadith that enriches and contextualizes the concise prose of Imam al-Muhasibi within the social milieu of our times

The Salaf with the Family of the House