Description
Kashf aẓ-Ẓunūn ‘an 'asāmī ‘l-Kutub wa'l-funūn (كشف الظنون عن أسامي الكتب والفنون) (‘Opinion’s Scrutiny of the Names of Books and the Sciences’). Begun in Aleppo in 1042 AH/1632 AD and completed in about 1062 AH/1652 AD, it is a vast bibliographic-biographical dictionary in Arabic, and a research-tool for scholars. Its list, approx. 15,000 Arabic, Persian and Turkish titles, 9500 authors and 300 arts and sciences, comprises the most extensive bibliographical dictionary of Islamic literature. It was published as Lexicon Bibliographicum et Encyclopaedicum in Latin in 7 vols. About Author, Kâtip Çelebi (كاتب جلبي), or Ḥājjī Khalīfa (حاجي خليفة) was the celebrated Ottoman-Turkish polymath and leading literary author of the 17th-century Ottoman Empire. He compiled a vast universal encyclopaedia, the famous Kaşf az-Zunūn, and wrote many treatises and essays. “A deliberate and impartial historian… of extensive learning”, Franz Babinger hailed him "the greatest encyclopaedist among the Ottomans. His was born Muṣṭafa ibn 'Abd Allāh (مصطفى بن عبد الله) in Istanbul in February 1609 (Dhu’l-Qa‘da 1017 AH). His father was a sipahi[7] (cavalrist) and silāhdār (sword bearer) of the Sublime Porte and secretary in the Anadolı muhasebesi (financial administration) in Istanbul. His mother came from a wealthy Istanbul family.[5] From age five or six he began learning the Qur’ān, Arabic grammar and calligraphy, and at the age of fourteen his father found him a clerical position in the imperial financial bureaucracy. [9] [10] He excelled in penmanship, accountancy and siyāqat ("Treasury cipher").[n 4][11] As the accountant of the commissariat department of the Ottoman army in Anatolia, he fought alongside his father on the Terjan campaign (1624), and in the failed expedition to recapture Baghdād from Persian control (1625). On the return home his father died at Mosul, and his uncle died a month later. In 1626–1627 he was at the siege of Erzurum.