- Comparative Literature, World Literatures, Arabic Manuscripts, Medieval Islam, Al-Andalus, Byzantine Studies, and 44 moreClassical Arabic Poetry, Near Eastern Studies, Arabic Lexicography, Medieval Mediterranean, Muslims subjects under Christian rule in Latin East, Islam and Human Rights, Islamic Philosophy, History of the Islamic World, Islamic and Norman Sicily, Histoire de l'Ifriqiya, Social and Cultural Anthropology, Global Middle Ages, Tunisian History, Medieval Jewish-Muslim Encounters, Judeo-arabic manuscripts regarding Islam, Polemics of Jewish Authors against Islam, Early Islam, Classical Geo-Cosmography and Ethnography, Classical Arabic Prose Literature, Islamic Mysticism, Modern Arabic Literature, Maghrebi Literature, Postcolonial Literature, Arabic Literature, Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language (TAFL), Arabic Dialects, Classical and Modern Arabic Literature and Culture, Classical Islam, Confluence and Dialogue In Arabic Islamic Thought, Arabic Western Literary and Cultural Relations, teaching Arabic as a foreign language, Literary translation, Creative Writing, Travel Writing, Islamic History, Philosophy, History, Anthropology, Political Science, The City in Literature and Culture, Arabic Prose Literature, Geography, Education, Cultural Studies, English Literature, and Englishedit
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An Edited Volume of 16 Chapters (follow link for table of contents on Edinburgh University Press page under file attachments): While the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies may be a relatively recent phenomenon, an explicit... more
An Edited Volume of 16 Chapters (follow link for table of contents on Edinburgh University Press page under file attachments):
While the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies may be a relatively recent phenomenon, an explicit concern with the space of the city has had an enduring presence in the Arabic-Islamic tradition. The trope of the madina (town or city, plural: mudun), whether real or imaginary, ideal or corrupt, conquered or lost, earthly or celestial, is a recurrent motif throughout the premodern Arabic literary corpus. In the modern period as well, while critics have often chosen to focus on early Arab novelists’ interest in the rural, the canonical texts of post-WWII/post-colonial Arabic poetry and prose reveal that the city has, time and again, served as a virtual battleground for some of the Arab world's most complex intellectual, sociocultural, and political issues. In this sense, the city is transformed into something beyond a physical structure and textual space, taking on the role instead of an auto/biographical, novelistic, and poetic arena—frequently troubled and contested—for debating the conflict between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern, the individual and the communal, and the Self and the Other.
From its initial conception, the aim of this volume has been to address the topic of the city in the Arabic literary tradition as a whole, its goal to explore the ways in which the city has been represented by both classical and modern authors writing in Arabic from different theosophical and ideological backgrounds. Crucial to its organizing theoretical paradigm from the beginning has been the rejection of the stark rupture that is too often seen to separate the premodern and modern Arabic literary traditions. We set out determined to view the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum and to create a collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literature.
While the spatial turn in literary and cultural studies may be a relatively recent phenomenon, an explicit concern with the space of the city has had an enduring presence in the Arabic-Islamic tradition. The trope of the madina (town or city, plural: mudun), whether real or imaginary, ideal or corrupt, conquered or lost, earthly or celestial, is a recurrent motif throughout the premodern Arabic literary corpus. In the modern period as well, while critics have often chosen to focus on early Arab novelists’ interest in the rural, the canonical texts of post-WWII/post-colonial Arabic poetry and prose reveal that the city has, time and again, served as a virtual battleground for some of the Arab world's most complex intellectual, sociocultural, and political issues. In this sense, the city is transformed into something beyond a physical structure and textual space, taking on the role instead of an auto/biographical, novelistic, and poetic arena—frequently troubled and contested—for debating the conflict between the rural and the urban, the traditional and the modern, the individual and the communal, and the Self and the Other.
From its initial conception, the aim of this volume has been to address the topic of the city in the Arabic literary tradition as a whole, its goal to explore the ways in which the city has been represented by both classical and modern authors writing in Arabic from different theosophical and ideological backgrounds. Crucial to its organizing theoretical paradigm from the beginning has been the rejection of the stark rupture that is too often seen to separate the premodern and modern Arabic literary traditions. We set out determined to view the entirety of the tradition as an evolving continuum and to create a collection relevant to scholars of both classical and modern Arabic literature.
