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"Literature and history Islamic Empire."
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The rise of the Arabic book
\"During the thirteenth century, Europe's largest library owned fewer than 2,000 volumes. Libraries in the Arab world at the time had exponentially larger collections. Five libraries in Baghdad alone held between 200,000 and 1,000,000 books each, including multiple copies of standard works so that their many patrons could enjoy simultaneous access. How did the Arabic codex become so popular during the Middle Ages, even as the well-established form languished in Europe? Beatrice Gruendler's The Rise of the Arabic Book answers this question through in-depth stories of bookmakers and book collectors, stationers and librarians, scholars and poets of the ninth century. The history of the book has been written with an outsize focus on Europe. The role books played in shaping the great literary cultures of the world beyond the West has been less known-until now. An internationally renowned expert in classical Arabic literature, Gruendler corrects this oversight and takes us into the rich literary milieu of early Arabic letters\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Arabs and Islam in Late Antiquity
This work provides a critique of Arabic textual sources for the history of the Arabs in late antique times, during the centuries immediately preceding Muhammad and up to and including the Umayyad period. Aziz Al-Azmeh considers the value and relevance of a range of literary sources, including orality and literacy, ancient Arabic poetry, the corpus of Arab heroic lore (ayyam), the early narrative, and the Qur’an. The work includes a very extensive bibliography of the works cited. This is the first book in the Gerlach Press series Theories and Paradigms of Islamic Studies.
eBook
Saracens and the Making of English Identity
This book explores the ways in which discourses of religious, racial, and national identity blur and engage each other in the medieval West. Specifically, the book studies depictions of Muslims in England during the 1330s and argues that these depictions, although historically inaccurate, served to enhance and advance assertions of English national identity at this time. The book examines Saracen characters in a manuscript renowned for the variety of its texts, and discusses hagiographic legends, elaborations of chronicle entries, and popular romances about Charlemagne, Arthur, and various English knights. In these texts, Saracens engage issues such as the demarcation of communal borders, the place of gender norms and religion in communities' self-definitions, and the roles of violence and history in assertions of group identity. Texts involving Saracens thus serve both to assert an English identity, and to explore the challenges involved in making such an assertion in the early fourteenth century when the English language was regaining its cultural prestige, when the English people were increasingly at odds with their French cousins, and when English, Welsh, and Scottish sovereignty were pressing matters.
eBook
Early Modern Encounters with the Islamic East
An exploration of early modern encounters between Christian Europe and the (Islamic) East from the perspective of performance studies and performativity theories, this collection focuses on the ways in which these cultural contacts were acted out on the real and metaphorical stages of theatre, literature, music, diplomacy and travel. The volume responds to the theatricalization of early modern politics, to contemporary anxieties about the tension between religious performance and belief, to the circulation of material objects in intercultural relations, and the eminent role of theatre and drama for the (re)imagination and negotiation of cultural difference. Contributors examine early modern encounters with and in the East using an innovative combination of literary and cultural theories. They stress the contingent nature of these contacts and demonstrate that they can be read as moments of potentiality in which the future of political and economic relations - as well as the players' cultural, religious and gender identities - are at stake.
eBook
Al-Jهaٍhiٍz : in praise of books
Al-Jahiz was a bibliomaniac, theologian, and spokesman for the political and cultural elite, a writer who lived, counselled and wrote in Iraq during the first century of the 'Abbasid caliphate. 'In Praise of Books' explores the centrality of books to Al-Jahiz's work and to the society he lived in.
Book
The Reader in al-Jahiz
The 9th-century essayist, theologian and encyclopaedist Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz has long been acknowledged as a master of early Arabic prose writing. Many of his most engaging writings were clearly intended for a broad readership but were presented as letters to individuals. Despite the importance and quantity of these letters, surprisingly little academic notice has been paid to them. Now, Thomas Hefter takes a new approach in interpreting some of al-Jahiz's 'epistolary monographs'. By focussing on the varying ways in which he wrote to the addressee, Hefter shows how al-Jahiz hid his conversations on the page in order to guide (or manipulate) his actual readers and encourage them to engage with his complex materials.
Key Features
* Looks at letters from one of the most unique minds of the Abbasid era that cover sectarian and ethnic rivalries, ethical questions, intoxicating beverages and daily life *Relates al-Jahiz's experiments with the letter frame to his views on occupations, human geography and other issues of his day
*Examines the role of self-parody in al-Jahiz's fictional conversations with his addressees
*Explores the rich interplay of contending voices
eBook
The reader in al-Jāḥiẓ : the epistolary rhetoric of an Arabic prose master
Thomas Hefter takes a new approach in interpreting some of al-Jāḥiẓ's \"epistolary monographs.\" By focussing on the varying ways in which he wrote to the addressee, Hefter shows how al-Jāḥiẓ shaped his conversations on the page in order to guide (or manipulate) his actual readers and encourage them to engage with his complex materials -- Source other than Library of Congress.
Book
The sultan speaks : dialogue in English plays and histories about the Ottoman Turks
The first study of English historical plays about the Turks, using works in Greek, Arabic, and Turkish. Drawing on Bakhtin's concept of the dialogic, McJannet shows that instead of adverse authorial commentary playwrights such as Marlowe and Fulke Greville use dialogue and commentary to enhance the sultan's stature and mitigate his negative acts.
eBook