Society, Religion, and Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Society, Religion, and Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia PDF Author: Ibrahim A. Mumayiz
Publisher: Garant Publishers
ISBN: 9789044125122
Category : Arabian Peninsula
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The growing diversity of our society means that we are increasingly confronted with foreign cultures and their art forms. The Western Canon has in recent years lost some of its monopoly in favor of influences from the Middle and Far East. This offers quite a few new perspectives, but for these cultures it is not always self-evident to find their way to a Western audience. The different language, the lack of familiarity with Arabic society, and several other cultural aspects hinder an easy access and interest. This is definitely the case for early-Arabic literature. One of the most important poetic works from pre-Islamic Arabia is The Mu'allaqat or 'The Hanging Poems.' These odes can be considered as the best poetic work in a tradition that spans six centuries (from the first to the sixth century AD). They describe in poetic form the early-Arabic life of the bedouin communities in great detail, and are widely read, praised, and studied in Arabic schools and universities. This book is devoted to making these odes accesible for a Western audience. The first part consists of seven essays that provide a thorough insight of the society in which these odes originated, with sharp critical analyses of the country; its overview of pre-Islamic Arabia, with an emphasis on the influence of Christianity; the Nabataeans, the reign of the fourth century Queen Mavia; and an analysis of the structure of pre-Islamic poetry. The second part consists of a poetic translation of The Mu'allaqat in English. (Series: Arabic Literature Unveiled, Vol. 1) [Subject: Arabic Studies, Sociology, Poetry, History, Literature]

Society, Religion, and Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia

Society, Religion, and Poetry in Pre-Islamic Arabia PDF Author: Ibrahim A. Mumayiz
Publisher: Garant Publishers
ISBN: 9789044125122
Category : Arabian Peninsula
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The growing diversity of our society means that we are increasingly confronted with foreign cultures and their art forms. The Western Canon has in recent years lost some of its monopoly in favor of influences from the Middle and Far East. This offers quite a few new perspectives, but for these cultures it is not always self-evident to find their way to a Western audience. The different language, the lack of familiarity with Arabic society, and several other cultural aspects hinder an easy access and interest. This is definitely the case for early-Arabic literature. One of the most important poetic works from pre-Islamic Arabia is The Mu'allaqat or 'The Hanging Poems.' These odes can be considered as the best poetic work in a tradition that spans six centuries (from the first to the sixth century AD). They describe in poetic form the early-Arabic life of the bedouin communities in great detail, and are widely read, praised, and studied in Arabic schools and universities. This book is devoted to making these odes accesible for a Western audience. The first part consists of seven essays that provide a thorough insight of the society in which these odes originated, with sharp critical analyses of the country; its overview of pre-Islamic Arabia, with an emphasis on the influence of Christianity; the Nabataeans, the reign of the fourth century Queen Mavia; and an analysis of the structure of pre-Islamic poetry. The second part consists of a poetic translation of The Mu'allaqat in English. (Series: Arabic Literature Unveiled, Vol. 1) [Subject: Arabic Studies, Sociology, Poetry, History, Literature]

Arabic Literature Unveiled

Arabic Literature Unveiled PDF Author: Peter Clark
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arabic language
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Book Description


Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature

Encyclopedia of Arabic Literature PDF Author: Julie Scott Meisami
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415185721
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
This reference work covers the classical, transitional and modern periods. Editors and contributors cover an international scope of Arabic literature in many countries.

The Arab Awakening Unveiled

The Arab Awakening Unveiled PDF Author: Esam Al-Amin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780937165157
Category : Arab Spring, 2010-
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
The book is a collection of essays about the most important phenomena in the Middle East in the past century. It provides thoughtful analysis and keen understanding of this historical moment as well as important aspects of US policy in the Middle East and the Muslim World. The book has a prologue and 53 chapters.

The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction

The Anchor Book of Modern Arabic Fiction PDF Author: Denys Johnson-Davies
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307481484
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 508

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Book Description
This dazzling anthology features the work of seventy-nine outstanding writers from all over the Arab-speaking world, from Morocco in the west to Iraq in the east, Syria in the north to Sudan in the south. Edited by Denys Johnson-Davies, called by Edward Said “the leading Arabic-to-English translator of our time,” this treasury of Arab voices is diverse in styles and concerns, but united by a common language. It spans the full history of modern Arabic literature, from its roots in western cultural influence at the end of the nineteenth century to the present-day flowering of Naguib Mahfouz’s literary sons and daughters. Among the Egyptian writers who laid the foundation for the Arabic literary renaissance are the great Tawfik al-Hakim; the short story pioneer Mahmoud Teymour; and Yusuf Idris, who embraced Egypt’s vibrant spoken vernacular. An excerpt from the Sudanese writer Tayeb Salih’s novel Season of Migration to the North, one of the Arab world’s finest, appears alongside the Libyan writer Ibrahim al-Koni’s tales of the Tuaregs of North Africa, the Iraqi writer Mohamed Khudayir’s masterly story “Clocks Like Horses,” and the work of such women writers as Lebanon’s Hanan al-Shaykh and Morocco’s Leila Abouzeid.