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"In this important book, which is based on his PhD dissertation, Nizar Hermes explores the depiction of Europeans in medieval Arabic texts. In the process he draws attention to the corpus of works by writers from both the eastern and... more
"In this important book, which is based on his PhD dissertation, Nizar Hermes explores the depiction of Europeans in medieval Arabic texts. In the process he draws attention to the corpus of works by writers from both the eastern and western Muslim world that describe Europe, and in doing so proposes a valuable re-assessment of what these works tell us about Muslim attitudes to Europe and its inhabitants during the period under discussion . . . This book will hence be invaluable to scholars, students and interested laypersons seeking to gain a better understanding of how Europe was seen from the Islamic world." - The Medieval Review
"A valuable and cogent review of what a number of medieval Arabic writers, in particular geographers, have said about medieval Europe and Europeans . . . Hermes has provided an extremely useful and readable survey addressing an important issue in the history of cultural contacts between Europe and the Arab world." - Speculum
"While previous research has tended to argue that Arabs basically took note of [Western] Europe only since the eighteenth century, the present study by Nizar F. Hennes, based on his Toronto doctoral dissertation, presents a wealth of different material that confirms in a variety of ways that Arab writers and scholars paid considerable attention to Europe already since the ninth century. Hermes does not intend to consider whether or how much Arabic culture might have influenced medieval European culture, which would be certainly a most intriguing topic as well; instead he makes wonderful and highly impressive efforts to determine what Arab scholars knew about Europe, as reflected by their chronicles, travelogues, and scientific work . . . Hermes's study represents a major step forward in our understanding of East-West communication already in the Middle Ages." - Mediaevistik: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Medieval Research
"A valuable and cogent review of what a number of medieval Arabic writers, in particular geographers, have said about medieval Europe and Europeans . . . Hermes has provided an extremely useful and readable survey addressing an important issue in the history of cultural contacts between Europe and the Arab world." - Speculum
"While previous research has tended to argue that Arabs basically took note of [Western] Europe only since the eighteenth century, the present study by Nizar F. Hennes, based on his Toronto doctoral dissertation, presents a wealth of different material that confirms in a variety of ways that Arab writers and scholars paid considerable attention to Europe already since the ninth century. Hermes does not intend to consider whether or how much Arabic culture might have influenced medieval European culture, which would be certainly a most intriguing topic as well; instead he makes wonderful and highly impressive efforts to determine what Arab scholars knew about Europe, as reflected by their chronicles, travelogues, and scientific work . . . Hermes's study represents a major step forward in our understanding of East-West communication already in the Middle Ages." - Mediaevistik: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Medieval Research
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Ibn Khamīs al-Tilimsānī (d. 1309 CE) was arguably one of the two greatest premodern poets of al-maghrib al-awsaṭ (the Central Maghrib, roughly modern-day Algeria), the other being Bakr ibn Ḥammād al-Tāhartī (d. 908). During the Marīnid... more
Ibn Khamīs al-Tilimsānī (d. 1309 CE) was arguably one of the two greatest premodern poets of al-maghrib al-awsaṭ (the Central Maghrib, roughly modern-day Algeria), the other being Bakr ibn Ḥammād al-Tāhartī (d. 908). During the Marīnid siege of Zayyānid Tlemcen (1299–1307), Ibn Khamīs fled to Ceuta in 1305 before settling in Naṣrid Granada, after short stays in Algeciras and Malaga. In Granada, the Tlemcenian poet-scholar lived as a protégé of the reviled vizier Ibn al-Ḥakīm al-Rundī, until their murder in 1309 by an enraged mob. While living in exile, Ibn Khamīs never forgot about his waṭan (homeland/hometown) which he most fondly, albeit obsessively, recalled and memorialized in a plethora of nostalgic poems (Tilimsānīyyāt) among which a ḥāʾiyya (poem rhyming on the letter ḥ) stands out as the finest example. After presenting an English translation of the ḥāʾiyya and other relevant verses, I argue that the Tilimsānīyyāt abound in an operatic recollection that unconventionally braids a nostalgic portrait of Tlemcen with a fixation on the past and a suppression of the present.
