Nuzhat al-Absar bi-Taraif al-Akhbar wa al-Ashar
- Author died
- 1362 AH
- Editions
- Dār al-‘Ibād
Nuzhat al-Absar bi-Taraif al-Akhbar wa al-Ashar (The Promenade of Sight in Choice Anecdotes and Poems) is an Arabic literary and poetic anthology compiled by Abd al-Rahman ibn Dirham .
Authorship and Contents
The work was authored by Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd Allah ibn Ahmad, known as Ibn Dirham, who is recorded as having lived approximately in the eleventh century AH (seventeenth century CE) .
The book is an adab compendium gathering choice historical anecdotes, rare narratives, and selections of Arabic poetry . It serves as an important source for preserving uncollected poetic fragments from early and medieval poets. For example, it preserves 33 poetic fragments comprising 70 verses by Ibn Waki' al-Tannisi, 23 of which are uniquely preserved in this compilation and absent from other source collections . The text also contains some textual misattributions and corruptions, such as recording verses by Mansur ibn Kayghalagh under the distorted name "Mansur ibn Waki'" .
Publication and Critical Reception
The book was printed and published in Doha, Qatar, in an undated two-volume edition .
The published edition was subject to modern scholarly critique by Muhammad Ajmal al-Islahi, who noted that despite being prepared by two editors, the edition contains extensive misreadings, corruptions (tashif), metrical errors in its poetic quotations, and an inadequate introduction, concluding that the work requires a new critical edition .
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