The King's Dictionary: The Rasulid Hexaglot: Fourteenth Century Vocabularies in Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol

by Peter B. Golden (Editor)

Aden, of old one of the main Eurasian ports for goods from China, Southeast Asia and India on their way to the Mediterranean lands, was controlled during the 13th - 15th centuries by the Ras lid dynasty. One of their kings, al-Malik al-Afd al al- Abb s b. Al (1363-1377) wrote multilingual glossaries (vocabularia) of extraordinary importance, universally termed the Ras lid Hexaglot. Its emergence caused quite a stir (e.g. New York Times, February 1981), and it is with pride that we now present our customers with the authoritative translation, commentary, and explanation of the socio-historical context by a group of major experts. The Arabic, Persian, Turkic, Greek, Armenian and Mongol languages in the King s Dictionary were the most important tongues of the Eastern Mediterranean. The Greek, Armenian and Mongol sections, in particular, provide one of the few examples of transcriptions of living vernacular forms of the era. Thomas Allsen s captivating chapter on the Eurasian Cultural Context of the dictionary makes clear, i.a., the depth of connections among several Eurasian cultural areas in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests."

460 pages, Leather Bound

First published June 1, 2000

About the author

Peter Benjamin Golden (born 1941) is an American historian who is "professor emeritus" of History, Turkish and Middle Eastern Studies at Rutgers University. He has written many books and articles on Turkic and Central Asian studies, such as An introduction to the history of the Turkic peoples.

Golden grew up in New York and attended Music & Art High School. He graduated from CUNY Queens College in 1963, before obtaining his M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Columbia University in 1968 and 1970, respectively. Golden also studied at the Dil ve Tarih – Coğrafya Fakültesi (School of Language and History – Geography) in Ankara (1967–1968). He taught at Rutgers University from 1969 until his retirement in 2012. He was Director of the Middle Eastern Studies Program (2008–2011) at Rutgers. He is an honorary member of the Türk Dil Kurumu and Kőrösi Csoma Society of Hungarian Orientalists and was a member of the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton) 2005–2006. In 2019, he was elected an Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.