Al-Thaʽālibī

Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī, Abd al-Mālik ibn Muḥammad ibn Ismā’īl (أبو منصور الثعالبي، عبد الملك بن محمد بن إسماعيل), (961–1038), was a writer of Persian or Arab ethnicity, native of Nishapur, Persia,[1] 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.[2]

"Tha'alibi" redirects here. For people with the surname, see Tha'alibi (surname).
Not to be confused with Thaalibia (disambiguation).
Chess game between Tha'ālibī and Bakhazari, by Ludwig Deutsch (1855–1935)

Works

Among twenty-nine known works are:

  • Kitāb Yatīmat al-dahr fī mahāsin ahl al-ʿasṛ; is his best known work and contains valuable extracts from the poetry of his own and earlier times, arranged according to the poets' nationality.[2] No satisfactory edition exists.[3]:xvii-xix That 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.[4]
    • ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʿālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī shuʿarāʼ ahl al-ʿaṣr (يتيمة الدهر في شعراء أهلالعصر), 4 vols (Damascus: [al-Maṭbaʿah al-Ḥifnīyah] دمشق : المطبعة الحفنية, 1302 AH [1885 CE]), vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4. The most widely used edition, with a Persian interlinear translation.
    • Muḥammad Muḥyī al-Dīn ‘Abd al-Ḥamīd محمد محي الدين عبدالحميد (ed.), يتيمة الدهر في في محاسن أهلالعصر, 4 vols (Cairo 1956), vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4. Bilāl Urfahʹlī 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'.[3]:xix
    • ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad Thaʻālibī, Yatīmat al-dahr fī maḥāsin ahl al-ʻaṣr maʻ al-tatimma wa-l-fahāris (يتيمة الدهر في شعراء أهل العصر مع التتمة والفهارس), ed. by Mufīd Muḥammad Qumayḥah, 6 vols (Bayrūt: Dār al-Kutub al-ʻIlmīyah (دار الكتب العلمية), 1983), vols 1-4 (index vol. 6). Machine-readable text.
    • Manuscript facsimile from the Thomas Fisher Arabic Collection.
  • Tatimmat al-Yatīmah, a sequel to the Yatāmat al-dahr.
  • Aḥsan mā samiʿtu ('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).[5]
    • Al-Thaʿālibī, Aḥsan mā samiʿtu, ed. by Muḥammad Ṣādiq ʿAnbar (Cairo: al-Maktabah al-Maḥmūdiyyah, n.d. [1925]).
  • Kitāb Fiqh ul-Lugha; lexicographical dictionary arranged by semantic subject. (Paris, 1861), (Cairo, 1867), (Beirut, 1885 - incomplete).[6][7]
  • Zād safar al-mulūk
    • Zād safar al-mulūk: A Handbook on Travel by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038), ed. by Ramzi Baalbaki and Bilal Orfali, Bibliotheca Islamica, 52 (Beirut: Orient-Institut, 2011), ISBN 978-3-87997-692-8.
  • Makārim al-akhlāq wa-maḥāsin al-ādāb wa-badāʾiʿ al-awṣāf wa-gharāʾib al-tashbīhāt
  • 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-taʿrīd aw al-Nihāya fī fann al-kināya (ed. F. al-Ḥawwār, Baghdad & Köln: Manshūrāt al-Jamal, 2006).

Notes
  1. "Abu Manşūr Tha'ālibī". Center for the Great Islamic Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15 February 2016.
  2. Thatcher 1911.
  3. Bilāl Urfahʹlī, The Anthologist's Art: Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi and his Yatimat al-dahr, Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 37 (Leiden: Brill, 2016), ISBN 9789004316294.
  4. Ahmad Shawqi Radwan, 'Thaʿālibī's “Tatimmat al-Yatīmah”: A Critical Edition and a Study of the Author as Anthologist and Literary Critic' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Manchester, 1972), p. 77.
  5. Adam Talib, How Do You Say “Epigram” in Arabic? Literary History at the Limits of Comparison, Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures, 40 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 83-85; ISBN 978-90-04-34996-4
  6. Thatcher 1911, p. 716.
  7. Thatcher 1911, p. 716 notes: For his other works see Brockelmann 1898, pp. 284–286

References
  • Urfahʹlī, 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), ISBN 9789004316294.
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