The Discourses

The Discourses PDF Author: al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814764835
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 531

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Book Description
Wide-ranging essays on Moroccan history, Sufism, and religious life Al-Hasan al-Yusi was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh scholar from the Middle Atlas began writing a collection of short essays on a wide variety of subjects. Completed three years later and gathered together under the title Discourses on Language and Literature (al-Muhadarat fi l-adab wa-l-lughah), they offer rich insight into the varied intellectual interests of an ambitious and gifted Moroccan scholar, covering subjects as diverse as genealogy, theology, Sufism, history, and social mores. In addition to representing the author’s intellectual interests, The Discourses also includes numerous autobiographical anecdotes, which offer valuable insight into the history of Morocco, including the transition from the Saadian to the Alaouite dynasty, which occurred during al-Yusi’s lifetime. Translated into English for the first time, The Discourses offers readers access to the intellectual landscape of the early modern Muslim world through an author who speaks openly and frankly about his personal life and his relationships with his country’s rulers, scholars, and commoners. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

A Bed for the King's Daughter

A Bed for the King's Daughter PDF Author: Shahla Ujayli
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477322302
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 59

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Book Description
A groundbreaking collection of experimental short fiction by award-winning Syrian author and Booker International Prize for Arabic Fiction nominee Shahla Ujayli, A Bed for the King’s Daughter uses surrealism and irony to examine such themes as women’s agency, the decline of collective life and imagination under modernity, and the effects of social and political corruption on daily life. In “The Memoir of Cinderella’s Shoes,” Cinderella uses her famous glass slipper as a weapon in order to take justice into her own hands. In “Tell Me About Surrealism,” an art history professor’s writing assignment reveals the slipperiness of storytelling, and in “Merry Christmas,” the realities of apartheid interfere with one family’s celebration. Through twenty-two short stories, Ujayli animates—with brevity and inventiveness—themes relevant to both the particularities of life in the Arab world and life outside it.

Thinking in Circles

Thinking in Circles PDF Author: Mary Douglas
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300134959
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 185

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Book Description
Immanuel Kant's views on politics, peace, and history have lost none of their relevance since their publication more than two centuries ago. This volume contains a comprehensive collection of Kant's writings on international relations theory and political philosophy, superbly translated and accompanied by stimulating essays. Pauline Kleingeld provides a lucid introduction to the main themes of the volume, and three essays by distinguished contributors follow: Jeremy Waldron on Kant's theory of the state; Michael W. Doyle on the implications of Kant's political theory for his theory of international relations; and Allen W. Wood on Kant's philosophical approach to history and its current relevance.

Approaching the Qur'an

Approaching the Qur'an PDF Author: Michael Sells
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0861546792
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Approaching the Qur’an presents brilliant translations of the short, hymnic chapters, or Suras, associated with the first revelations to the Prophet Muhammad. These early Suras contain some of the most powerful, prophetic, and revelatory passages in religious history, offering the vision of a meaningful and just life that anchors the faith of one fifth of the world’s inhabitants. In addition to these translations, Michael Sells provides an introduction to the Qur’an, commentaries on the Suras, a glossary of technical terms, and discussions of the auditory nature and gender aspects of the Arabic text. An ideal resource for students and interested lay readers, this third edition also includes a new full Sura and associated commentary, a new preface, and a thoroughly updated bibliography.

Exhausted on the Cross

Exhausted on the Cross PDF Author: Najwan Darwish
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681375532
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 145

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Book Description
A much-anticipated follow-up to Nothing More to Lose, this is only the second poetry collection translated into English from a vital voice of Arabic literature. “We drag histories behind us,” the Palestinian poet Najwan Darwish writes in Exhausted on the Cross, “here / where there’s neither land / nor sky.” In pared-down lines, brilliantly translated from the Arabic by Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Darwish records what Raúl Zurita describes as “something immemorial, almost unspeakable”—a poetry driven by a “moral imperative” to be a “colossal record of violence and, at the same time, the no less colossal record of compassion.” Darwish’s poems cross histories, cultures, and geographies, taking us from the grime of modern-day Shatila and the opulence of medieval Baghdad to the gardens of Samarkand and the open-air prison of present-day Gaza. We join the Persian poet Hafez in the conquered city of Shiraz and converse with the Prophet Mohammad in Medina. Poem after poem evokes the humor in the face of despair, the hope in the face of nightmare.