al-Shuur bil-Awar
- Author died
- 764 AH
- Editions
- Dār ʻAmmār
al-Shu'ur bi-l-'Awar (Sense of One-Eyedness) is a specialized literary and biographical compendium by the Mamluk-era scholar and man of letters al-Safadi (696–764 AH / 1296–1363 CE), dedicated to the lore, legal and linguistic aspects, and biographies of notable one-eyed individuals.
Background and Purpose
Al-Safadi composed the work after completing his biographical dictionary of blind figures, Nakt al-himyan fi nukat al-'umyan (Purse-Pockets on the Wit of the Blind), seeking to follow it with a parallel study dedicated exclusively to prominent one-eyed figures of past eras. The work reflects his broader interest in cataloging notable persons with specific physical traits and ailments, alongside other specialized works he wrote concerning blear-eyed figures and hunchbacks.
Structure and Contents
The author organized the book into six thematic introductions (muqaddimat) followed by a concluding biographical section (natija):
- First Introduction: Lexical and linguistic terms concerning one-eyedness.
- Second Introduction: Morphological and grammatical analysis of the vocabulary, including grammatical discussions on superlative and exclamatory constructions (af'al al-tafdil and al-ta'ajjub).
- Third Introduction: Hadith reports concerning the Antichrist (al-Dajjal) and his physical attribute of having one eye.
- Fourth Introduction: Jurisprudential rulings (fiqh) and legal matters concerning the one-eyed.
- Fifth Introduction: Proverbs, witty anecdotes, and literary tales concerning one-eyed individuals.
- Sixth Introduction: Poetic verses composed on one-eyedness and one-eyed persons.
- Conclusion (al-Natija): Biographies of famous one-eyed figures arranged in alphabetical order ('ala huruf al-mu'jam), containing accounts of seventy-seven individuals, including Companions of the Prophet, Successors, scholars, poets, and literati.
Manuscripts and Publication
Among the surviving manuscript copies of the book is one preserved in the al-Khalidiyya Library in Jerusalem, copied in 841 AH in black ink across 190 pages. Another copy is held in the Berlin State Library (MS No. 9867), spanning 112 pages with 27 lines per page. A photographic copy from an Istanbul manuscript was preserved in Ahmad Zaki Pasha's collection at Dar al-Kutub in Cairo. The text was edited by 'Abd al-Razzaq Husayn and published in Amman in 1988 CE.
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