كتاب معارك العرب في الأندلس

Andalusia, that country that Muslims ruled for nearly eight centuries, and established an immortal civilization in it that is witnessed by the remains of the palaces and cities that they left behind, and the works of its scholars, and their role in enriching the pillars of European civilization. So why did Al-Andalus fall? A surprising question, but when we read “The Battles of Andalusia,” our astonishment disappears. Whereas, Boutros Al-Bustani traced in his book the battles that the West fought in order to conquer Andalusia, exposing the reasons for the weakness of the Andalusians. Andalusia lost its unity when the minister, Abu Al-Hazm bin Jahour, announced the fall of the state and its disintegration into 22 small states. Which cleared the way for the West to extract one state after another, and the last of these states was Granada, which fell in 1492 AD without the Muslims moving a finger. The Mamluk and Ottoman states preferred to play the role of spectators, to bring down the king of the Arabs, the center of Islamic civilizational radiation in the West.

About the book:
Boutros Boustany
The author Book Battles of the Arabs in Andalusia and the author of 51 another books.
Boutros Al-Bustani, nicknamed Al-Muallim Boutros, is a Lebanese writer, encyclopedist, educator, and historian who attended national schools and authored the first Arabic encyclopedia, which he called Circle of Knowledge: A General Dictionary for Every Art and Demand. The teacher, Boutros Al-Bustani, who died in 1883 AD, was the first to establish a high-class national school, the first to establish a sublime purposeful magazine, the first to compose a lengthy modern Arabic dictionary, and the first to start a project for a circle of knowledge in the Arabic language, and he is considered one of the greatest leaders of the modern Arab renaissance.

his life
His nickname "The Gardener" is a nickname for a famous Maronite family that produced many men who were fluent in the Arabic language and rendered many services to literature. Boutros Al-Bustani was born in the village of Debbieh, in the Chouf regions of Lebanon, on May 1, 1819 AD. He received his studies in theology and ecclesiastical law, and taught English on his own. In the year (1840) AD, he went to Beirut and contacted some American envoys, teaching them Arabic and Arabizing books for them, and they sought help from him to run the business in their printing press.

He was appointed as a professor at the Ubayyah School in 1860 AD, where he stayed for two years, then he was appointed as an interpreter for the American Consulate in Beirut.

After the year 1860 AD, he paid great attention to educating the people in his country, so he established the newspaper "Nafir Syria", which is the first upscale national newspaper. In the year 1863 AD, he founded the famous “Al-Wataniya School”, and it was the first national high school, and it was attended by students from different sects and different regions, and from neighboring countries to learn in it, and among other things they learned Arabic, English, French, human love and attachment to homelands. Most of what our teacher is known for is language and composition. He worked with authorship, so he compiled several books on arithmetic, grammar, morphology, language, and literature. He also left us traces that had the greatest impact on the culture of his time. The famous writer Lisa Haj Arab

He also left behind a number of sermons, lectures and articles that he delivered in forums and associations and published in newspapers and magazines. He also established, with the assistance of his eldest son, Selim, four newspapers, in addition to Nafeer Syria, namely: Al-Jinan, Al-Jinan, and Al-Jeneina. All of them were weekly or daily political, commercial, and literary newspapers.

As for his greatest works of all, it is the circle of knowledge, which he defined by saying, "It is a general dictionary for every art and demand." Six parts were issued during his lifetime, and five parts were published after his death. His sons, especially Salim and his brother-in-law, Suleiman Khattar al-Bustani, worked on it. The work stopped before he completed the project. This encyclopedia is truly the first national encyclopedia based on the modern method of authorship.

As for the second work of his, and the rest as well, it is the dictionary of Muhit al-Muhit, which is the first modern dictionary in the Arabic language. It was printed in two large volumes in Beirut in 1870 AD and submitted to the Ottoman Sultan, so he received the third glorious Medal. This dictionary is still one of the most important modern Arabic dictionaries, and every scholar needs it. A language and a research student, despite the passage of more than a hundred years since its authorship, because he arranged it according to the letters of the lexicon, considering the first letter of the abstract trio, and in it he collected many science and art terms, whether dictionary or Arabized, and explained the origins of some foreign words, and collected many living colloquial words and interpreted them, and adopted dictionaries Trusted old and use simple easy phrase.

The "Library of Lebanon" reprinted the dictionary in its two volumes, then renewed the 1977 edition in one volume, corrected the typographical errors, and distinguished the radical and main entries in a different color, which helps in the ease of use of the dictionary.