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Author: Emily Jane Selove
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arabic prose literature
Languages : en
Pages : 195
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Book Description
This study centers on an unusual medieval Arabic text, probably from the 11th century, called Hikayat Abi al-Qasim (The Imitation of Abu al-Qasim). The Hikaya tells the tale of a Baghdadi party-crasher crashing a party in Isfahan, and the author informs us in his introduction that this party-crasher is meant to represent a microcosm of the city of Baghdad. The author also tells us that this text can be read in the same amount of time that the events portrayed take to occur, creating a real-time depiction of time passing perhaps unparalleled in literary history. In analyzing this work, I draw from the ample scholarship on other ancient and medieval portrayals of banquets and dinner conversation, and especially those written in Latin. The Satyrica of Petronius, likened by several scholars to the Hikaya, features prominently in this analysis. In portraying Baghdad as an old party-crasher who not only demands to be fed but who dominates the conversation with his overabundant speech, the Hikaya paints the city as an entity who, although its physical power may be dwindling, continues to dominate the literary conversation with overbearing arrogance. Abu al-Qasim himself is part of a literary tradition of party-crashing characters. Although these characters, as outsiders to the feast, typically act as guides to the reader, Abu al-Qasim does not describe the Isfahani feast that he is crashing, but rather drowns it out with his words. The tension between language and food is a theme in banquet literature that often serves to problematize the representational qualities of language. The use of language in the Hikaya highlights the power of words to confuse or deceive, thereby calling into question the didactic value of the text even when it claims to be teaching us something. I show that the style known as mujun (which often involves a kind of nonsense language) might be compared to playing a game. I conclude by showing that Abu al-Qasim, as a microcosm, is a playful Doppelgänger of the prophet Muhammad. Like Muhammad, he represents both a real human being and a cosmic symbol, and the Hikaya can be seen as his Qurʹan.
Author: Emily Jane Selove
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arabic prose literature
Languages : en
Pages : 195
Get Book Here
Book Description
This study centers on an unusual medieval Arabic text, probably from the 11th century, called Hikayat Abi al-Qasim (The Imitation of Abu al-Qasim). The Hikaya tells the tale of a Baghdadi party-crasher crashing a party in Isfahan, and the author informs us in his introduction that this party-crasher is meant to represent a microcosm of the city of Baghdad. The author also tells us that this text can be read in the same amount of time that the events portrayed take to occur, creating a real-time depiction of time passing perhaps unparalleled in literary history. In analyzing this work, I draw from the ample scholarship on other ancient and medieval portrayals of banquets and dinner conversation, and especially those written in Latin. The Satyrica of Petronius, likened by several scholars to the Hikaya, features prominently in this analysis. In portraying Baghdad as an old party-crasher who not only demands to be fed but who dominates the conversation with his overabundant speech, the Hikaya paints the city as an entity who, although its physical power may be dwindling, continues to dominate the literary conversation with overbearing arrogance. Abu al-Qasim himself is part of a literary tradition of party-crashing characters. Although these characters, as outsiders to the feast, typically act as guides to the reader, Abu al-Qasim does not describe the Isfahani feast that he is crashing, but rather drowns it out with his words. The tension between language and food is a theme in banquet literature that often serves to problematize the representational qualities of language. The use of language in the Hikaya highlights the power of words to confuse or deceive, thereby calling into question the didactic value of the text even when it claims to be teaching us something. I show that the style known as mujun (which often involves a kind of nonsense language) might be compared to playing a game. I conclude by showing that Abu al-Qasim, as a microcosm, is a playful Doppelgänger of the prophet Muhammad. Like Muhammad, he represents both a real human being and a cosmic symbol, and the Hikaya can be seen as his Qurʹan.
