Ibn Wahshiyya

All you want to know about Ibn Wahshiyya

Ibn Wahshiyah (fl. 9th century/10th century) (Arabic: أبو بكر أحمد بن وحشية Abu Bakr Ahmed ibn 'Ali ibn Qays al-Wahshiyah al-Kasdani al-Qusayni al-Nabati al-Sufi‎)[1] was a Nabataean Arab writer, alchemist, agriculturalist, Egyptologist and historian born at Qusayn near Kufa in Iraq. He was known in early modern Europe as Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih.[2]

A reference to Ibn Wahshiyah is made in the archaeological mystery Labyrinth by Kate Mosse.

Contents

Works

Ibn al-Nadim (in Kitab al-Fihrist) list a large number of books on magic, statues, offerings, agriculture, alchemy, physics and medicine, that were either written, or translated from older books, by Ibn Wahshiyah.

Agriculture

It is thought that he wrote or translated a book called Nabataean Agriculture (Kitab al-falaha al-nabatiya) (c. 904), a major treatise on the subject, which was said to be based on ancient Babylonian sources. The book extols Babylonian-Aramean-Syrian civilization against that of the conquering Arabs. It contains valuable information on agriculture and superstitions, and in particular discusses beliefs attributed to the Sabeans that there were people before Adam, that Adam had parents and that he came from India. These ideas were discussed by the Jewish philosophers Judah ben Samuel Halevi and Maimonides, through which they became an influence on the seventeenth century French Millenarian Isaac La Peyrère.

Egyptology

Ibn Wahshiyah is said to be author of Kitab Shawq al-Mustaham, a work that discusses a number of ancient alphabets and claims to offer a translation of Egyptian hieroglyphics. An edition of the Arabic text with English translation by Joseph Hammer appeared in 1806 and the text was known to Silvestre de Sacy a colleague of Jean-François Champollion. Dr Okasha El Daly, at University College London's Institute of Archaeology, claims that some hieroglyphs had been decoded by Ibn Wahshiyah, eight centuries earlier than Champollion deciphered the Rosetta stone.[3]

Ibn Wahshiyya was one of the first historians to be able to at least partly decipher what was written in the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs,[4] by relating them to the contemporary Coptic language used by Coptic priests in his time. An Arabic manuscript of Ibn Wahshiyya's book on Egyptology, in which he deciphered a number of Egyptian hieroglyphs, was later read by Athanasius Kircher in the 17th century, and then translated and published in English by Joseph Hammer in 1806 as Ancient Alphabets and Hieroglyphic Characters Explained; with an Account of the Egyptian Priests, their Classes, Initiation, and Sacrifices in the Arabic Language by Ahmad Bin Abubekr Bin Wahishih, 16 years before Jean-François Champollion's complete decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs.[2]

See also

References

  1. ^ Okasha El-Daly (2005), Egyptology - The Missing Millennium, UCL Press
  2. ^ a b Dr. Okasha El Daly, Deciphering Egyptian Hieroglyphs in Muslim Heritage, Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester
  3. ^ McKie, Robin (2004-10-03). "Arab scholar 'cracked Rosetta code' 800 years before the West", The Observer, Guardian News and Media Limited 2007. Retrieved on 2007-05-23. 
  4. ^ Dr. Okasha El Daly (2005), Egyptology: The Missing Millennium: Ancient Egypt in Medieval Arabic Writings, UCL Press, ISBN 1844720632 (cf. Arabic Study of Ancient Egypt, Foundation for Science Technology and Civilisation)
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