Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature
Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature

Author: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-03-28

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 9004691014

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In his Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful (Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan) the prolific anthologist al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) offers a thematically arranged selection of Arabic poems and prose anecdotes or sayings with contrary or paradoxical purport, such as praise of miserliness, boredom, sickness, and death, or condemnation of generosity, intelligence, youth, and music. The book is both entertaining and informative, giving insight in premodern Arab and Islamic culture. It contains a new edition of the Arabic text and a complete English translation (the first in any language) with extensive annotation, preceded by an introduction with the necessary background of the genre.

Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature: Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful by Abū Manṣūr Al-Thaʿālibī
Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature: Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful by Abū Manṣūr Al-Thaʿālibī

Author: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī

Publisher: Brill Studies in Middle Easter

Published: 2024-03-28

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789004691001

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The entertaining and informative Arabic anthology by al-Thaʿālibī (d. 1037), Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful, offers poems and prose with contrary or paradoxical statements, thematically arranged. The book contains a new edition and a richly annotated English translation.

The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature
The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature

Author: Esad Durakovic

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-04-24

Total Pages: 360

ISBN-13: 1317520483

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Through analysing ancient and classical Arabic literature, including the Qur'an, from within the Arabic literary tradition, this book provides an original interpretation of poetics, and of other important aspects of Arab culture. Ancient Arabic literature is a realm of poetry; prose literary forms emerged rather late, and even then remained in the shadow of poetic creative efforts. Traditionally, this literature has been viewed through a philologist’s lens and has often been represented as ‘materialistic’ in the sense that its poetry lacked imagination. As a result, Arabic poetry was often evaluated negatively in relation to other poetic traditions. The Poetics of Ancient and Classical Arabic Literature argues that old Arabic literature is remarkably coherent in poetical terms and has its own individuality, and that claims of its materialism arise from a failure to grasp the poetic principles of the Arabic tradition. Analysing the Qur’an, which is known for confronting the poetry of the time, this book reveals that "post Qur’anic" literature came to be defined against it. Thus, the constitution and interpretation of Arabic literature imposed itself as a particular exegesis of the sacred Text. Disputing traditional interpretations by arguing that Arabic literature can only be assessed from within, and not through comparison with other literary traditions, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Islamic Studies, Arabic Studies and Literary Studies.

Night & Horses & The Desert
Night & Horses & The Desert

Author: Robert Irwin

Publisher: ABRAMS

Published: 2016-06-21

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1590209141

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This collection of Arabic literature is “a joy to read. . . . a journey through eleven centuries of a lost world, with a surprise on almost every page” (Financial Times). Spanning the fifth to the sixteenth centuries, from Afghanistan to Spain, Night & Horses & The Desert includes translated extracts from all the major classics in an invaluable introduction to the subject of classical Arabic literature. Robert Irwin has selected a wide range of poetry and prose in translation, from the most important and typical texts to the very obscure. Alongside the extracts, Irwin’s copious commentary and notes provide an explanatory history of the subject. What were the various genres and to what extent were they constrained by rules? What were the canons of traditional Arabic literary criticism? How were Arabic prose and poetry recited and written down? Irwin explores the literary environments of the desert, salon, mosque, and bookshop and provides brief biographies of the caliphs, princesses, warriors, scribes, dandies, and mystics who created such a rich and diverse literary culture. Night & Horses & The Desert gives western readers a unique taste of the sheer vitality and depth of the medieval Arab past. “Superb . . . . a revelation.” —The Washington Post “[A] treasure-house of a book. . . . Unequaled for scholarship and entertainment.” —The Independent

Aristotle's Meteorology in the Arabico-Latin Tradition
Aristotle's Meteorology in the Arabico-Latin Tradition

Author: Pieter L. Schoonheim

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-05-03

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 9004453113

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Aristotle’s Meteorology: a twin set in Mediaeval Text Tradition. The Greek text of Aristotle’s Meteorology is in places highly problematic. Its edition by Fobes (1922), however, is a highlight in editorial technique. The Arabic version (c.800) is of quite different form and content. The two editions by Badawi (1961) and Petraitis (1967) were subject to considerable improvement. The present edition was done on the basis of the two extant Arabic manuscripts. The edition of the Latin translation (12th c.) from the Arabic has been constituted on the basis of 5 manuscript sources, out of 110 copies. The status of both the Arabic and the Latin texts was bad, but not hopeless: as the Latin version stands near to its Arabic predecessor, the text of the latter gives support to the editing of the text, as well as for the understanding of the contents. And this procedure works vice versa. The present edition of the texts has been completed with an Index of technical terms in Arabic, Greek and Latin and Registers on the Greek and Latin. Further a Bibliography and List of Latin manuscripts are presented.

