A Beckoning Compass, Circulating Lives: The Bustani Encyclopedia and Other Nineteenth-century Sources
A Beckoning Compass, Circulating Lives: The Bustani Encyclopedia and Other Nineteenth-century Sources
This chapter considers Fawwaz’s use of contemporary Arabic sources, notably the Arab world’s first modern encyclopedia (produced in the last quarter of the nineteenth century), a world history in Arabic, and contemporary magazines published in Egypt. Her use of these sources challenges scholars’ tendencies to categorise intellectuals of the time according to their origins and religious affiliations, for Fawwaz drew liberally on these works by Syrian Christian writers and reformers as well as briefly on a Turkish-language compilation. The chapter incorporates a study of the Bustani encyclopedia focusing on its treatment of biography as well as its articulated sense of readership, and its use of a modern apparatus of subject organisation and alphabetization, which Fawwaz followed to a large degree, while cleverly maintaining the sense of Islamic priority evident in early biographical dictionaries by placing Muhammad’s mother Amina at the very start of her volume. The chapter continues the analysis of the previous chapter of how Fawwaz appropriated and modified the contents and diction of her sources.
Keywords: Butrus al-Bustani, Da’irat al-ma’arif, Encyclopedias, Yuhanna Abqariyus, Persia, Semiramis, Al-Muqtataf, Al-Khansa’, Maryam Makariyus, Mehmet Zihni
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