Jeremy Farrell | Leiden University (original) (raw)

Papers by Jeremy Farrell

Kirill Dmitriev and Christine van Ruymbeke (eds.). 'Passed around by a Crescent': Wine Poetry in the Literary Traditions of the Islamic World, Beiruter Texte und Studien 142. Beirut and Würzburg: Ergon-Verlag., 2022

This chapter describes and contextualizes the Islamic religiosity of al-Ḥasan b. Hāniʾ al-Ḥakamī,... more This chapter describes and contextualizes the Islamic religiosity of al-Ḥasan b. Hāniʾ al-Ḥakamī, better known as Abū Nuwās (d. AH 198/813 CE or 200/815), popularizer of the Arabic wine song (khamriyya). Previous studies of Abū Nuwās's religiosity have described it as esoteric based on close readings his wine songs (khamriyyāt), to the exclusion of the data found in his ascetic poetry (zuhdiyyāt). Instead, I suggest that the evidence of Abū Nuwās's religiosity found in both these genres is indicative of a type previously termed "transgressive sacrality" (Visuvalingam 1988; Crone 2015). This reading situates the religiosity of Abū Nuwās according to categories proposed in the field of evolutionary anthropology (Whitehouse 2001 etc.), offers new insights into the poet's view of ritual, moral community, and eschatological anticipation, and shows that these views largely comport with those of his Muslim contemporaries.

You can view the other insightful and entertaining contributions to this wonderful volume—generously made available through an Open Access agreement—by selecting the last link that appears under the 'Files' icon, above.

I regret that I could not refer to the following works, which also treat the different varieties of "transgressive sacrality" or early Islamic asceticism, or early Islamic ritualbecause of the timeline of publication:

Claus Peter Zoller, "Traditions of transgressive sacrality (against blasphemy) in Hinduism," Acta Orientalia 78 (2017): 1–162. Available at: https://journals.uio.no/actaorientalia/article/view/7265
Nora K. Schmdt, "Trajekte spätantiker Askese: Übungswissen in der frühislamischen Mahnpredigt am Beispiel von al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī (21–110 AH/ 642–728)," in Übungswissen in Religion und Philosophie: Produktion, Weitergabe, Wandel, Almut, eds. Barbara Renger and Alexandra Stellmacher (Berlin: Lit, 2018), 183–204. Available at: https://www.academia.edu/37382243/Trajekte_sp%C3%A4tantiker_Askese_%C3%9Cbungswissen_in_der_fr%C3%BChislamischen_Mahnpredigt_am_Beispiel_von_al_%E1%B8%A4asan_al_Ba%E1%B9%A3r%C4%AB_21_110_AH_642_728_In_%C3%9Cbungswissen_in_Religion_und_Philosophie_Produktion_Weitergabe_Wandel_Almut_Barbara_Renger_and_Alexandra_Stellmacher_eds_Berlin_Lit_2018_pp_183_204
Christopher Melchert, Before Sufism: Early Islamic Renunciant Piety, Islam – Thought, Culture, and Society 4 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2020). Available at: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110617962/html?lang=en
Andrew Marsham, Rituals of Islamic Monarchy: Accession and Succession in the First Muslim Empire (Edinburgh: EUP, 2009). Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/rituals-of-islamic-monarchy/9EDA2D7B569DC5DF552B5A1974E90B2C

Modern Hadith Studies. Continued Debates and New Approaches. Edited by Belal Abu-Alabbas, Michael Dann, and Christopher Melchert. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2020

NB: A number of errors in the text have been updated in the consequent publication, which can be... more NB: A number of errors in the text have been updated in the consequent publication, which can be accessed by clicking the links in the 'Files' icon, above.

Although ʿAbbasid society in the ninth and tenth centuries witnessed significant sectarian conflict, inter-group relations were not always defined by “negative loyalties” (Mottahedeh 2001). This chapter examines cooperative activity between hadith scholars and Sufis during this period as exhibited by five early “traditionist Sufis” (Karamustafa 2007): figures who were acclaimed by both later Sufi historians and hadith critics. Previous studies have both overstated evidence of conflict between the Sufi and hadith movements and ignored evidence of a shared epistemological orientation in the form of traditionist Sufis' (recently published) minor hadith works and documentation of their participation in pairwise relationships with élite hadith scholars (ḥuffāẓ) in prosopographical works. A statistical analysis of these latter records as a network—a collective of agents connected by ties of meaningful exchange—demonstrates that early traditionist Sufis significantly impacted the structure of the élite hadith scholarship network over the course of the tenth century. Despite their small numbers, this small cadre succeeded in creating a niche of cooperation between the Sufis and hadith scholars which endured for centuries.

I regret that I did not refer to the following works, which also discuss the relation between hadith-scholarship and Sufism:

Jean-Jacques Thibon, "Transmission du hadith et modèle prophétique chez les premiers soufis," Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religions 178(2) (2017): 71-88. Available at: https://www.cairn.info/journal-archives-de-sciences-sociales-des-religions-2017-2-page-71.htm

Aiyub Palmer, "Chapter 13: Sufism," in The Wiley Blackwell Concise Companion to the Hadith, ed. Daniel W Brown (Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley Blackwell, 2020), 265-79. Available at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781118638477.ch13

Hikmet Yaman, "A Muḥaddith Sūfī or a Sūfī Muḥaddith? An Evaluation of General Characteristics of the Sūfī Approaches to Ḥadīths [Muhaddis bir Sufi mi yoksa Sufi bir Muhaddis mi? Sufilerin Hadislere Yaklaşımlarının Genel Özelliklerine Dair Bir Deǧerlendirme]," Sufiyye 15 (2023):1–22. doi:https://doi.org/31.12.2023.