Author: Selove Emily Selove
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 1474411584
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 159
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Book Description
Hikayat Abu al-Qasim, probably written in the 11th century by the otherwise unknown al-Azdi, tells the story of a gate-crasher from Baghdad named Abu al-Qasim, who shows up uninvited at a party in Isfahan. Dressed as a holy man and reciting religious poetry, he soon relaxes his demeanour, and, growing intoxicated on wine, insults the other dinner guests and their Iranian hometown. Widely hailed as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, a ikA yah also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts. Painting a picture of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, he is a figure familiar to those who have studied the ancient cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters and saints in literatures from the Mediterranean and beyond. This study therefore compares a ikA yah, a mysterious text surviving in a single manuscript, to other comical banquet texts and party-crashing characters, both from contemporary Arabic literature and from Ancient Greece and Rome.
Author: Muhammad ibn Ahmad Abu al-Mutahhar al-Azdi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : ar
Pages : 146
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Book Description
Author: William McCants
Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
ISBN: 081572859X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 23
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Book Description
In The Believer, Will McCants tells the story of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State (a.k.a. ISIS), a group so brutal and hardline that even al-Qaida deemed them too extreme. Baghdadi, an introverted religious scholar, with a passion for soccer, now controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria. McCants shows how Baghdadi became radicalized in the Saddam Hussein era and found his path to power after connecting with other radicals in an American prison during the Iraq War, culminating in his declaration of a reborn Islamic empire bent on world conquest.
Author: Muhsin J. al-Musawi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023151946X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347
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Book Description
In this fascinating study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi shows how deeply Islamic heritage and culture is embedded in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (known to many as the Arabian Nights) and how this integration invites readers to make an Islamic milieu. Conservative Islam dismisses The Thousand and One Nights as facile popular literature, and liberal views disregard the rich Islamic context of the text. Approaching the text with a fresh and unbiased eye, al-Musawi reads the tales against Islamic schools of thought and theology and recovers persuasive historical evidence to reveal the cultural and religious struggle over Islam that drives the book's narrative tension and binds its seemingly fragmented stories. Written by a number of authors over a stretch of centuries, The Thousand and One Nights depicts a burgeoning, urban Islamic culture in all its variety and complexity. As al-Musawi demonstrates, the tales document their own places and periods of production, reflecting the Islamic individual's growing exposure to a number of entertainments and temptations and their conflict with the obligations of faith. Aimed at a diverse audience, these stories follow a narrative arc that begins with corruption and ends with redemption, conforming to a paradigm that concurs with the sociological and religious concerns of Islam and the Islamic state. By emphasizing Islam in his analysis of these entertaining and instructional tales, al-Musawi not only illuminates the work's consistent equation between art and life, but he also sheds light on its underlying narrative power. His study offers a brilliant portrait of medieval Islam as well, especially its social, political, and economic institutions and its unique practices of storytelling.
Author: Abū Jaʿfar Muḥammad ibn Jarīr al-Ṭabarī
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780887060588
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The 20 years' caliphate of al-Maʾmūn began as a stormy period in Middle Eastern history; after the comparatively peaceful reign of his father Hārūn al-Rashīd, the caliphate was plunged into violent civil warfare in both Iraq and Arabia, involving the sons of al-Rashīd, rivals for the supreme authority, and various other sectarian rebels and aspirants for power. Yet once peace was secured and the caliphate lands united once more, al-Maʾmūn's reign settled down into one of the most exciting and innovative of the mediaeval caliphate. The Caliph himself was a highly cultivated man who possessed a keen intellectual curiosity and who interested himself in the practical sciences, astronomy and mathematics. He also encouraged the translating of Greek philosophical, scientific and medical works from Greek and Syriac into Arabic and involved himself in theological controversies in which the dialectical techniques of the Greek thinkers were to figure. Ṭabarī's history of this period constitutes a prime source for political and military history. His racy and vivid style, including many verbatim conversations and documents, brings the Caliphate of al-Maʾmūn very much alive. A discounted price is available when purchasing the entire 39-volume History of al-Ṭabarī set. Contact SUNY Press for more information.