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In this article, we explore the Orientalized perception and racialized representation of the Afro-Arab sultan of Morocco Mūlāy Ismā' īl(r. 1672 to 1727) as found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French sources. We do so by chiefly... more
In this article, we explore the Orientalized perception and racialized representation of the Afro-Arab sultan of Morocco Mūlāy Ismā' īl(r. 1672 to 1727) as found in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French sources. We do so by chiefly revisiting the mock "fairy tale love story" of Mūlāy Ismā' īl, including his alleged marriage proposal to Marie Anne de Bourbon, la Princesse de Conti, the eldest legitimized and favorite daughter of King Louis XIV of France. After examining the Orientalist tropes of French and European images of Mūlāy Ismā'īl, we turn to a number of modern and contemporary Moroccan defenses of Mūlāy Ismā'īl, especially as articulated by Moroccan historian and apologist Ibn Zaydān, one of presumably thousands of Mūlāy Ismā'īl's descendants. Our aim is to explore how the racially charged Franco demonizations and the discursively loaded Moroccan vindications of Mūlāy Ismā'īl have been reinvented and renegotiated in French and Arabic historical and literary sources from the seventeenth century up to the twenty-first century.
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Through discussing issues related to the play's subgenre(s) and especially alterity, I will present what I see as the ambivalent discourses at work in The Tragedy of Mariam which make it almost impossible to come up with a conclusive... more
Through discussing issues related to the play's subgenre(s) and especially alterity, I will present what I see as the ambivalent discourses at work in The Tragedy of Mariam which make it almost impossible to come up with a conclusive verdict on the subversiveness or conservatism of the text which, by and large, has dominated its critical reception. This stands in stark opposition to what some would call, not without truth, as the play's orientalist discourse. The latter can be traced in several textual instances, but notably in the stereotypical representation of the Arabian Silleus, the exotic and erotic lover/seducer of the play's anti-heroine Salome, which, I will argue, does not only reminisce of medieval anti-Saracen rhetoric, but equally it coalesces early modern literary and non-literary demonization of the Moors. I propose it is always legitimate to question the applicability of Edward Said's theory to the medieval and early modern encounters between the Isla...
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In this article, I examine the life and career of forgotten Levantine poet Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 1154) and explore his largely obscure poetic legacy, especially his fascinating Ifranjiyyāt (Poems on the Franks). Among Ibn al-Qaysarānī’s... more
In this article, I examine the life and career of forgotten Levantine
poet Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 1154) and explore his largely obscure
poetic legacy, especially his fascinating Ifranjiyyāt (Poems on the
Franks). Among Ibn al-Qaysarānī’s poetic treasures, there is an
intriguing alterist corpus of poems he composed while journeying
into the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268). Especially if read
against Edward Said’s Orientalism, the Ifranjiyyāt’s ultimate
historical and cultural value, I argue, lies not only in how these
understudied poems capture the poet’s complex depiction of the
Franks, but also, and most importantly, in how they poetically
document the array of medieval Arab-Muslim responses to the
Crusades.
poet Ibn al-Qaysarānī (d. 1154) and explore his largely obscure
poetic legacy, especially his fascinating Ifranjiyyāt (Poems on the
Franks). Among Ibn al-Qaysarānī’s poetic treasures, there is an
intriguing alterist corpus of poems he composed while journeying
into the Principality of Antioch (1098–1268). Especially if read
against Edward Said’s Orientalism, the Ifranjiyyāt’s ultimate
historical and cultural value, I argue, lies not only in how these
understudied poems capture the poet’s complex depiction of the
Franks, but also, and most importantly, in how they poetically
document the array of medieval Arab-Muslim responses to the
Crusades.
