Portrait of an Eighth-Century Gentleman : Khālid ibn Ṣafwān in History and Literature /
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Portrait of an Eighth-Century Gentleman. Khālid ibn Ṣafwān in History and Literature by Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila is an in-depth study of the eighth-century Umayyad and early Abbasid orator and courtier Khālid ibn Ṣafwān and the development of his character in adab literature. The book collects and translates all his sayings and stories about him culled from a wide range of Arabic and Persian texts. In the book, Hämeen-Anttila studies the mechanisms of change in early narratives, showing how Arabic anecdotes developed and were modified by a series of authors during both their oral and literary transmission, changing a historical person into a literary character. Detailed chapters discuss Khālid in his various roles and analyse the literary techniques of the stories.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004433977
9789004433960
The cutting edge of the poet's sword : Muslim poetic responses to the Crusades /
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In this comprehensive analysis of Arabic poetry during the period of the crusades (sixth/twelfth-seventh/thirteenth centuries), Osman Latiff provides an insightful examination of the poets who inspired Muslims to unite in the jihād against the Franks. The Cutting Edge of the Poet's Sword not only contributes to our understanding of literary history, it also illuminates a broad spectrum of religiosity and the role of political propaganda in the anti-Frankish Muslim struggle. Latiff shows how poets, often used by the ruling elite to promote their rule, emphasised the centrality of Islam's holy sites to inspire the Muslim response to the occupation and later reconquest of Jerusalem, and expressed some surprising views of Frankish Christians.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004345225 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Classical Arabic humanities in their own terms : festschrift for Wolfhart Heinrichs on his 65th birthday /
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The volume brings together approaches to different elements of Arabic-Islamic civilization, mainly in the areas of linguistics, literature, literary theory, and prosody, but also including religion, ritual, economics, and zoology. Contributions also touch upon the adjacent areas of the Old Iranian, Persian, Greek and Byzantine written traditions. Some take as their points of departure specific Arabic words (cat, giraffe) or morphemes; others explore literary genres, subgenres (oration, ode, macaronic poem, travel narrative) or figures within them (the trickster, the devil). Cultural concepts such as wishing, gift-giving or discourse are treated, as are aspects of broader phenomena, such as the role of gender in dream interpretation or the relative merits of luxury goods and mass-produced commodities.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047423812 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Rustam nāma : Dāstān-i manẓūm-i Musalmān shudan-i Rustam bih dast-i Imām ʿAlī ('alayhi al-salām) bih inḍimām-i Muʿjiz-nāma-yi Mawlā-yi muttaqiyān /
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In his Meccan days Muḥammad's message was rejected by many as a threat to the values and interests of the community. Among his opponents, there was a merchant called Naḍr b. Ḥārith. From his visits to the city of Ḥīra in Mesopotamia, a cultural melting-pot of Iranian, Christian, and pagan Arab beliefs and traditions, he had brought back stories from Iranian folklore, especially about Rustam and Isfandyār, with which he tried to attract the attention of those listening to Muḥammad's speeches, away from the latter's revolutionary message. This explains why the religious elite of the Persianate world rejected Iranian epic folklore as contrary to the message of Shīʿī Islam, Rustam in particular being viewed as incompatibele with the person of Imam ʿAlī. But folklore being difficult to eradicate, Rustam was often depicted as a Muslim convert and enemy-turned-friend of ʿAlī, like in this poem from Safavid times. A miracle story involving ʿAlī accompanies it.