Author: Julie Scott Meisami
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415185714
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 438
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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.
Author:
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674727789
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Baghdad: The City in Verse captures the essence of life lived in one of the world’s great enduring metropolises. In this unusual anthology, Reuven Snir offers original translations of more than 170 Arabic poems—most of them appearing for the first time in English—which represent a cross-section of genres and styles from the time of Baghdad’s founding in the eighth century to the present day. The diversity of the fabled city is reflected in the Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, Kurdish, and Jewish poets featured here, including writers of great renown and others whose work has survived but whose names are lost to history. Through the prism of these poems, readers glimpse many different Baghdads: the city built on ancient Sumerian ruins, the epicenter of Arab culture and Islam’s Golden Age under the enlightened rule of Harun al-Rashid, the bombed-out capital of Saddam Hussein’s fallen regime, the American occupation, and life in a new but unstable Iraq. With poets as our guides, we visit bazaars, gardens, wine parties, love scenes (worldly and mystical), brothels, prisons, and palaces. Startling contrasts emerge as the day-to-day cacophony of urban life is juxtaposed with eternal cycles of the Tigris, and hellish winds, mosquitoes, rain, floods, snow, and earthquakes are accompanied by somber reflections on invasions and other catastrophes. Documenting the city’s 1,250-year history, Baghdad: The City in Verse shows why poetry has been aptly called the public register of the Arabs.
Author: Okasha El Daly
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1315429764
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 259
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Book Description
Egyptology: The Missing Millennium brings together for the first time the disciplines of Egyptology and Islamic Studies, seeking to overturn the conventional opinion of Western scholars that Moslims/Arabs had no interest in pre-Islamic cultures. This book examines a neglected period of a thousand years in the history of Egyptology, from the Moslem annexation of Egypt in the seventh century CE until the Ottoman conquest in the 16th century. Concentrating on Moslem writers, as it is usually Islam which incurs blame for cutting Egyptians off from their ancient heritage, the author shows not only the existence of a large body of Arabic sources on Ancient Egypt, but also their usefulness to Egyptology today. Using sources as diverse as the accounts of travelers and treasure hunters to books on alchemy, the author shows that the interest in ancient Egyptian scripts continued beyond classical writers, and describes attempts by medieval Arab scholars, mainly alchemists, to decipher the hieroglyph script. He further explores medieval Arab interest in Ancient Egypt, discussing the interpretations of the intact temples, as well as the Arab concept of Egyptian kingship and state administration—including a case study of Queen Cleopatra that shows how the Arabic romance of this queen differs significantly from Western views. This book will be of great interest to academics and students of archaeology, Islamic studies and Egyptology, as well as anyone with a general interest in Egyptian history.
Author:
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791497208
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
The 20 years' caliphate of al-Maʾmūn began as a stormy period in Middle Eastern history; after the comparatively peaceful reign of his father Hārūn al-Rashīd, the caliphate was plunged into violent civil warfare in both Iraq and Arabia, involving the sons of al-Rashīd, rivals for the supreme authority, and various other sectarian rebels and aspirants for power. Yet once peace was secured and the caliphate lands united once more, al-Maʾmūn's reign settled down into one of the most exciting and innovative of the mediaeval caliphate. The Caliph himself was a highly cultivated man who possessed a keen intellectual curiosity and who interested himself in the practical sciences, astronomy and mathematics. He also encouraged the translating of Greek philosophical, scientific and medical works from Greek and Syriac into Arabic and involved himself in theological controversies in which the dialectical techniques of the Greek thinkers were to figure. Ṭabarī's history of this period constitutes a prime source for political and military history. His racy and vivid style, including many verbatim conversations and documents, brings the Caliphate of al-Maʾmūn very much alive. A discounted price is available when purchasing the entire 39-volume History of al-Ṭabarī set. Contact SUNY Press for more information.