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Ibn Rashīq’s popularity in the Arab world as one of the most distinguished classical Maghribi poets owes much to what is often called in Arabic school textbooks “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq fī rithāʾ al-Qayrawān,” or simply “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq.”... more
Ibn Rashīq’s popularity in the Arab world as one of the most distinguished classical Maghribi poets owes much to what is often called in Arabic school textbooks “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq fī rithāʾ al-Qayrawān,” or simply “Nūniyyat Ibn Rashīq.” Ibn Rashīq composed his city-elegy, the nūniyyah while living in exile to lament the destruction (kharāb) and desolation (khalāʾ) of Qayrawan in the wake of the Hilālī sacking of the city in 1057 CE. A full English translation of Ibn Rashīq’s printed and standardized nūniyyah follows an introductory essay that enumerates salient linguistic and rhetorical features, and offers a manuscript and publication history for the poem. The essay pivots around the lack of elegiac and nostalgic representation of Qayrawan’s once majestic ‘cityscape’ and iconic worldly buildings in the nūniyyah, finding the mnemonic and nostalgic focus of the Maghrib’s most renowned city-elegy to be rather the loss of the city’s fuqahāʾ (Islamic scholars or jurisprudents).
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See http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137405012_sample.pdf This is the introduction to Historic Engagements with Occidental Cultures, Religions, Powers. The file also includes the book's table of contents and... more
See http://www.palgrave.com/resources/sample-chapters/9781137405012_sample.pdf
This is the introduction to Historic Engagements with Occidental Cultures, Religions, Powers. The file also includes the book's table of contents and index.
Modern Orientalist scholarship failed to pay sufficient atten-
tion to the creation of social conditions that involved Orientals in the processes of problematization, formulation of the finalities of research, or scholarly review, and this failure was devastating to a discourse whose self-proclaimed purpose was that of knowing other cultures. According to Karl Popper’s classic formulation, “Objectivity is closely bound up with the social aspect of the scientific method,” which results “from the friendly-hostile co-operation of many scientists.” Crucial to the epistemology that Popper—and Michel Foucault, Edward W. Said, and others—advocates is “free criticism." In Popper’s framework, this takes place in “the various social institu-
tions” such as “the scientific periodicals, and congresses.” According to this definition of what constitutes knowing, activity is the trope, and knowledge—understood as grounded in the communities (Popper’s social institutions) of inquirers—cannot be free from guiding values and purposes. Nor can it be poured into a knower who has been purified of distorting personal and cultural values. The knower is an agent who moves within streams of activity, encounters problems, and
attempts to overcome them through inquiries that require not only the pursuit, but also the development, application, and assessment of goals and standards. By theorizing knowledge as one stage in the inquiring activities of humans, this epistemology historicizes knowledge. The failure of Orientalist scholars to manage social conditions so that free criticism of their claims could take place is clear in light of the British case in India, perhaps the most important site in the formative
period of modern Orientalism.
This is the introduction to Historic Engagements with Occidental Cultures, Religions, Powers. The file also includes the book's table of contents and index.
Modern Orientalist scholarship failed to pay sufficient atten-
tion to the creation of social conditions that involved Orientals in the processes of problematization, formulation of the finalities of research, or scholarly review, and this failure was devastating to a discourse whose self-proclaimed purpose was that of knowing other cultures. According to Karl Popper’s classic formulation, “Objectivity is closely bound up with the social aspect of the scientific method,” which results “from the friendly-hostile co-operation of many scientists.” Crucial to the epistemology that Popper—and Michel Foucault, Edward W. Said, and others—advocates is “free criticism." In Popper’s framework, this takes place in “the various social institu-
tions” such as “the scientific periodicals, and congresses.” According to this definition of what constitutes knowing, activity is the trope, and knowledge—understood as grounded in the communities (Popper’s social institutions) of inquirers—cannot be free from guiding values and purposes. Nor can it be poured into a knower who has been purified of distorting personal and cultural values. The knower is an agent who moves within streams of activity, encounters problems, and
attempts to overcome them through inquiries that require not only the pursuit, but also the development, application, and assessment of goals and standards. By theorizing knowledge as one stage in the inquiring activities of humans, this epistemology historicizes knowledge. The failure of Orientalist scholars to manage social conditions so that free criticism of their claims could take place is clear in light of the British case in India, perhaps the most important site in the formative
period of modern Orientalism.
