Searchable Online Version Aḥmadnagarī, Dastūr al-ʿUlamāʾ, or Jāmiʿ al-ʿUlūm fī Iṣṭilāḥāt al-Funūn دستور العلماء للأحمدنكري

The Dastūr is an 18th-century encyclopedic work written in the Arabic language. Unlike other lexicons, the author does not stop at definitions, but goes into the full details of the topics he writes about (spending 12 pages on algebra, for example), whether in matters of Islamic law, Arabic grammar and phraseology, tajwīd (the art of the recitation of the Quran), Islamic mysticism, sociology, physiology, medicine, astronomy, geology, logic, mathematics or physics. This allows the Dastūr to be used as a guide in some classical areas of knowledge, for example in learning the rules of Arabic grammar. The author does not stop at including the opinions of other scholars, he adds his own opinions and judgments on matters of dispute among scholars, whether in matters of law, linguistics or the natural sciences, sometimes spending pages arguing for his own position against other scholars. An unusual feature of this book is that while it is in Arabic, the author makes occasional use of Persian in brackets and often includes examples from Persian poetry, perhaps a reflection of the high status of the Persian language during the Mughal period. The writer is the Muslim Indian scholar Aḥmadnagarī (d. in the 18th century CE / 12th century AH), whose full name is al-Qāḍī ("the judge") ʿAbd al-Nabī b. ʿAbd al-Rasūl al-Aḥmadnagarī. His last name of Aḥmadnagarī refers to the city of Ahmednagar in India, 230 miles east of Mumbai.