{"product_id":"great-lives-of-the-islamic-golden-age-selections-from-ibn-khallikans-biographical-dictionary","title":"Great Lives of the Islamic Golden Age: Selections from Ibn Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary","description":"\u003cp\u003e📖 \u003cstrong\u003eInstant digital download — EPUB format\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eDescription\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the 13th century, a Damascus judge named Ibn Khallikan set out to do something no one in the Islamic world had done before: gather the lives of its most remarkable people into a single alphabetical dictionary. The result, the \u003cem\u003eWafayat al-A'yan\u003c\/em\u003e (\"Deaths of Eminent Men\"), became the model that every later Arabic biographical dictionary would follow — not a dry list of dates, but a collection of anecdotes, verses, deathbed scenes, and eyewitness testimony that brought its subjects back to life on the page.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThis edition gathers four of its most vivid portraits from Baron de Slane's classic 1843 translation: the blind poet-philosopher Abu'l-Ala al-Ma'arri, who renounced meat for forty-five years out of compassion for animals; Abu Tayib al-Mutanabbi, still regarded by many as the greatest poet the Arabic language has produced; Imad ad-Din Zengi, the atabeg whose capture of Edessa in 1144 lit the fuse of the Muslim counter-crusade that Nur ad-Din and Saladin would carry to Jerusalem; and Zubaida, wife of Harun ar-Rashid, whose fortune built wells and way-stations along the pilgrim road to Mecca that bore her name for centuries. Four very different lives, told in the voice of a 13th-century scholar who clearly loved his subjects.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor \u0026amp; Genre\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eIbn Khallikan\u003c\/strong\u003e (1211–1282) was a Kurdish-born jurist who served as chief qadi of Damascus under the Mamluks. Genre: Classical Arabic biography \/ history, in Baron Mac Guckin de Slane's 19th-century English translation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cblockquote\u003e\"I am he whose learning is seen by the blind, and whose word causeth the deaf to hear.\" — the line of al-Mutanabbi that Abu'l-Ala al-Ma'arri, sightless from childhood, singled out as though the poet had looked into the future and seen him\u003c\/blockquote\u003e","brand":"Ibn Khallikan","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50590827479288,"sku":"EN-KHALLIKAN-GREATLIVES","price":0.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0802\/4798\/0280\/files\/EN-KHALLIKAN-GREATLIVES.jpg?v=1790036169","url":"https:\/\/nilebookstore.com\/products\/great-lives-of-the-islamic-golden-age-selections-from-ibn-khallikans-biographical-dictionary","provider":"Nile Book Store","version":"1.0","type":"link"}