Shidyaq’s lost anthology in his own hand

Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris al-. Kitab al-rawd al-nadher abyat wa nawadir.

Auf Anfrage

Lost, and in the hand of its own compiler. A unique manuscript anthology of verse and anecdotes, titled "Kitab al-rawd al-nadher abyat wa nawadir", compiled by Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq in 1846. The title-page formula "jam' katibihi", literally the compilation of its scribe, identifies Shidyaq not merely as compiler but also as copyist, making the present manuscript the defining survival of a work otherwise recorded only as wanting.

The collection gathers poems and short humorous tales from the Islamic Golden Age, opening with three anecdotes, two of them about Ibn al-Muqaffa, before passing to well-known voices including al-Hallaj, Abu Nuwas, and Ibn al-Rumi.

Rather than assembling familiar excerpts mechanically, Shidyaq orders the material as an act of literary preservation, pairing verse with anecdotal prose and inserting contextual names and notes in red so that the reader can move through a compact archive of remembered wit, eloquence, and moral incident.

Shidyaq (1805/06-1887), a widely travelled scholar, writer, journalist, and translator, was a foundational figure in modern Arabic literature, and his work helped shape the recovery and modernization of Arabic letters in the 19th century.

The present work did not reach print. The checklist of his writings issued by the Foundation of Lebanese Thought at Notre Dame University-Louaize records it as item 23 among his literary works and identifies it as wanting; no available copies have been traced in OCLC nor in Arabic sources.