The World of Murtada al-Zabidi (1732-1791): Life, Networks and Writings.

Varisco, Daniel Martin

The World of Murtada al-Zabidi (1732-1791): Life, Networks and Writings. By STEFAN REICHMUTH. Exeter: GIBB MEMORIAL TRUST, 2009. Pp. xxiii + 398. $100.

"To crown a bride with a dictionary might be regarded as a rather bold metaphor," suggests Stefan Reichmuth in his new volume about the eighteenth-century author of Taj al-'arus (The Bridal Crown), a text that might be best characterized as the mother of all Arabic lexicons. For the serious scholar of Arabic there are few sources as important as Muhammad Murtada al-Zabidi's lexicon, compiled in Egypt before Napoleon's invasion and the oft-reputed onset of modern Orientalism. Edward Lane cited it frequently in his undyingly serviceable Arabic-English lexicon. Stefan Reichmuth of Ruhr University in Bochum has now brought this eminent and prolific Muslim scholar into the historical spotlight he deserves. The reader is introduced to the Muslim humanist scholar of the twelfth/eighteenth century and his significant corpus, one overshadowed by the lexicon. This is an extraordinary research project, which not only probes al-Zabidi's unpublished diaries and notes for biographical data, but illustrates the intellectual environment of Cairo during the late Mamluk era and provides an in-depth quantitative and qualitative survey of al-Zabidi's scholarly and personal networks. In particular, al-Zabidi's contribution to hadith studies and his Sufi network will be of interest to a variety of scholars.

The first chapter traces the early history of al-Zabidi, from his birth in India to his youthful emigration to the Hijaz and Yemen, the latter only occupying a formative period of five years. Like his famous grandfather, Muhammad Qadiri (d. 1732), al-Zabidi was a Naqshbandi, adding to his self-description as a Husayni sharif, belonging to the Hanafi madhhab and a specialist in the disciplines of prophetic tradition, lexicography, and genealogy (p. 2). Reichmuth documents the scholar's teachers in India, Yemen, and, for his later sojourn, Cairo, as well as his students, including 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti. It should be noted that al-Zabidi was a prolific traveler in Egypt and Palestine, seeking manuscripts and recording his observations. During his almost forty years as resident in Egypt he received visitors from all over the Islamic world, including sons of the Moroccan sultan Mawlay Muhammad b. 'Abdallah. Indeed, it seems al-Zabidi was adept at cultivating relationship with important political figures and managing to avoid the vagaries of regime change. By the time of his death in 1791 he had accumulated a great amount of wealth.

Some 225 titled writings, in addition to poems and ijazat, are enumerated by Reichmuth (pp. 98-148). Foremost among these is the major lexicon Taj al-'arus, completed in 1774. Al-Zabidi did not just set out to update earlier lexicons, but to pull together a comprehensive volume from the older authorities so that the reader would no longer need to consult them. For his effort al-Zabidi was praised as "the most eloquent (fasih) of the people of his time" (p. 58). Reichmuth devotes an entire chapter (pp. 223-68) to the evolution, style, and range of content in al-Zabidi's Taj. Many of us still no doubt resort to reprints of the old nineteenth-century edition, although there is a new forty-volume edition from Kuwait, which was finally completed in 2002 after almost four decades. In essence, Taj is an almost encyclopedic expansion of al-Firuzabadi's early fifteenth-century al-Qamus al-muhit, with the addition of geographical and personal names and more recent Arabic technical terminology. While the famous Lisan al-'arab of Ibn Manzur contained 9,273 Arabic roots, the Taj boasts 11,978 (p. 236). Reichmuth notes that al-Zabidi was no simple copyist, but a careful scholar who sought the most reliable manuscripts (p. 230) and had an extraordinary memory.

