7-550: The Biographie nationale de Belgique ( French pronunciation: [bjɔɡʁafi nɑsjɔnal də bɛlʒik] ; English: National Biography of Belgium ) is a biographical dictionary of Belgium . It was published by the Royal Academy of Belgium in 44 volumes between 1866 and 1986. A continuation series, entitled the Nouvelle Biographie Nationale ( New National Biography ), has been published by
14-410: A subject field, such as architecture or engineering. Tarif Khalidi claimed the genre of biographical dictionaries is a "unique product of Arab Muslim culture". The earliest extant example of the biographical dictionary dates from 9th-century Iraq , and by the 16th-century it was a firmly established and well-respected form of historical writing. They contain more social data for a large segment of
21-557: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Biographical dictionary A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in Who's Who , or deceased people only, in the Dictionary of National Biography ). Others are specialized, in that they cover important names in
28-400: Is called History of Damascus authored by a Muslim historian Ibn Asakir . When it comes to the numbers of individuals, American scholar of Islam Richard Bulliet argues that "a brief look at Brockelmann 's Geschichte der Arabischen Litteratur is sufficient to convince anyone that the number of individual biographies extant must run into the hundreds of thousands and most likely into
35-821: The Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium since 1988, with volume 16 appearing in 2023. Both the Biographie nationale and Nouvelle biographie nationale were digitised by the Fonds InBev-Baillet Latour and can be freely consulted on the Academy's website. A parallel biographical dictionary has been produced in Dutch since 1964, entitled Nationaal Biografisch Woordenboek ( Flemish pronunciation: [nɑ(t)ɕoːˈnaːl bijoːˈɣraːfis ˈʋoːrdə(m)ˌbuk] ; National Biographical Dictionary ). It places more emphasis on figures important to
42-592: The history and culture of the Flemish Region and is published by the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (with the co-operation of the Royal Academy of Dutch language and literature and the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium ). This Belgian history-related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about a biographical dictionary
49-483: The population than that found in any other pre-industrial society. The earliest biographical dictionaries initially focused on the lives of the prophets of Islam and their companions , with one of the earliest examples being The Book of The Major Classes by Ibn Sa'd al-Baghdadi , and then began documenting the lives of many other historical figures (from rulers to scholars) who lived in the medieval Islamic world. The largest known biographical dictionary ever produced
#858141