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TIn lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: In Don Quixote: A Touchstone for Literary Criticism (2005), distinguished Cervantine scholar James A. Parr does not seem to go too far when he hails Miguel de Cervantes... more
TIn lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:
In Don Quixote: A Touchstone for Literary Criticism (2005), distinguished Cervantine scholar James A. Parr does not seem to go too far when he hails Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605–1615)—hereafter Don Quixote—as the perfect model of a “pivotal text,” that is “prescient in its formulation of the strategies of the self-conscious, self-questioning, and other experimental and historical texts of our time” (6). Indeed, in addition to its superlative literary merit and fictional uniqueness, Don Quixote is historically and culturally rich. This is very much true, for example, of the text’s distinctively complex dramatization of the early modern encounter between Europe and Islam. This encounter, of course historically speaking, was primarily embodied in the conflict between Habsburg Spain and the Ottoman Empire, then Europe’s and the Islamic world’s two leading powers. Although the Spanish-Ottoman rivalry was performed in different territorial and, mainly, maritime battlegrounds—the Battle of Lepanto (1571) looms large in this regard—the textual ones were not less significant and Don Quixote is a compelling textual illustration.
In growing numbers, scholars are arguing that the “contact zone,” between Europe and Islam is textually and contextually very detectable throughout the works of Cervantes. “Islam,” to quote Frederick Quinn’s The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought (2008), “was a topic not only in French and English political, religious, and cultural writings but also was the focus of a major seventeenth-century Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes” (83). While a fair amount of ink has been spilled on the Islamic theme, and that of Algiers in particular, in works such as Los Bagnos de Argel (The Bagnios of Algiers), Los Tratos de Alger (The Traffic of Algiers), El Galardo Español (The Gallant Spaniard) and La Gran Sultana (The Grand Sultana), there still exits a lacuna when it comes to exploring Cervantes’ complex representation of Islam and his attitude towards the Arabo-Islamic cultural heritage in his magnum opus.
Through addressing what I see as Cervantes’ reference to the medieval propaganda myth of “the idol Mahomet,” his literary transfiguration of the early modern subversive phenomenon of the conversion to Islam, and his ambiguous feelings towards the Arabian historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, I will re-visit Cervantes’ views of Islam and Muslims. I will, further, explore—again, what I see as—the not yet duly studied possible Arabic influence on Don Quixote. I will do so by comparing, for the first time in Cervantine scholarship, the Moorish tale (i.e., “The Captive’s Tale”) to the Arabian Alf Layla wa-Layla’s Frankish tale known alternatively as “Princess Miriam the Girdle-girl, Daughter of the King of France” and “The Love Tale of ʿAli Nur al-Din the Cairene and Princess Mariam, Daughter of the King of France.” I will finally, albeit briefly, draw attention to the Arabic maqāma genre whose features and motifs bear some striking similarities to some of the salient narratological and structural aspects of Don Quixote. The hope is to stir further interest and future research on the possible (in)direct influence of the Arabic maqāma genre on Don Quixote.
It is “universally acknowledged” that Don Quixote is introduced at the beginning of the narrative as an obsessive reader of romances of chivalry and a zealous admirer of Christian knights. “In short,” we are told, “our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset” (21). In his seemingly never-ending disputes with his entourage, specifically the learned curate of the parish and the connoisseur Master Nicholas, barber of La Mancha, he prides himself on fervently defending the valor of his favorite knights Amadís de Gaula, El Cid Ruy Díaz, Bernardo del Carpio, giant Morgante, and Reinaldos de Montalban. We need to keep in mind that most, if not all, of the aforementioned knights are largely celebrated in late medieval and early modern European romances for their gesta against the Moors. In many respects, some of them might even be described as matamores (Moor killers) par...
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/the_comparatist/v038/38.hermes.html
In Don Quixote: A Touchstone for Literary Criticism (2005), distinguished Cervantine scholar James A. Parr does not seem to go too far when he hails Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605–1615)—hereafter Don Quixote—as the perfect model of a “pivotal text,” that is “prescient in its formulation of the strategies of the self-conscious, self-questioning, and other experimental and historical texts of our time” (6). Indeed, in addition to its superlative literary merit and fictional uniqueness, Don Quixote is historically and culturally rich. This is very much true, for example, of the text’s distinctively complex dramatization of the early modern encounter between Europe and Islam. This encounter, of course historically speaking, was primarily embodied in the conflict between Habsburg Spain and the Ottoman Empire, then Europe’s and the Islamic world’s two leading powers. Although the Spanish-Ottoman rivalry was performed in different territorial and, mainly, maritime battlegrounds—the Battle of Lepanto (1571) looms large in this regard—the textual ones were not less significant and Don Quixote is a compelling textual illustration.
