Shihāb al-Dīn Abū 'l-Abbās Aḥmad ibn ‘Alī ibn Aḥmad ‘Abd Allāh
al-Fazārī al-Shāfiʿī better known by the
epithet
An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...
al-Qalqashandī ( ar, شهاب الدين أحمد بن علي بن أحمد القلقشندي; 1355 or 1356 – 1418), was a medieval
Egyptian
Egyptian describes something of, from, or related to Egypt.
Egyptian or Egyptians may refer to:
Nations and ethnic groups
* Egyptians, a national group in North Africa
** Egyptian culture, a complex and stable culture with thousands of years of ...
encyclopedist
An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...
,
polymath
A polymath ( el, πολυμαθής, , "having learned much"; la, homo universalis, "universal human") is an individual whose knowledge spans a substantial number of subjects, known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific pro ...
and
mathematician
A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems.
Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change.
History
On ...
. A native of the
Nile Delta
The Nile Delta ( ar, دلتا النيل, or simply , is the delta formed in Lower Egypt where the Nile River spreads out and drains into the Mediterranean Sea. It is one of the world's largest river deltas—from Alexandria in the west to Po ...
, he became a Scribe of the Scroll (''Katib al-Darj''), or clerk of the
Mamluk
Mamluk ( ar, مملوك, mamlūk (singular), , ''mamālīk'' (plural), translated as "one who is owned", meaning " slave", also transliterated as ''Mameluke'', ''mamluq'', ''mamluke'', ''mameluk'', ''mameluke'', ''mamaluke'', or ''marmeluke'') ...
chancery in
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
,
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...
. His
magnum opus
A masterpiece, ''magnum opus'' (), or ''chef-d’œuvre'' (; ; ) in modern use is a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or a work of outstanding creativity, ...
is the voluminous administrative encyclopedia ''Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshá''.
''Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā''
''Ṣubḥ al-Aʿshá fī Ṣināʿat al-Inshāʾ'' ('The Dawn of the Blind' or 'Daybreak for the Night-Blind regarding the Composition of Chancery Documents'); a fourteen-volume encyclopedia completed in 1412, is an administrative manual on geography, political history, natural history, zoology, mineralogy, cosmography, and time measurement. Based on the ''Masālik al-abṣār fī mamālik al-amṣar'' of
Shihab al-Umari
Shihab al-Din Abu al-Abbas Ahmad ibn Fadlallah al-Umari ( ar, شهاب الدين أبو العبّاس أحمد بن فضل الله العمري, Shihāb al-Dīn Abū al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad ibn Faḍlallāh al-ʿUmarī), commonly known as Ibn Fadlal ...
, it has been called "one of the final expressions of the genre of
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
administrative literature".
Selections on "Seats of Government " and "Regulations of the Kingdom " from Early Islam to the Mamluks' have been published separately.
The ''Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā'' was cited by
David Kahn as the first published discussion of the substitution and transposition of ciphers, and the first description of a
polyalphabetic cipher, in which each
plaintext
In cryptography, plaintext usually means unencrypted information pending input into cryptographic algorithms, usually encryption algorithms. This usually refers to data that is transmitted or stored unencrypted.
Overview
With the advent of comp ...
letter is assigned more than one substitution. The exposition on cryptanalysis included the use of tables of
letter frequencies
Letter frequency is the number of times letters of the alphabet appear on average in written language. Letter frequency analysis dates back to the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 AD), who formally developed the method to break ...
and sets of letters which cannot occur together in one word.
Kahn therefore cited it as the first work in human history that described cryptology, because it described both cryptography and cryptanalysis. Al-Qalqashandi quoted the text relevant to cryptology from the work of
Ibn al-Durayhim ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad Ibn al-Durayhim ( ar, علي بن محمد ابن الدريهم; 1312–1359/62 CE) was an Arab cryptologist who gave detailed descriptions of eight cipher systems that discussed substitution ciphers, leading to the earliest ...
(1312–1361) that was once considered lost. Later discoveries in Istanbul‟s Sulaimaniyyah Ottoman Archives did not just find the work by Ibn Duraihim, but also works of
al-Kindi
Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn ʼIsḥāq aṣ-Ṣabbāḥ al-Kindī (; ar, أبو يوسف يعقوب بن إسحاق الصبّاح الكندي; la, Alkindus; c. 801–873 AD) was an Arab Muslim philosopher, polymath, mathematician, physician ...
in the 9th century that is now considered the oldest work on cryptology.
[Kathryn A. Schwartz (2009): Charting Arabic Cryptology's Evolution∗, ''Cryptologia'',33:4, 297-304 ]
References
Sources
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External links
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Further reading
*''Christian and Jewish Religious Dignitaries in Mamluk Egypt and Syria: Qalqashandi's Information on their Hierarchy, Titulature, and Appointment (I &II)'' ''
International Journal of Middle East Studies
The ''International Journal of Middle East Studies'' is a scholarly journal published by the Middle East Studies Association of North America (MESA), a learned society.
See also
* Middle East Research and Information Project
* Association for th ...
'', 3:1, 3:2 (1972)
1350s births
1418 deaths
14th-century Arabs
15th-century Arabs
14th-century Egyptian people
14th-century mathematicians
15th-century Egyptian people
15th-century mathematicians
Egyptian encyclopedists
Egyptian scientists
Medieval Egyptian mathematicians
Scholars from the Mamluk Sultanate
Encyclopedists of the medieval Islamic world
Pre-19th-century cryptographers
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