8vo. Volume I: [8] introduction, [4, contents], 299 pp., / Volume II: [8 pp list of corrections], [7 pp contents], 272 pp., Arabic lithographic text within borders,edited by Nasr Hurini, modern hard back, Boulaq, al-Matba’ah al-Kubra al-Saniyah, Cairo, 1282 A.H / 1865.

Synopsis

Al-Suyuti, in full Jalal al-Din Abu al-Fadl ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn abi Bakr al-Suyuti , was an Egyptian author and teacher, born in 1445 in Cairo, Egypt, where he also died in 1505. His works deal with a wide variety of subjects, the Islamic religious sciences predominating.
The son of a judge, al-Suyuti was tutored by a Sufi (Muslim mystic) friend of his father. He was precocious and became a teacher when still young, in 1462. A controversial figure, he was deeply embroiled in the political conflicts and theological disputes of his time, and at one point he proclaimed himself the mujaddid (“renewer”) of the Islamic faith. In 1486 he was appointed head of the Sufi Lodge (Khanaqah) attached to the mosque of Baybars in Cairo and was living in virtual retirement. When in 1501 he tried to reduce the stipends of Sufi scholars at the mosque, a revolt broke out, and al-Suyuti was nearly killed. After his trial, he was placed under house arrest on the island of Rawḍah (near Cairo). He worked there in seclusion until his death.
Al-Suyuti’s works number more than 500; many are mere booklets, and others are encyclopaedic. He was the co-author of Tafsir al-Jalalayn (“Commentary of the Two Jalāls”), a word-by-word commentary on the Qur’an, the first part of which was written by Jalal al-Din al-Mahalli. His Itqan fi‘ulum al-Qur’an (“Mastery in the Sciences of the Qur’an”) is a well-known work on Qur’anic exegesis. Among his works that have been translated into English is Ta’rikh al-khulafa’ (History of the Caliphs), as well as a work on cosmology, another on exegesis, and several others.
Al-Suyuti was a compiler of genius rather than an original writer, but it is precisely his ability to select and abridge that makes his works so useful. This faculty characterises his most important philological work, Al-Muzhir fī ‘ulum al-lughah wa anwa’iha (“The Luminous Work Concerning the Sciences of Language and its Subfields”), a linguistic encyclopaedia covering such topics as the history of the Arabic language, phonetics, semantics, and morphology. It was largely derived from the works of two predecessors, Ibn Jinni and Ibn Faris. (Britannica Online Ecyc 7/4/09.)