In growing numbers, scholars are arguing that the “contact zone,” between Europe and Islam is textually and contextually very detectable throughout the works of Cervantes. “Islam,” to quote Frederick Quinn’s The Sum of All Heresies: The Image of Islam in Western Thought (2008), “was a topic not only in French and English political, religious, and cultural writings but also was the focus of a major seventeenth-century Spanish writer, Miguel de Cervantes” (83). While a fair amount of ink has been spilled on the Islamic theme, and that of Algiers in particular, in works such as Los Bagnos de Argel (The Bagnios of Algiers), Los Tratos de Alger (The Traffic of Algiers), El Galardo Español (The Gallant Spaniard) and La Gran Sultana (The Grand Sultana), there still exits a lacuna when it comes to exploring Cervantes’ complex representation of Islam and his attitude towards the Arabo-Islamic cultural heritage in his magnum opus.
Through addressing what I see as Cervantes’ reference to the medieval propaganda myth of “the idol Mahomet,” his literary transfiguration of the early modern subversive phenomenon of the conversion to Islam, and his ambiguous feelings towards the Arabian historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, I will re-visit Cervantes’ views of Islam and Muslims. I will, further, explore—again, what I see as—the not yet duly studied possible Arabic influence on Don Quixote. I will do so by comparing, for the first time in Cervantine scholarship, the Moorish tale (i.e., “The Captive’s Tale”) to the Arabian Alf Layla wa-Layla’s Frankish tale known alternatively as “Princess Miriam the Girdle-girl, Daughter of the King of France” and “The Love Tale of ʿAli Nur al-Din the Cairene and Princess Mariam, Daughter of the King of France.” I will finally, albeit briefly, draw attention to the Arabic maqāma genre whose features and motifs bear some striking similarities to some of the salient narratological and structural aspects of Don Quixote. The hope is to stir further interest and future research on the possible (in)direct influence of the Arabic maqāma genre on Don Quixote.
It is “universally acknowledged” that Don Quixote is introduced at the beginning of the narrative as an obsessive reader of romances of chivalry and a zealous admirer of Christian knights. “In short,” we are told, “our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset” (21). In his seemingly never-ending disputes with his entourage, specifically the learned curate of the parish and the connoisseur Master Nicholas, barber of La Mancha, he prides himself on fervently defending the valor of his favorite knights Amadís de Gaula, El Cid Ruy Díaz, Bernardo del Carpio, giant Morgante, and Reinaldos de Montalban. We need to keep in mind that most, if not all, of the aforementioned knights are largely celebrated in late medieval and early modern European romances for their gesta against the Moors. In many respects, some of them might even be described as matamores (Moor killers) par...
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/the_comparatist/v038/38.hermes.html
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Lauded by Andalusian historian Ibn Hayyan (d. 1076) as ḥakīm al-andalus (the sage of Muslim Spain), Muslim poet and diplomat Abu Zakariyya Yahya Ibn al-Hakam al-Bakri al-Jayyani (d. 864), known as al-Ghazal (the gazelle) for his physical... more
Lauded by Andalusian historian Ibn Hayyan (d. 1076) as ḥakīm al-andalus (the sage of Muslim Spain), Muslim poet and diplomat Abu Zakariyya Yahya Ibn al-Hakam al-Bakri al-Jayyani (d. 864), known as al-Ghazal (the gazelle) for his physical beauty and intellectual nimbleness, traced his noble lineage to the powerful Arab tribe of Bakr ibn Waʾil. “Al-Ghazal,” Abdurahmane el-Hajji writes, “was a distinguished and shrewd personality famous for his sociable nature, gaiety, smartness, adroitness, and quickness of wit.” Given these qualities, al-Ghazal was, in the words of Judith Jesch, “a confidant” of five consecutive Umayyad emirs of Cordoba, two of whom dispatched him on important diplomatic missions outside dār al-Islām. The first of these missions was to Byzantium (Constantinople) in 840, and the second to the land of al-Majūs (very loosely, unbelievers; here, the Vikings) in 845.
