Harvard University Press Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos

"During the thirteenth century, the great scholar, geographer, physician, and astronomer Zakariya al-Qazwini (1203-1283) authored what became perhaps the single most influential work of natural history in the Islamic world: a compendium of curiosities entitled 'Aja'ib al-Makhluqat wa Ghara'ib al-Mawjudat, or, loosely translated, Wonders and Rarities. Following the travels of Qazwini's book across time and place, Travis Zadeh examines how Muslim intellectuals and religious authorities conceived of the world before the discovery of the western hemisphere and the rise of heliocentrism: through the language of wonder and rarity"-- “The wonders and curiosities of the Islamic imagination await discovery by a new generation of readers in this superb and very enjoyable book by Travis Zadeh.”—Orhan Pamuk, winner of the Nobel Prize in LiteratureThe astonishing biography of one of the world’s most influential books.During the thirteenth century, the Persian naturalist and judge Zakariyya? Qazwini authored what became one of the most influential works of natural history in the world: Wonders and Rarities. Exploring the dazzling movements of the stars above, the strange minutiae of the minerals beneath the earth, and everything in between, Qazwini offered a captivating account of the cosmos. With fine paintings and leading science, Wonders and Rarities inspired generations as it traveled through madrasas and courts, unveiling the magical powers of nature. Yet after circulating for centuries, first in Arabic and Persian, then in Turkish and Urdu, Qazwini’s compendium eventually came to stand as a strange, if beautiful, emblem of medieval ignorance.Restoring Qazwini to his place as a herald of the rare and astonishing, Travis Zadeh dramatically revises the place of wonder in the history of Islamic philosophy, science, and literature. From the Mongol conquests to the rise of European imperialism and Islamic reform, Zadeh shows, wonder provided an enduring way to conceive of the world—at once constituting an affective reaction, an aesthetic stance, a performance of piety, and a cognitive state. Yet through the course of colonial modernity, Qazwini’s universe of marvels helped advance the notion that Muslims lived in a timeless world of superstition and enchantment, unaware of the western hemisphere or the earth’s rotation around the sun.Recovering Qazwini’s ideas and his reception, Zadeh invites us into a forgotten world of thought, where wonder mastered the senses through the power of reason and the pleasure of contemplation. Travis Zadeh revives the work of the thirteenth-century Persian scholar Qazwini, whose Wonders and Rarities was for centuries one of the most influential natural histories in the world. Inviting us to embrace anew Qazwini’s rationalized study of nature and magic, Zadeh dramatically revises the place of wonder in the history of Islamic thought. Autorid: Travis Zadeh