Bahamut in nineteenth-century Arabic and Orientalist reference works

Record summary

Bahamut is a vast fish in Islamic cosmological traditions, often placed beneath a bull and supporting the world or the cosmic structure. Nineteenth-century encyclopedic, translation, and Orientalist works reproduced or discussed the figure, sometimes alongside descriptions of other legendary beings. The lead is useful for separating cosmology, exegesis, and folklore from reports of unknown animals, while also tracing how European authors classified Islamic marvel literature. Details differ substantially between sources, and many modern summaries flatten those differences into a single “monster” narrative.