SUYUTI [

See also:

• ABU

Abu-1 Fadhl'Abd ur-Rahman

See also:

• IBN

ibn Abi Bakr Jalal ud-Din us-Suyuti] (1445–1505)  , Arabian encyclopaedic writer, was the son of a Turkish slave woman . His father, who was of Persian descent, had been cadi in Suyut (Upper Egypt) and professor in Cairo, but died before his son was six years old . The boy's training was taken in hand by a Sufi friend of the father . He was precocious and is said to have known the Koran by heart before he was eight years old: In 1462 he was already a teacher; in 1464 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca; in 1472 he became a professor, and in 1486 was promoted to a chair in the mosque of Bibars . Here, however, he provoked a revolt among the students and in 15oi was discharged for maladministration of trust funds . Two years later he was offered the same post again, but declined, and worked in seclusion at Raucla, an island of the Nile, and there died in 1505 . He was one of the most prolific writers of the East, though many of his works are only pamphlets and some are mere abridgments of the work of others . We know of 561 separate titles of his works, and over 316 exist in manuscript . A list of these is given in C . Brockelmann's Gesch. der Arabischen Litteratur, ii . 144—158 (Berlin, 1902) . They deal with almost every branch of Moslem science and literature .

Among the best known are the Itgan fi `Ulum ul-Quran ( on the exegetic sciences of the Koran), published with an

analysis by A . Sprenger (Calcutta, 1852—1854) and often in Cairo; the commentary on the Koran, known as the Tafsir ul-Jalalain, begun by Jalfil ud-Din ul-Mahalli (1389—1459) and finished by Suyuti, published often in the East; and the history of the caliphs, published at Calcutta (1858) and elsewhere . (G . W .