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THE WORLD OF MURTADA AL-ZABIDI (1732-91): LIFE, NETWORKS, AND WRITINGS by Stefan Reichmuth Oxford: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2009 (xxii + 398 pages, bibliography, index, illustrations, maps) $100.00 (cloth)
Reviewed by Dahlia E. M. Gubara
In this dense volume, Stefan Reichmuth does indeed provide, as he promises, "a comprehensive overview of Zabidi's life and works in the context of his times" (xxi). Murtada al-Zabidi was an eighteenth-century polymath, whose areas of expertise ranged from lexicography, genealogy, and philology to mysticism, theology, and prophetic narration (hadith). He taught and studied with leading personalities of the period, authored some of its most referenced works, and is associated with one of the earliest uses of the term al-nahda, which came to denote the late nineteenthcentury cultural revival in the Arab world. His significance for Arab- Islamic thought is well established, yet few English-language studies have attempted such a broad exploration of his life and works. Reichmuth, a professor of Oriental studies at Ruhr-Bochum University, is well suited for such an undertaking, having published prolifically on Islamic intellectual history, Islamic education, and Islam in Africa.
Each of the five chapters stands as an independent study in its own right. Chapter one reconstructs al-Zabidi's career, from India to Yemen and the Hijaz and finally to Cairo, where he died of the plague. Based largely on biographical sources in Arabic and Hindi/Urdu and al-Zabidi's own writing, it traces the mix of experiences that, combined with his personal and scholarly qualities, transformed him into such a leading authority. Chapter two assesses al-Zabidi the writer and publisher. Reichmuth documents al-Zabidi's methods of "advertising" his works to multiple audiences by way of expansive personal and professional relationships with political and scholarly elites and non-elites alike. Together, these two chapters consolidate existing biographical information and fill many gaps in our knowledge of al-Zabidi's trajectory.
Chapter three analyzes al-Zabidi's unfinished biographical lexicon, entitled Mu' jam, which provided the basis for the more famous 'Aja'ib al-Athar by his student 'Abd al-Rahman al-Jabarti. Reichmuth approaches it as a "fusion of genres" of the Arabic literary tradition, in which autobiographical, even sentimental, elements may be read (154). Nearly half of the text's entries speak of friendship and hospitality, and one third of them of relations of love (hubb, mahabba, mawadda,...