{"title":"Esoteric Islam in Modern French Thought: Massignon, Corbin, Jambet, written by Ziad Elmarsafy","authors":"Yasser Elhariry","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341466","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341466","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49420875","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Revisiting al-Ṭabarī on Maqtal ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib: An Early Report from Historical Learning to Practical Prescription","authors":"Mariam Saeed El Ali","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341461","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines the report (khabar) that relates the reasons behind the killing of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661), as transmitted in the famous History of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), exploring its historical, poetical, and practical facets. After considering its formal and historiographical structure, the paper analyzes some of the report’s phonetical, lexical, and textual elements, revealing its affective poeticity, or capacity to move readers in various ways. A review of different citations of the report in other Arabic medieval compilations positively sheds light on the practical morality that Muslim compilers were orienting their readers to observe, in their employment of titles, subtitles, explicit evaluations, and contextual arrangements among other constructions. The paper aims to attest to the report’s diverse potentials to aid its readers in ultimately answering the ethical question of “What to do, here and now?”","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47452070","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Byzantine Adab and Falsafah in 11th Century Antioch","authors":"S. Noble","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341460","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341460","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Both medieval Arab historians and modern Byzantinists have generally ignored the Arabophone cultural life of Antioch during its period under Byzantine rule from 969–1084 CE, preferring to equate Christian rule with Greek culture. Nevertheless, lay intellectuals closely connected to the Melkite Patriarchate of Antioch were active in promoting the translation of Greek patristic works into Arabic during this period. This article examines the career of the deacon ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Faḍl al-Anṭākī, whose translations, compilations, and original works evince close familiarity with contemporary intellectual trends in Baghdad and a desire to produce translations of high literary quality. Moreover, in Ibn al-Faḍl’s criticisms of local philosophers who had strayed from Christian dogma, we find further evidence for Byzantine Antioch as a center of Arabic literary and philosophical activity.","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46194389","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Psychoanalysis and the Love of Arabic: Hall of Mirrors, written by Nadia Bou Ali","authors":"Shiri Alon","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341464","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341464","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41355927","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Diyārāt to Ziyārāt","authors":"Dana Sajdi","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341459","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341459","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay explores the relationship between two geographical and literary genres, the diyārāt (Books of Monasteries), which disappeared in the 11th century, and the ziyārāt (shrine pilgrimage guides), which appeared in the 13th century. The relationship is discussed in the context of the transformation of the Syrian sacred landscape, which became thoroughly Islamized through the erection of Islamic public buildings including shrines and mausolea between the 11th–13th centuries. I argue that these two genres had a similar function of spatially inscribing the political order through the invitation to liminal practices in the marginal sites of the monastery and the Islamic shrine/mausoleum. The diyārāt registered the caliphal order and courtly culture, while the ziyārāt served to sanctify the professional scholar whose authority emerged in the post-caliphal sultanic age.","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44630281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Al-Balādhurī’s Prophet’s Biography: Narrative in Service of Politics","authors":"Mohammad Rihan","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341462","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341462","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The monumental multi-volume work Ansāb al-ashrāf, authored by Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī, represents an intellectual edifice recognized by many scholars. However, this paper endeavors to discuss in depth the first volume of it, which al-Balādhurī dedicated to the life of the Prophet Muḥammad, and attempts to show that the underlying reasons for writing another biography of the Prophet—in an age where the Sīrah of the Prophet was well established—were mainly political and personal, linked in particular to the rule of the ʿAbbāsids. It aimed to legitimize ʿAbbāsid rule by systematically and subtly enhancing the role of ʿAbbāsid symbols and ancestry in the formation of early Islam, mainly by linking the eponym of the ʿAbbasid dynasty, al-ʿAbbās b. ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, to a positive image of the Prophet.","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48367121","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Arabic Shadow Theatre 1300–1900. A Handbook, written by Li Guo","authors":"F. Corrao","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341469","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341469","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44842663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"From Tukhmah to Wamḍah: The Literary Forum at the University of Aleppo, Its Critical Enterprise, and the New Poetics of Minimalism","authors":"Daniel Behar","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341448","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341448","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This essay presents a synoptic view and a critical synthesis of the activity of the Literary Forum at the University of Aleppo (1980–1986) with the aim of putting Aleppo on the map of modern Arabic literature. Serving as an intensive laboratory for literary and meta-literary production under political duress, the Forum is situated at a confluence of global cultural currents as well as at a turning point in the history of the Arabic prose poem. The Forum members devised literary strategies for coping with the deterioration of their city’s cultures while working within both an Arabic tradition of modernity and a global space of intellectual engagement. Well into the twenty-first century, the Forum’s legacies continue to shape the moral stances of poets facing disaster at home and the precariousness of statelessness abroad, and extend into forms of civilian solidarity and collective organizing.","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41781924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Specters of World Literature: Orientalism, Modernity, and the Novel in the Middle East, written by Karim Mattar","authors":"H. Alfaisal","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341444","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341444","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45127067","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Transmission and Transit in Contemporary Arabic Literature: Naql and Its Limits","authors":"Drew Paul","doi":"10.1163/1570064x-12341452","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/1570064x-12341452","url":null,"abstract":"In this essay, I use the concept of naql to connect textual transmission and physical movement in two contemporary Arabic fictional works that are structured around questions of the circulation of narratives and bodies: Khālid al-Khamīsī’s Tāksī, a fictional collection of tales about Cairo taxi drivers, and Aḥmad Saʿdāwī’s Frānkishtāyn fī Baghdād, which depicts a monster roaming the streets of Baghdad. I begin with a discussion of naql as both transmission and movement, reading a tension between fixity and change that complicates notions of authenticity and authority in realms such as language, time, and mobility. I then argue that Tāksī uses the mobility of the taxi and the types of transmissions that it receives and produces to reposition cultural and political knowledge gleaned from cabdrivers who move through the gridlocked streets of Cairo. In Saʿdāwī’s novel, the monster’s movements and actions begin as a response to violence but fail to cohere as an alternative to structural corruption, revealing the limits of naql as political critique. I conclude by considering how this reading of naql is reflected in the global circulation of these texts.","PeriodicalId":43529,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF ARABIC LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47146127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}