Words that Tear the Flesh: Essays on Sarcasm in Medieval and Early Modern Literature and Cultures. Edited by Stephen Alan Baragona and Elizabeth Louise Rambo. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture 21. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2018

Readers of the pre-modern Arabic literary tradition recognized sarcastic speech acts. Sarcasm ope... more Readers of the pre-modern Arabic literary tradition recognized sarcastic speech acts. Sarcasm operates through a negative, illocutionary assessment relative to an inter-subjectively fixed standard, and implicates competing claims to authority. Pre-modern Arabic linguistic theorists articulated a number of concepts to describe a sarcastic speech act that exhibits a conflict between "apparent" and "hidden" meanings (tahakkum, istihzāʾ, sukhrīyah), thus requiring para-textual evidence to serve as a decisive factor for disambiguation. Instances of sarcasm and texts composed in a sarcastic voice appeared in a variety of Arabic literary genres, including exegesis, biography, and poetry. Textually-inclined scholars rarely discussed sarcasm as a mode of discourse because its recognition depends on the reader's use of inductive reasoning, a strategy of reading which these same scholars, in their attempts to systematize theories of Arabic grammar and language, either regarded as problematic or discouraged outright.

See also the following studies that exhibit significant overlap in approach or content:

• Satire
(Arabic) Sherif Abdelkarim, "Ibn al-Khaṭīb: Character Assassin," PMLA 137(1) (2022):70–87. Available at: https://bit.ly/3ArPNVc
(Arabic) Enass Khansa, "On Rupture and Temporary Endings: The Apostrophic Frame of Ibn Shuhayd al-Andalusī's (d. 426/1035) Satire on Inspiration and Literary Theft," Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies (JAIS) 24.1 (2024): 171–90. Available at: https://bit.ly/47NopAo
(Persian) Riccardo Zipoli, Irreverent Persia: Invective, Satirical and Burlesque Poetry from the Origins to the Timurid Period (10th to 15th Centuries). Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2015. Available at: https://bit.ly/3EHgd7O

• Use of inductive reasoning
Robert Gleave, Islam and Literalism: Literal Meaning and Interpretation in Islamic Legal Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), especially 63–93 (chapter 3, "The Emergence of Literal Meaning in Early Islamic Thought"). Available at: https://bit.ly/3AP259w

• Irony
Mustansir Mir, "Irony in the Qurʾān: A Study of the Story of Joseph," in Literary Structures of Religious Meaning in the Qurʾān, ed. Issa J. Boullata, 173–187. New York: Routledge, 2004. Available at: https://bit.ly/40tQvfT
Ibrahim M. Dowaidar, "Irony in Ibn Sūdūn's Nuzhat al-nufūs wa-muḍḥik al-ʿabūs: A Pragmatic study," CDELT Occasional Papers in the Development of English Education 83.1 (2023):57–106. doi:10.21608/opde.2023.325328.

Conference Presentations by Jeremy Farrell

Presentation to 2018 Middle East Studies Association annual conference (San Antonio, TX) How do ... more Presentation to 2018 Middle East Studies Association annual conference (San Antonio, TX)

How do leaders gain substantial followings? The organization of human communities is classically associated with hierarchization, the distinction between leaders and the led. In light of problematic categories for describing the attraction between leaders and followers in existing literature, we propose metrics of the leader-follower relationship that expressed through network topology and stylometry. As a case study, we examine the hierarchization of a community of religious figures known as "Sufis" from 9th-10th century Iraq. While data standardization poses issues, we find that the most attractive Sufi leaders exhibited high levels of "novelty," a feature of leadership was common throughout the Islamic world, particularly on account of increased conversion rates to Islam.

Existing theories of leadership appeal to the concept of attraction to explain hierarchization. For instance, several approaches to leadership consider ascriptive qualities (e.g. lineage, "charisma") as invariably attractive to followers. Conversely, other theories hold that constituencies follow individuals who exert control of over resources (e.g., currency, divine inspiration). Although these theories of attraction explain dynamics in contemporary communities, their application to historical communities assumes strong parameters that are difficult to identify in historical cases.

Network analysis offers an avenue to articulate concepts that are more applicable to historical instances of hierarchization. Three categories for evaluating leader-follower relationships can be expressed using commonly-used network metrics. First, we evaluate the "strength" of ties between leaders and followers. Second, we evaluate the originality of a leader's "message," composed of discrete "sayings." Topologically, this corresponds to the geodesic distance between a statement's originator (node[o]) and a leader (node[j]); thus, an "original" message returns a value of "0", while more "traditional" messages return increasingly higher values. Finally, we evaluate the heterogeneity of a leader's message through stylometric analysis. Using a list of key words, we evaluate their relative frequency in a leader's message: absolute values (0.0, 1.0) indicate homogenous messages, while a median value (0.5) indicates a heterogeneous message.

We apply these categories to a corpus of texts written by Sufis from the 9th-11th centuries, in order to discern the factors that influenced the development of a leader-follower hierarchy. A unique structural feature of these texts is a record of the transmission pathway for sayings by leading Sufis (i.e., x ? y ? z ['saying']); our corpus comprises nine works with 2,044 transmission pathways.

Book Reviews by Jeremy Farrell

Journal of Sufi Studies, 2024