Anyone who has ever consulted the Taj, which probably covers any serious scholar of Arabic, should read Reichmuth's chapter on the text. It is as close to the biography of a book as one might make. Of particular interest is al-Zabidi's recording of figurative and metaphorical expression (majaz). For example, al-Zabidi adds the new term mukhula (for rifle), describing it as "this apparatus by which leaden bullets are shot, in the language of the Maghribis" (p. 243). Certain entries have an abundance of semantic variation. Thus, al-Zabidi takes the 77 connotations of 'ajuz to be found in al-Qamus al-muhit and adds 24 more that he found in al-Saghani's Takmila and several literary sources. One of the subjects that clearly fascinated al-Zabidi was honey ('asal), which receives an extended treatment on differing opinions about its origins.

The few years that al-Zabidi spent in Zabid and the Yemeni Tihama are reflected in the numerous Yemeni geographical locations cited. I have always consulted the Taj for specific Yemeni usages, although I suspect that in addition to his brief exposure to Yemeni dialect al-Zabidi drew many of his dialect terms from al-Saghani. It is interesting to note that al-Zabidi does not record the plant name qat (Catha edulis), although he does refer to kafta, a term used for leaves of the plant. He clearly knew about the plant, which would have been consumed by Yemenis, especially Sufi colleagues, in Zabid, as evidenced by his commentary on a Yemeni qasida on qat (p. 137). The Taj and other of his writings show a growing interest in European technology, especially adapting foreign words into Arabic. As reported by al-Jabarti, an eyewitness at al-Zabidi's death saw "a great number of valuable pocket watches scattered on the rugs of the hall, and they were still in the wrappings of their country" (p. 80).

As bold as the lexicon is, there is much more of value in the written corpus of al-Zabidi. Of particular interest is the autograph copy of his Mu'jam, an incomplete collection of 643 biographical accounts; this was published in 2006 in Beirut. First and foremost, though, al-Zabidi thought of himself as a specialist in hadith, composing an urjuza of 1,500 verses on transmitters. Other notable works include a major commentary on al-Ghazali's Ihya' 'ulum al-din, which Reichmuth styles "the only complete commentary on that book which has been written to this day" (p. 94), a defense of the Hanafi madhhab, a history of Arabic calligraphy, a study of the sacred roots of archery, and a genealogical survey of the female ancestry of the Prophet. There are clearly many important texts by the author to be studied, filling in the gap of knowledge about eighteenth-century Muslim scholarship. And, as Reichmuth reminds us, al-Zabidi discussed ethical and economic ideas at the same time as his European contemporaries, including Samuel Johnson (another lexical giant), Adam Smith, and the Physiocrats.

The most unusual, and unique, aspect of Reichmuth's analysis is the mapping and diagramming of al-Zabidi's personal networks. For example, the 643 biographical entries in the Mu'jam are delineated according to teachers, students, and partners, disciplines, age groups, offices, professions, titles, and al-Zabidi's designation of friendship (sahibna) and love (mahabba), the latter especially noted for Sufis (p. 162). Multiple matrixes are provided of joint occurrence of topics, ranking of topics for different groups, and shared topics according to Kemeny metric data. This multidimensional scaling, rare for studies of this kind, makes possible a statistical rendering of preferences by the type and even relative age of scholar.

The volume contains an extensive bibliography and comprehensive index. Only a few printing errors are in evidence, such as "counry" (p. 23), misplaced semi-colons (pp. 37, 237), "lead" for "led" (p. 41), and "Moroco" (p. 63). One annoying quirk of the text is the author's idiosyncratic transliteration system, at all costs trying to avoid double lettering and following a linguist's habit of using "x" for the Arabic letter kha'. Given that al-Zabidi writes formal texts, not in dialect, it would be better to stay with one of the standard Arabic transliteration systems. In all, Reichmuth's study stands as a model intellectual history. It deserves a reserved place in university and private libraries that the steep price will probably not favor.

DANIEL MARTIN VARISCO

HOFSTRA UNIVERSITY