مفتاح السعادة وصباح السيادة

Miftah al-Sa'adah wa Misbah al-Siyadah

Miftāḥ al-Saʿādah wa Miṣbāḥ al-Siyādah fī Mawḍūʿāt al-ʿUlūm (مفتاح السعادة ومصباح السيادة في موضوعات العلوم) by the renowned Ottoman scholar Ṭāshkubrīzādah Aḥmad ibn Muṣṭafā (d. 968 AH/1561 CE) is one of the great encyclopaedic and bibliographical works on the classification of knowledge in the Islamic tradition. Written at the height of the author’s scholarly maturity, it surveys approximately three hundred sciences and disciplines, introducing their names, definitions, subjects, benefits and branches, while identifying the principal books composed in each field and their authors.

Ṭāshkubrīzādah arranges the sciences into seven major “dawḥahs” (دوحات), encompassing writing and the written sciences; Arabic language, grammar, rhetoric, literature and history; instrumental disciplines such as logic, dialectics and the etiquette of scholarly discussion; theoretical and practical philosophical sciences; and, most extensively, the Islamic religious sciences and Sufism. His purpose was not merely to catalogue knowledge, but to provide students with a guide to understanding the sciences and the proper paths by which they may be studied and acquired.

A particularly valuable feature is its rich bibliographical content: thousands of works and their authors are mentioned, and Ṭāshkubrīzādah sometimes indicates that he had personally seen a particular book, comments upon its scholarly value or whereabouts, and candidly notes when he had been unable to verify it. The work is therefore an indispensable reference for the history and classification of Islamic scholarship, classical bibliography, and the literature of the various Islamic sciences up to the tenth century AH. (الجزيرة نت)