Encyclopedia of Men of Letters

Encyclopedia of Men of Letters (Mo’jam al-Odaba) is an Arabic book on the biographies and genealogies of famous Arab scholars, historians, poets, writers, philologists, grammarians and reciters of the Quran.

The author’s biography
Yaqut Rumi, famous Arab encyclopaedist; 1179 – 1129. A trader in the Persian Gulf, he traveled widely and ransacked libraries wherever he went. He wrote on the Arab genealogies and composed a work containing ####biographies of men of letters. His fame rests upon his Lexicon of the countries, which contains not only geographical information but also, under each place-name, astrological and historical data, quotations from poems and a list of eminent natives of the place.

Structure of the book:
The figures’ date of birth and death, works and in some parts, pieces of poets’ poems and also their lineage have been written. Most of the biographies are brief, but the biographies of some figures have been written in detail: Mahlabi, Shafi’I, Muhammad Ibn Jarir Tabari, Abul Fat’h Ibn Amid, Abu Hayyan Tawhidi and Sahib Ibn Abbad.

Other names of the book:
The News of Men of Letters
The News of Grammarians
The Book of Men of Letters
The book first was published by a great orientalist, in seven volumes in 1907 in Cairo, then it was corrected by Ibrahim Yazaji and Nastas Homsi which included 1041 biographies and was published in 1927 in Cairo. The third time it was published in 10 volumes.

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