Short description:

Bibliotheca Islamica (BI) is the Orient-Institut Beirut's platform for the critical edition of mainly Arabic texts. The series dates back to 1929, when Hellmut Ritter edited the Kitab Maqalat al-islamiyin wa- tilaf al-musallin of Abu l-Hasan Ali al-Asari, a seminal text on dogmatic positions in the early Islamic period. Since then, the OIB has published more than fifty titles in this series.

Long description:

Al-Faw??id al-san?yah f? al-ri?lah al-Madan?yah wa al-R?m?yah by Qu?b al-D?n al-Nahraw?l? (d. 990/1582) is a unique book in its content and history and has been long-awaited to be seen in an edited publication. The present edition is based on the manuscript in Velieddin Efendi's collection of Beyazit Umumi Kütüphanesi in Istanbul. This manuscript is the author's draft of which he was unable to make a fair copy for public readership. This has rendered the editor's task much more challenging, requiring him to consult a corpus of significant historical, geographical and literary sources to finalize the current edition.

The book includes historical and literary material relating to some Hijaz events in the mid-tenth century/sixteenth century. It also relates the author's many voyages within the Hijaz region and his trip to the court of Suleiman the Magnificent as an envoy carrying a letter of complaint from the Sheriff of Mecca against the Ottoman governor of Medina, Delü Piri.

For an-Nahraw?l?, this book was so important that he used to take it with him on all his travels. He expressed deep sorrow when he lost it, and relief when it was recovered through the intervention of the sultan's son Beyazit. Although parts of his travel accounts have been published, this is the first time that the complete work of an-Nahraw?l? has been made available to scholars and researchers.