البصائر والذخائر-صادر

al-Basa'ir wa-al-Dhakha'ir

Al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-Dhakhāʾir (البصائر والذخائر) is one of the great literary anthologies of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (d. ca. 400 AH), the celebrated man of letters, philosopher and prose stylist of the fourth Islamic century. It is a vast treasury of material gathered from al-Tawḥīdī’s extensive reading, learning and personal transmission, preserving thousands of selections from the Arabic literary and intellectual heritage.

The work brings together wise sayings, anecdotes, historical reports, poetry, eloquent speeches and letters, proverbs, moral observations, linguistic material, humour, philosophical reflections and accounts of scholars, rulers, poets and men of letters. Its contents range freely across literature, ethics, wisdom, language, history, society and human character, often preserving memorable statements and reports attributed to earlier authorities. Examples throughout the work show al-Tawḥīdī quoting figures as diverse as al-Jāḥiẓ, early Arab sages, scholars, philosophers and ascetics.

Rather than being a systematically arranged treatise on a single discipline, al-Baṣāʾir wa-l-Dhakhāʾir is essentially a large adab anthology and repository of intellectual and literary treasures. Al-Tawḥīdī himself presents it as the fruit of his accumulated reading and experience, and its remarkable variety makes it an important source for classical Arabic prose and poetry as well as for the intellectual and cultural life of the Abbasid period.

This is the relied-upon edition prepared by Dr. Wadād al-Qāḍī and published by Dār Ṣādir.