A World of Wonders: A Muslim Guidebook to the Cosmos

Writing amid the tumult of the Mongol invasions, the polymath Zakariyya al-Qazwini compiled an account of the earth and heavens that rose above his dismal surroundings to depict a creation full of wonders and rarities. After leading readers through everything under the sun—animal, mineral, or vegetable-he then turned to the planets and stars, before looking back below, to the relations of the celestial and terrestrial domains. Not content to remain on the level of the physical cosmos, Qazwini tried to show how observation of the natural world contained metaphysical and even moral lessons, teaching the careful observer how to live a better, and fuller, existence. At the core of this approach was the concept of wonder, a disposition Qazwini aimed to inculcate in his readers as they looked up and out from the pages of his book to the marvels of the cosmos around them. Nile Green talks to Travis Zadeh, author of Wonders and Rarities: The Marvelous Book That Traveled the World and Mapped the Cosmos (Harvard University Press, 2023).