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1 online resource. :
9789004405042
9789648700657
Politics, poetry, and sufism in medieval Iran : new perspectives on Jami's Salaman va Absal /
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In Politics, Poetry, and Sufism in Medieval Iran Chad Lingwood offers new insights into the political significance of poetry and Sufism at the court of Sulṭān Ya'qūb (d. 896/1490), leader of the Āq Qoyūnlū. The basis of the study is Salāmān va Absāl , a Persian allegorical romance 'Abd al-Raḥmān Jāmī (d. 898/1492), the great Timurid belletrist and Naqshbandi Sufi, dedicated to Ya'qūb. Lingwood demonstrates that Salāmān va Absāl , which modern critics have dismissed as 'crude' and 'grotesque,' is a sophisticated work of political and mystical advice for a Muslim ruler. In the process, he challenges received wisdom concerning Jāmī, the Āq Qoyūnlū, and Perso-Islamic advice literature. Significantly, the study illustrates the extent to which Jāmī's compositions integrated the Timurid and Āq Qoyūnlū realms.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004255890
The poetics of grammar and the metaphysics of sound and sign /
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This book examines the seemingly universal notion of a grammatical cosmos. Individual essays discuss how many of the great civilizations provide cognitive maps that emerge from a metaphysical linguistics in which sounds, syllables and other signs form the constructive elements of reality. The essays address cross-cultural issues such as: Why does grammar serve as a template in these cultures? How are such templates culturally contoured? To what end are they applied - id est, what can one do with grammar - , and how does it work upon the world? The book is divided into three sections that deal with the metaphysics of linguistic creation; practices of encoding and decoding as a means of deciphering reality; and language in the widest sense as a medium for self- and cultural transformation. Contributors include: Jan Assman, Sara Sviri, Michael Stone, M. Finkelberg, Yigal Bronner, Martin Kern, Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Dan Martin, Jonathan Garb, Tom Hunter, David Shulman, and Sergio La Porta.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047421658 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Arabic literary thresholds : sites of rhetorical turn in contemporary scholarship /
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This volume, dedicated to Jaroslav Stetkevych, includes a number of original contributions that signify a rhetorical shift in the social sciences and Arabic studies. The articles and essays deal with Orientalism, classical Arabic tradition, Andalusian poetry, Francophone literature, translation, architecture and poetry, comparative studies, and Sufism. Literary production is studied in its own terms to situate these literary concerns in the mainstream of cultural studies. The outcome is a solid and highly sophisticated scholarship that makes this book one of the most needed among scholars and students of comparative literature, Arabic poetics and politics, Orientalism, Afro-Asian studies, East/West encounters and translation.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789047430339 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Orality and textuality in the Iranian world : patterns of interaction across the centuries /
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The volume demonstrates the cultural centrality of the oral tradition for Iranian studies. It contains contributions from scholars from various areas of Iranian and comparative studies, among which are the pre-Islamic Zoroastrian tradition with its wide network of influences in late antique Mesopotamia, notably among the Jewish milieu; classical Persian literature in its manifold genres; medieval Persian history; oral history; folklore and more. The essays in this collection embrace both the pre-Islamic and Islamic periods, both verbal and visual media, as well as various language communities (Middle Persian, Persian, Tajik, Dari) and geographical spaces (Greater Iran in pre-Islamic and Islamic medieval periods; Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan of modern times). Taken as a whole, the essays reveal the unique blending of oral and literate poetics in the texts or visual artefacts each author focuses upon, conceptualizing their interrelationship and function.
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1 online resource (xx, 456 pages) : illustrations (some color) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004291973 :
1570-078X ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Al-Suyūṭī, a polymath of the Mamlūk period : proceedings of the themed day of the First Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies (Ca' Foscari University, Venice, June 23, 2014) /...
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This volume is a collection of several papers devoted to Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (d. 911/1505), presented on the First Conference of the School of Mamlūk Studies (held at Ca' Foscari University,Venice, from June 23 to June 25, 2014). It aims to contribute to a reassessment of the scholarly profile of the controversial but fascinating polymath and intellectual, and, more generally, to a deeper understanding of the cultural, political and academic life of the last period of the Mamlūk empire. Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī's bibliography ranges from law to theology, and from linguistics to history. It includes medicine and geography. This polymath felt that his mission was to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the past, and knowledge in general, from widespread ignorance and decline. Considered for a long time to be an author devoid of any originality and a "simple" compiler, he was in fact an excellent teacher and a rigorous scholar who had a meticulous and accurate working method. With contributions by: Christopher D. Bahl; Mustafa Banister; Joel Blecher; S. R. Burge; Daniela Rodica Firanescu; Éric Geoffroy; Antonella Ghersetti; Francesco Grande; Jaakko Hämeen-Anttila; Takao Ito; Judith Kindinger; Christian Mauder; Aaron Spevack.
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Includes index. :
1 online resource (240 pages) :
9789004334526 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Brill's Companion to the Reception of Plutarch /
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The Greek biographer and philosopher Plutarch of Chaeronea (c. 45-125 AD) makes a fascinating case-study for reception studies not least because of his uniquely extensive and diverse afterlife. Brill's Companion to the Reception of Plutarch offers the first comprehensive analysis of Plutarch's rich reception history from the Roman Imperial period through Late Antiquity and Byzantium to the Renaissance, Enlightenment and the modern era. The thirty-seven chapters that make up this volume, written by a remarkable line-up of experts, explore the appreciation, contestation and creative appropriation of Plutarch himself, his thought and work in the history of literature across various cultures and intellectual traditions in Europe, America, North Africa, and the Middle East.
