Al-Nuwayri

Al-Nuwayrī, full name Shihāb al-Dīn Aḥmad bin ʿAbd al-Wahhāb al-Nuwayrī (Arabic: شهاب الدين أحمد بن عبد الوهاب النويري, 5 April 1279 – 5 June 1333) was an Egyptian Muslim historian and civil servant of the Bahri Mamluk dynasty.

He is most notable for his compilation of a 9,000-page encyclopedia of the Mamluk era, titled The Ultimate Ambition in the Arts of Erudition (نهاية الأرب في فنون الأدب, Nihāyat al-arab fī funūn al-adab), which pertained to zoology, anatomy, history, chronology, amongst others.

[2] The name Al-Nuwayri is a nisba referring to the village of Al-Nuwayra in present-day Beni Suef Governorate.

[5] At some point after 1312, he retired from government service and took a job copying manuscripts in order to support himself while compiling his encyclopedia.

[8] The rest of the work was a compilation of a number of texts including Delightful Concepts and the Path to Precepts (Mabahij al-fikar wa manahij al-'ibar) by Jamal al-Din al-Watwat and Avicenna's Canon of Medicine.