Abstract:
This article discusses one of the fields of study among medieval Muslim scholars, namely the field of Islamic languages, which in our modern era are called oriental languages. The discussion in it is devoted to a medieval Muslim scholar who specialized in genealogy, but nevertheless devoted some of his attention to scholarship on oriental languages, Jamal al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhanna (d. 682 / 1283). His book on oriental languages is entitled “Hilyatu al-insân wa halbatu al-lisân”. This work is devoted to three languages: Persian, Turkish, and Mongolian. My article is divided into two parts. The first presents an introduction to Ibn Muhanna, and the second presents an introduction to his book on oriental languages. Although the author was one of the great scholars of his time, the information about him in Islamic biographical dictionaries is negligible, and therefore he remained unknown among researchers until the early twentieth century, when the Turkish scholar Kilisli Rifat Bilge was able to discover a complete copy of the book. This manuscript is in the library of the Imperial Museum (Müze-i Hümâyûn) in Istanbul, and Bilge announced its discovery in an article published in the magazine “Iqdam” on June 5, 1338 AH / 1920 AD. Two years later (1340 AH / 1922 AD), Bilge published an edition of the manuscript. Hence, Jamal al-Din Ahmad ibn Muhanna and his book gained a respectable position among researchers interested in Turkish studies in particular, and oriental studies in general. The book includes an introduction and three sections. The author devoted the first section to the Persian language, the second section to the Turkish language, and the third section to the Mongolian language. Each of the three sections contains sections and chapters on the grammar of each of the three languages on the one hand, as well as sections on the vocabulary (verbs, nouns, and adjectives) used in daily conversation among speakers of each language in various areas of life.