History of Linguistics Volume I
History of Linguistics Volume I

Author: Giulio C. Lepschy

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-06-03

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1317895312

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This comprehensive history of linguistics is part of a 5 volume set. Together, the volumes examine the social, cultural and religious functions of language, its place in education, the prestige attached to different varieties of language, and the presentation of lexical and grammatical descriptions. They explore the linguistic interests and assumptions of individual cultures in their own terms, without trying to transpose and reshape them into the context of contemporary ideas of what the scientific study of language ought to be. The authors of individual chapters are all specialists who have been able to analyse the primary sources, and so produce original syntheses which offer an authoritative view of the different traditions and periods. Volime One examines the developments of Chinese linguistics, Indian grammatical tradition, the linguistic interests of the Near East, the Hebrew tradition, and the Arabic grammatical system of the Middle Ages.

Classical Arabic Philosophy
Classical Arabic Philosophy

Author:

Publisher: Hackett Publishing

Published: 2007-03-15

Total Pages: 462

ISBN-13: 1603840338

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This volume introduces the major classical Arabic philosophers through substantial selections from the key works (many of which appear in translation for the first time here) in each of the fields--including logic, philosophy of science, natural philosophy, metaphysics, ethics, and politics--to which they made significant contributions. An extensive Introduction situating the works within their historical, cultural, and philosophical contexts offers support to students approaching the subject for the first time, as well as to instructors with little or no formal training in Arabic thought. A glossary, select bibliography, and index are also included.

Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar
Al-Maqrīzī’s al-Ḫabar ʿan al-bašar

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-03-19

Total Pages: 375

ISBN-13: 9004386955

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In The Arab Thieves, Peter Webb critically explores the classic tales of pre-Islamic Arabian outlaws in Arabic Literature. A group of Arabian camel-rustlers became celebrated figures in Muslim memories of pre-Islam, and much poetry ascribed to them and stories about their escapades grew into an outlaw tradition cited across Arabic literature. The ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrīzī arranged biographies of ten outlaws into a chapter on ‘Arab Thieves’ in his wide-ranging history of the world before Muhammad. This volume presents the first critical edition of al-Maqrīzī’s text with a fully annotated English translation, alongside a detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrīzī used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam. Via an exhaustive survey of early Arabic sources about the outlaws and comparative readings with outlaw traditions in other world literatures, The Arab Thieves reveals how Arabic literature crafted lurid narratives about criminality and employed them to tell ancient Arab history.

Justice in Islam
Justice in Islam

Author: RAYMOND WILLIAM. BAKER

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2022

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0197624979

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"Justice stands as the crown jewel of the Islamic moral universe. Qur'anic referenes to justice are more frequent than those to the prophets of Islam. It is justice, rather than jihad or "holy war"' of the Western imagination, that defines the centrist Islam of the Qur'an. Justice in midstream Islam is at once "one and many," to borrow a formulation of Islamic mystics. Justice is one as the core Islamic value and many in the particular struggles for social justice it inspires. Abu Dharr al Ghifari, the beloved 7th century companion of the Prophet Muhammd, authored several hundred prophetic traditions and fought for the rights of the poor. Abu Dharr modeled the combination of scholarship and activism that characterizes Islamic intellectuals. Struggles for social justice waged in Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and beyond evoke the Prophet's companion as exemplar. The excesses of extremist thinking and the blinding glare of the violence it fosters may threaten to overwhelm the faith. Invariably, however, Islamic intellectuals step forward to restore moderation. Centrist Islam today is winning adherents at a pace that outstrips all other faiths. Individual chapters focus on the contributors to this Awakening, including the Egyptian Shaikh Muhammad al Ghazalli, the Turkish scholar Sa'id Nursi, the Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Fadlallah, the martyred Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Baqir al Sadra, the Iranian intellectual Ali Sheriati, and the American athlete and Muslim convert Muhammad Ali. Their stories explain how an awakened Islam has today become a global phenomenon"--