Title: Encyclopaedism in the Mamluk Period
Description: This dissertation explores the emergence of a golden age of Arabic encyclopaedic literature in the scholarly centers of Egypt and Syria during the Mamluk Empire (1250-1517). At the heart of the project is a study of Shihab al-Din Ahmad b. `Abd al-Wahhab al-Nuwayri's (d. 1333) Nihayat al-arab fi funun al-adab (`The Ultimate Ambition in the Branches of Erudition'), a 31-volume encyclopaedic work composed at the beginning of the 14th century and divided into five parts: (i) heaven and earth; (ii) the human being; (iii) animals; (iv) plants; and (v) the history of the world.