The Construction of Knowledge in Islamic Civilization Qudama b. Ja 'far and His Kitab al-Kharaj wa-Sina'at al-Kitabah by Paul L. Heck (Leiden: E. J Brill, 2002. 243 pages.)

Abstract

Through the lens of genre, Heck examines Kitab al-Kharaj wa Sina 'at a/Kitabah
("The Book of the Land-Tax and the Craft of Writing/
Secretaryship"), a work on Islamic administration composed in Baghdad
in the early fourth/tenth century by the prominent secretary Qudamah ibn
Ja'far (d. 337/948). His analysis ofQudamah's manual, which belongs to
a body of texts that emerged in the late third/ninth century and focused primarily
on the concerns of state officials, proceeds by breaking it into constituent
parts and considering each one individually in relation to earlier
and contemporary works in related genres. The result is a detailed appreciation
for the work's characteristics and relative merits; showing how one
author constructed human knowledge; how he articulated the relationship
between knowledge, religion, and the 'Abbasid state; and how this por trayal
differed from other contemporary schemes.
The organization of the original work was as follows: I. Introduction,
2. The Art of Writing, 3. Language and Rhetoric, 4. Bureaus of the
Imperial Administration, 5. Bureaus of the Imperial Administration, 6.
Geography, 7. Fiscal Law, and 8. Political Thought. Unfortunately, only
chapters 5-8 survive. The unique manuscript at Istanbul's Koprulu Library
was published in facsimile edition in 1968 and edited in 1981 (the 1981
edition, Heck reports, contains numerous errors). The author's discussion
uses the rubrics of language in chapter 2 (parts 2-5), geography in chapter ...