Organizing knowledge : : encyclopaedic activities in the pre-eighteenth century Islamic world / / edited by Gerhard Endress ; preface by Abou Filali-Ansary.

• Superior document: Islamic philosophy, theology, and science, v. 61
• TeilnehmendeR: Endress, Gerhard, 1939-; Filali-Ansary, Abdou.
• Year of Publication: 2006
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Islamic philosophy, theology, and science ; v. 61.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (256 pages)
• Notes: Description based upon print version of record.

The contributions in this volume offer the first comprehensive effort to describe and analyse the collection, classification, presentation and methodology of information in the knowledge society of medieval Islam in the disciplines of religious and legal learning, as well as the rational sciences of Hellenistic origin - philosophy, mathematical and medical sciences.The volume begins with a general discussion of the concept of encyclopædia. Successive chapters explore the bases of authority in the institutions of religion and law; biographical literature and handbooks of law; compendia of scientific and philosophical learning based on Iranian and Greek sources; and the more specialised expositions of mathematics and philosophy. The special character of Muslim institutions, their teaching traditions and syllabi is also put into perspective. This is a reference work for the principal genres of 'enyclopædic' outlines and manuals - biography, legal handbooks, historiography of knowledge transmission, cosmography, and the philosophical sciences - and a major contribution to the literary and intellectual history.

Table of Contents

Intro -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Editor's Note -- The Contributors -- THE CONCEPT OF ENCYCLOPÆDIA -- Encyclopædic Activities in the Islamic World: A Few Questions, and No Answers -- THE ARABIC ISLAMIC TRADITIONS -- Biographical Dictionaries as the Scholars' Alternative History of the Muslim Community -- Encyclopædic Activities in Islamic Jurisprudence -- THE IRANIAN AND GREEK TRADITIONS -- The Greek and Persian Background of Early Arabic Encyclopedism -- The Cycle of Knowledge: Intellectual Traditions and Encyclopædias of the Rational Sciences in Arabic Islamic Hellenism -- Organizing Scientific Knowledge: The 'Mixed' Sciences in Early Classifications -- The Brethren of Purity (Ikhwān al-Ṣafāʾ) and their Philosophical Treatises (Rasāʾil) -- INTEGRATIVE CONCEPTS -- Al-Qazwīnī's ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt: An Encyclopædia of Natural History? -- L'Encyclopédisme dans l'historiographie: réflexions sur le cas d'Ibn Khaldūn -- A EUROPEANIST'S PERSPECTIVE -- A Europeanist's Perspective -- Bibliography -- General Index -- Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science.