Seerah al-Nuwairi — Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwairi (1279-1333 CE): The Mamluk-Era Encyclopaedist Who Compiled Nihayat al-Arab fi Funun al-Adab (The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition — 31 Volumes Covering Natural History, Human Nature, Heaven and Earth, History of Pre-Islamic Arabs, and Islamic History), One of the Most Comprehensive Medieval Islamic Encyclopaedias and a Major Source for Mamluk-Era History

Seerah al-Nuwairi (سِيرَةُ النُّوَيرِيّ; full name: Shihab al-Din Ahmad ibn Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwairi; born 677 AH / 1279 CE in Nuwayra [a village in Upper Egypt]; died 733 AH / 1333 CE in Cairo; career: like al-Safadi, al-Nuwairi was a senior Mamluk chancery secretary [katib]; he served in Cairo and in the Syrian provinces; his work spanned administrative service and encyclopaedic compilation; the major work: Nihayat al-Arab fi Funun al-Adab [نِهَايَةُ الأَرَبِ فِي فُنُونِ الأَدَب — The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition]: a 31-volume encyclopaedia covering: [1] al-sama' wal-'alam [heaven and the world — astronomy, cosmography, weather, geography]; [2] al-insan [the human being — physiology, psychology, the five senses, emotion, character]; [3] al-hayawan [animals — zoology]; [4] al-nabat [plants — botany]; [5] al-tarikh [history — the longest section]; the historical section covers: pre-Islamic Arab history; prophetic history; the caliphates; the Crusades; Mongol invasions; contemporary Mamluk history through his own time; the historical section is the primary value: al-Nuwairi's historical coverage of the Mamluk period [his own time] is a primary source; his account of the Mongol invasions draws on contemporary testimony; his coverage of the early Mamluk sultans and their campaigns is detailed; he had access to official records through his chancery position; encyclopaedic tradition: Nihayat al-Arab belongs to the tradition of the adab encyclopaedia — collections meant to provide the educated man of letters with knowledge across all fields; predecessors: Ibn Qutayba [d. 889] Uyun al-Akhbar; al-Mas'udi [d. 956] Muruj al-Dhahab; al-Tha'alibi [d. 1038] Yatimat al-Dahr; contemporaries and successors: al-Nuwairi's work is contemporary with al-Qalqashandi's Subh al-A'sha and al-Safadi's al-Wafi; the 14th century was the great age of Mamluk encyclopaedism; the scope of Nihayat al-Arab: 31 volumes, covering knowledge as a cultivated Mamluk secretary would need to know it — nature, human nature, animals, plants, and history; the goal was not specialization but the formation of the complete adib [man of letters] who could write on any subject; survival: Nihayat al-Arab survived in good manuscript tradition; it was edited and published in Cairo [Dar al-Kutub al-Misriyya] in a multi-volume edition in the 20th century; the Mamluk encyclopaedic legacy: together with al-Safadi's al-Wafi, al-Qalqashandi's Subh al-A'sha, and Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima, al-Nuwairi's Nihayat al-Arab forms the corpus of Mamluk intellectual achievement — the last great flowering of classical Arabic encyclopaedism before the Ottoman period) is the most comprehensive of the Mamluk encyclopaedists.