Works
Around 1171 in Hisn Kayfa, Usama wrote the Kitab al-'Asa ("Book of the Staff"), a poetry anthology about famous walking sticks and other staffs, and al-Manazil wa'l-Diyar ("Dwellings and Abodes"). In Damascus in the early 1180s he wrote another anthology, the Lubab al-Adab ("Kernels of Refinement"), instructions on living a properly cultured life. He is most famous for the Kitab al-I'tibar (translated various ways, most recently as the Book of Contemplation), which was written as a gift to Saladin around 1183. It is not exactly a "memoir", as Philip Hitti translated the title, although it does include many autobiographical details that are incidental to the main point. It was meant to be "a book of examples ('ibar) from which to draw lessons."
In 1880, Hartwig Derenbourg was the first to discover the Kitab al-I'tibar, which survived in only one manuscript, in the possession of the Escurial in Madrid. Derenbourg was also the first to produce an Arabic edition (1886), a biography of Usama (1889), and a French translation (1895). In 1930, Hitti produced an improved Arabic edition, and an English translation. Qasim as-Samarrai produced another Arabic edition in 1987.
Usama wrote in "Middle Arabic", a less formal style of classical Arabic.
Read more about this topic: Usama Ibn Munqidh
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)
“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
—Bible: New Testament, Galatians 2:15-16.
“I look on trade and every mechanical craft as education also. But let me discriminate what is precious herein. There is in each of these works an act of invention, an intellectual step, or short series of steps taken; that act or step is the spiritual act; all the rest is mere repetition of the same a thousand times.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)