The Classification of Sciences in an Ottoman Arabic Encyclopaedia: Taskopruzada's Miftah al-Sa'ada

This article offers an insight into the work of Aḥmad b. Muṣṭafā Ṭāšköprüzāda (d. 968/1561), one of the most prolific Ottoman scholars of the sixteenthcentury, whose life has been barely studied as regards the author’s encyclopaedic production. The first part presents the main stages of his formation, as he himself outlined it in the al-Šaqāʾiq al-Nuʿmāniyya. This profile provides a unique insight of an Ottoman polymath and literate at work in the various fields of the Islamic knowledge. His training finds a consistent continuity in his work as an author and in the construction of the the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda, in which he quoted a great number of works that he had studied. The second part of the article focuses on this work and the classification of sciences given in it. The appendix includes a complete translation of the table of contents of the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda, which provides a detailed description of its contents and shows its highly diversified structure. Finally, an excerpt from the Miftāḥ al-Saʿāda concerning the definition of “the science of divisions of sciences” is included.