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1 online resource. :
9789004409446
9789004280403
Arabic Historical Literature from Ghadāmis and Mali : a Documents from the 18th to 20th Century /
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In this work translations of four texts are provided from Ghadāmis and from Mali. The first is a biography of the Ghadāmisī scholar ʿAbdallāh b. Abī Bakr al-Ghadāmisī (1626-1719 AD), written by the eighteenth-century author Ibn Muhalhil al-Ghadāmisī. A second text is "The History of al-Sūq", concerning al-Sūq, the historic town of Tādmakka and the original home of the Kel-Essouk Tuareg. The third text is "The Precious Jewel in the Saharan histories of the 'People of the Veil'" by Muḥammad Tawjaw al-Sūqī al-Thānī, a contemporary Tuareg author. It pertains to the Kel-Essouk and their historical ties with the Maghreb and West Africa. The final text is a description of the Tuareg from the book "Ghadāmis, its features, its images and its sights" by Bashīr Qāsim Yūshaʿ, published in Arabic in 2001 AD.
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1 online resource :
9789004315853
All Things Arabia : Arabian Identity and Material Culture /
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By employing the innovative lenses of thing theory and material culture studies, this collection brings together essays focused on the role played by Arabia's things from-cultural objects to commodities to historical and ethnographic artifacts to imaginary things-in creating an Arabian identity over time. The Arabian identity that we convey here comprises both a fabulous Arabia that has haunted the European imagination for the past three hundred years and a real Arabia that has had its unique history, culture, and traditions outside the Orientalized narratives of the West. All Things Arabia aims to dispel existing stereotypes and stimulate new thinking about an area whose patterns of trade and cosmopolitanism have pollinated the world with lasting myths, knowledge, and things of beauty.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004435926
9789004435919
Persian wisdom in Arabic garb : ʻAlī born ʻUbayda al-Rayḥānī (d. 219/834) and his Jawāhir al-kilam wa-farāʼid al-ḥikam /
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This volume introduces ʿAlī born ʿUbayda al-Rayḥānī (d. 219/834), one of the central figures in the transmission of classical Greek and Persian wisdom into Arabic. It offers an edition, translation, and evaluation of his book Jawāhir al-kilam , one of the oldest collections of proverbial wisdom and moralia in Arabic, as well as other remaining pieces of his works. The first part of the book surveys the content of his more than sixty books and suggests that among his translations from Middle Persian into Arabic were the Sindbād-nāma and Bilawhar wa-Budhāsf . Moreover, he emerges as the author of the famous al-Adab al-ṣaghīr heretofore wrongly attributed to Ibn al-Muqaffa'. The second part contains the Arabic texts and translations as well as a rich documentation of their sources and their further transmission.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (v. 1, pages [339]-360) and index. :
9789047418757 :
0169-8729 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The raven and the falcon : youth versus old age in medieval Arabic literature /
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This book fills a long-standing gap in Arabic-Islamic studies. Following the informative and entertaining style of adab literature and based on a large number of relevant sources from a wide range of genres, Hasan Shuraydi presents a panoramic view of relevant themes that concern youth and old age in Medieval Arabic literature intended for both specialists and non-specialists. A pattern of binary oppositions runs through such themes, e.g., black/white, male/female, husband/wife, sacred/profane, paradise/this world, ignorance/wisdom, past/present, young/old, new/old, health/disease, sappy/dry, permitted/forbidden, lust/chastity, obedience/disobedience, experience/inexperience, folly/reason, sobriety/intoxication, parent/child, celibacy/marriage, present life/hereafter. Themes discussed include: aging, ambition, aphrodisiacs, beauty, education, feminist trends, hair dyeing, homosexuality, honoring age, jihad, life stages, longevity, love, marriage, sex.
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1 online resource (pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004278950 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Inventory of the 'lettere e scritture Turchesche' of the Venetian State Archives /
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As well as the well-known inventory written by Maria Pia Pedani Fabris in 1994, I \'Documenti Turchi\' dell'Archivio di Stato di Venezia , this book is based on the work by Alessio Bombaci from the 1940s. Pedani's work is an academic inventory of the documents in the archives Lettere e Scritture Turchesche kept in the Venetian State Archives. It describes in detail 822 documents from the first half of the 16th century until the first half of the 17th century. Part of the documents are Ottoman originals, part are Italian translations. They deal above all with commercial affairs. There are name-i hümayun s, but also letters of beylerbeyi s and sancakbeyi s of the Balkan regions and of other lower Ottoman officials.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. [202]-208) and indexes. :
9789047441533 :
1877-9964 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.