In his account of the life and achievements of al-Ghazal, Andalusian literary chronicler Ibn Dihya (d. 1235) focused more on al-Ghazal’s contribution to Andalusian history than on his poetry. Nowhere was this more evident than in Al-Mutrib min Ashʿar Ahl al-Maghrib (The Melodious Compilation from the Poetry of the People of the West), wherein Ibn Dihya described at length the strained relations between the Muslims of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and al-Majūs. As Sarah Pons-Sanz wrote, “The Vikings terrorised most of Western Europe from the end of the eighth century to approximately the middle of the eleventh century. The Iberian Peninsula was no exception, though the Viking raids there were much less significant than those on the British Isles and Frankia.”
https://secure.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137405029.0006
In his account of the life and achievements of al-Ghazal, Andalusian literary chronicler Ibn Dihya (d. 1235) focused more on al-Ghazal’s contribution to Andalusian history than on his poetry. Nowhere was this more evident than in Al-Mutrib min Ashʿar Ahl al-Maghrib (The Melodious Compilation from the Poetry of the People of the West), wherein Ibn Dihya described at length the strained relations between the Muslims of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain) and al-Majūs. As Sarah Pons-Sanz wrote, “The Vikings terrorised most of Western Europe from the end of the eighth century to approximately the middle of the eleventh century. The Iberian Peninsula was no exception, though the Viking raids there were much less significant than those on the British Isles and Frankia.”
https://secure.palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9781137405029.0006
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The first full English translation, with an introduction, of Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna (The Armenian Cursed Ode)— written on behalf of Nicephorus Phocas (regn. 963-969 )—and sent to Abbasid caliph al-Muteeʿ (regn. 946-974), the... more
The first full English translation, with an introduction, of Al-Qasida al-Arminiyya al-Malʿuna (The Armenian Cursed Ode)— written on behalf of Nicephorus Phocas (regn. 963-969 )—and sent to Abbasid caliph al-Muteeʿ (regn. 946-974), the poetic responses of al-Qaffal, and that of Ibn Hazm
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,في غَيَاهِبِ الغُربةِ الطّاغيهْ
سمعتُ صوتا
لهُ في جبالِ القُلوبِ الهافيهْ
رَجْعُ وَجْدٍ و تَرْدِيدُ صَفَا
..فَدَعْ كُلَّ صَوْتٍ بَعْدَ صَوْتِهَا"
فإنّهَا الصَّائِحَةُ المَنْسِيَّةُ
".وَ الأُخْرَيَاتُ الصَّدَى
سمعتُ صوتا
لهُ في جبالِ القُلوبِ الهافيهْ
رَجْعُ وَجْدٍ و تَرْدِيدُ صَفَا
..فَدَعْ كُلَّ صَوْتٍ بَعْدَ صَوْتِهَا"
فإنّهَا الصَّائِحَةُ المَنْسِيَّةُ
".وَ الأُخْرَيَاتُ الصَّدَى
Research Interests:
The primary focus of this conference is on Arabic literary theory, engaging with its development from the pre-modern era up to the present. We invite scholars to explore a plethora of thematic issues tied to the challenges of mapping,... more
The primary focus of this conference is on Arabic literary theory, engaging with its development from the pre-modern era up to the present. We invite scholars to explore a plethora of thematic issues tied to the challenges of mapping, reconstructing, and studying varied sets of Arabic literary theoretical frameworks with the aim of identifying cross-temporal and trans-local conceptualizations and terms for a genealogy of Arabic literary theory. While focusing on the formation, transformation, re-organization and enduring legacy of pre-modern literary conceptualizations across the Arabic literary continuum, the conference approaches modernist literary explorations as invitations to the study of paradigmatic shifts in Arabic literary theory. The conference aspires to cement a dialogue between classical and modern epistemic systems while questioning their boundaries.