Abstract
To use a Leavisite term, there is a ‘Great Tradition’ in medieval Arabic and Persian literature which recounts mirabilia, wonders and rarities. This genre is known in Arabic as ʻajā'ib. It is highly interdisciplinary and can range through a diversity of topics such as arguments for the existence of God (pp. 106–7), cosmology (p. 127), the huge mythical bird known as the ʻanqā’ (p. 158) and the evil eye (p. 123). These are just a few examples from a massive range of topoi which might feature in any ʻajā'ib work and which, in accordance with the teachings of the great Persian philosopher Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) (CE c.980–1037), by whom Qazwīnī was much influenced (p. 117), might present miracle and magic as part of normal life (p. 122). It is an arena which embraces theology, cosmology, philosophy, geography, Islamic history, mythology, folklore, magic, miracles, zoology, botany, medicine, astrology, Qur'ān and ḥadīth (Islamic traditions); and our listing is by no means exhaustive!
The ʻajā'ib emphasised real or fantastic events, facts or perceptions in the terrestrial domain which were difficult to comprehend. 1 One of the most famous and popular exponents of this genre was the Persian Zakariyyā’ al-Qazwīnī (CE 1202–1283), professor, naturalist, judge and descendant of a notable Companion of the Prophet Muḥammad (p. 70). He produced a work which documented and vaunted the glories of the natural world and which has resolutely stood the test of time (p. 3). In the original Arabic, the work was entitled ʻAjā'ib al-Makhlūqāt wa Gharā'ib al-Mawjūdāt, which may be translated literally as The Wonders of Creation and Marvels of All That Exists, a long-winded title which Zadeh renders more succinctly as Wonders and Rarities (pp. 335–7). 2
Although much praised, both in the past and the present, it is worth noting that not all scholars have been universally complimentary about Qazwīnī's work. It does have its weaknesses. Thus he has been criticised for a somewhat casual attitude to his sources, for compiling rather than deploying proper scholarly analysis and for being unable, or unwilling, to corroborate the material which he transmitted, relying solely on the witness of others. 3
Qazwīnī lived in an age of devastating conflict as the Mongols swept through all before them (pp. 33–34). Yet he was a survivor and the backdrop of war and carnage did not prevent him from producing a work of encyclopaedic range, which focussed on people as well as materials, the real as well as the fantastic, the strange as well as the familiar, always aware as he wrote of the underpinnings of the philosophies of the age and the Islamic faith (p.109). He was a polymath whose arena was the whole of creation (p. 109).
Qazwīnī's influences and sources were many and varied. In addition to Ibn Sīnā, to whom we referred earlier, we might note, inter alia, Ptolemy's Almagest (p. 77), Plato (p. 10), the Mosul, Baghdadi and Aleppan scholar Yāqūt al-Rūmī (CE 1179–1229) whose geographical dictionary he must have read (p. 36), the Grenadan scholar Abū Ḥāmid al-Gharnāṭī (CE d.1169), and the Mosul polymath Athīr al-Dīn al-Abharī (d. c. CE 1264). In Damascus, Qazwīnī met the famous ṣūfī philosopher Ibn al-ʻArabī (CE 1165–1232) (p. 69). However, out of all these scholarly luminaries, Qazwīnī reserved the title of ‘Our Master’ for al-Abharī alone (p. 38).
Qazwīnī divided his encyclopaedic magnum opus into three parts: he started in the Heavens, moved to the Earth and then gave consideration to the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms (p. 6). Zadeh too employs a tripartite division in his biography of Wonders and Rarities: firstly, he provides an historical context for the world in which Qazwīnī lived and wrote. This section he calls A World Within Words (pp. 25–93). He then turns his spotlight on Qazwīnī's book itself in a second Part entitled Wonders to Behold (pp. 95–196). His third section is called Distant Shores, in which Zadeh examines the reception history of Qazwīnī's book (pp. 197–293). The work concludes with a Coda entitled Acts of Enchantment (pp. 294–330).
The reception history yields some unlikely but fascinating parallels: the modern comic novelist Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) wrote a series of Discworld novels underpinned by a cosmology which envisioned a flat planet on the backs of four elephants which are on the back of a giant turtle. While this appears to have had Hindu Brahmin antecedents as its inspiration, it bears comparison with what Qazwīnī presents via Wahb ibn Munabbih, by way of a cosmology in which the Earth rests on a great angel who is on a massive ruby which in turn is on a huge bull (p. 201; see also fig.7.1 on p. 200). 4
Travis Zadeh's intention – indeed, methodology – throughout his volume is to document a vast quantity of hugely differing materials as they appear in the humanscape on which he works and to try and make sense of them, ordering them into some kind of coherent shape (p. 333). It is a noble attempt to contextualise his materials and illustrate thereby the human condition in its diverse manners, forms and situations (p. 334).
There are few flaws in what he presents. However, it is a pity that there is no separate bibliography, although this lacuna is compensated for by a very full set of notes at the end of the volume in which all bibliographical materials are embedded (pp. 343–405). I would also dispute the bold statement that ‘the epistles of the Brethren of Purity [are] an encyclopedic collection associated with the metaphysical teachings of Kindī and his students’ (p.195). This is not an association that immediately springs to mind in any consideration of the thought of the Brethren of Purity (Ihkwān al-Ṣafā’) (fl CE 10th–11th cent). But these are quibbles in the context of what is a magisterial volume.
In this enterprise, Zadeh mirrors the endeavour of Qazwīnī himself and, in a very real sense, in his biography of Wonders and Rarities, Zadeh becomes an alter-Qazwīnī. He has produced a brilliant and intellectually satisfying analysis of one of medieval Arabic's great multifaceted works. It may serve as a model for other scholars who attempt biographies of other of the world's great books.