Mafatih al-Ulum
- Author died
- 387 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-Kitāb al-‘Arabī
Mafatih al-Ulum (Keys of the Sciences) is an early Arabic encyclopedic dictionary of technical terminology across Islamic and foreign disciplines, authored by the secretary and scholar Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi (d. 387 AH / 997 CE) .
Author and Composition
The author, Abu Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Ahmad ibn Yusuf al-Katib al-Balkhi al-Khwarizmi, lived in Khurasan during the second half of the fourth century AH (tenth century CE) . He died in 387 AH (997 CE), though another report places his death around 380 AH . Al-Khwarizmi served in an administrative capacity and lived at the court in Nishapur during the reign of the Samanid amir Nuh ibn Mansur (Nuh II, r. 366–387 AH / 976–997 CE) . He composed the book for Abu al-Hasan Ubayd Allah ibn Ahmad al-Utbi, the vizier of Nuh ibn Mansur .
In his preface, al-Khwarizmi stated that he was prompted to compile a work that gathered the keys to the various sciences and the fundamentals of the arts, assembling the specialized terms and conventions used among each class of scholars that were largely omitted from general Arabic language lexicons .
Structure and Contents
The work is organized into two primary discourses (maqalat), subdivided into fifteen chapters (abwab), each dedicated to a distinct discipline :
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The First Discourse: Devoted to the Islamic legal sciences and Arabic disciplines, containing six chapters :
- Jurisprudence (fiqh)
- Scholastic theology (kalam)
- Grammar (nahw)
- Secretarial art and chancery administration (kitaba)
- Poetry and prosody (shi'r wa-arud)
- Historical reports and affairs of nations (akhbar)
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The Second Discourse: Devoted to the philosophical and rational sciences transmitted from other civilizations (ulum al-hikma), containing nine chapters :
- Philosophy (falsafa)
- Logic (mantiq)
- Medicine (tibb)
- Arithmetic and the science of numbers (ilm al-adad)
- Geometry (handasa)
- Astronomy and astrology (nujum)
- Music (musiqa)
- Mechanics and ingenious devices (hiyal)
- Alchemy (kimiya)
Sources and Methodology
The work provides concise, systematic definitions of specialized terms in each subject rather than exhaustive treatises. In the mathematical and scientific sections, al-Khwarizmi drew upon Greek works translated into Arabic, including writings attributed to Euclid, Nicomachus, Hero, and Philo . In the chapter on alchemy, the writings of Abu Bakr al-Razi served as his primary source; al-Khwarizmi arranged substances into metals, the four spirits, and aqaqir (drugs and reagents), including salts, sal ammoniac, borax, vitriols, stones, and processed materials .
Reception and Editions
The historian al-Maqrizi praised the book as a work of immense value (kitab jalil al-qadr) . It is regarded as one of the earliest Arabic works in the genre of terminological classification and definitions of sciences, preceding later compendia such as al-Sharif al-Jurjani's al-Ta'rifat and al-Kafawi's al-Kulliyyat .
The text was first edited by the Dutch Orientalist Gerlof van Vloten and published in Leiden in 1895 (reprinted in 1968) . Subsequent Arabic editions were published in Cairo (1342 AH / 1923 CE; 1976 CE) and Beirut (1984, ed. Ibrahim al-Ibyari; 1989) . Portions of the work—including sections on medicine, technology, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, alchemy, and music—were analyzed and translated into German and English by scholars such as E. Wiedemann, E. Seidel, J. Ruska, H. E. Stapleton, R. F. Azo, and M. Hidayat Husayn .
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