This manuscript contains a copy of the long version of the famous encyclopaedia of animals by the Egyptian author al-Damīrī. Regularly classified as an example of zoology, The Life of Animals consists of about a thousand entries about animals mentioned in Arabic literature, including important religious texts.

While the author himself exploited a wide range of sources, his encyclopaedia which survives in short, medium and long versions had an important impact on subsequent Arabic writing about animals.

The encyclopaedia is a significant source for the study of historical Arabic falconry literature. Falconry manuals typically include long instructions for the care and medical treatment of trainable birds of prey.

Both their food and the substances they were given to treat medical conditions contained parts of animals. In order to identify these animals and understand why historical authors thought their blood or flesh had a certain effect on the body, animal encyclopaedias such as The Life of Animals can be very useful.

They also shed light on the cultural significance of animals and on their interactions with other animals and with humans. Authors such as al-Damīrī often also made use of Arabic falconry literature. His chapter about the peregrine falcon, for example, contains an anecdote which can be traced back to the book of Adham and al-Ghiṭrīf.

The Life of Animals is mostly organized in alphabetical order by animal name. The encyclopaedia belongs to the tradition of literary encyclopaedias and anthologies. In its long version, it contains a number of digressions only loosely connected to the entries where they appear.

The chapter on the eagle, for example, contains an account of the downfall of the Barmakid family in the Abbasid period. Entries typically contain information about the names of animals, including their provenance, the position of the animals in a larger taxonomy, their appearance and behavior, legal regulations, medical properties of their body parts, and the significance of seeing them in dreams. There are poetic quotations too and a number of anecdotes.

Because of the encyclopaedia’s alphabetical organization, trainable birds of prey appear in different places. Al-Damīrī lists birds which also appear in Arabic falconry literature, but presents a different ornithological organization for them than the common division into four main species. There are greater overlaps between The Life of Animals and later Arabic falconry literature which tends to cover a wider range of subjects than the narrower and more focused book of Adham and al-Ghiṭrīf.

Kamāl al-Dīn Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān al-kubrā, 4 volumes, edited by Ibrāhīm Ṣāliḥ (Damascus: Dār al-bashāʾir, 2005).

Ad-Damîrî’s Ḥayât al-Ḥayawân (A Zoological Lexicon), translated by A.S.G. Jayakar, volumes I and II, part I (London and Bombay, 1906-1908).

Herbert Eisenstein, Einführung in die arabische Zoographie. Das tierkundliche Wissen in der arabisch-islamischen Literatur (Berlin, 1991), 132-142.

Joseph de Somogyi, ‘Ad-Damīrī’s Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān. An Arabic Zoological Lexicon’, Osiris 9 (1950), 33-43.

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