Medieval Knowledge in Modern Reading: A Fifteenth-Century Arabic Encyclopaedia of omni re scibili (original) (raw)

Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors

Medieval Arabic Historiography is concerned with social contexts and narrative structures of pre-modern Islamic historiography written in Arabic in seventh and thirteenth-century Syria and Eygpt. Taking up recent theoretical reflections on historical writing in the European Middle Ages, this extraordinary study combines approaches drawn from social sciences and literary studies, with a particular focus on two well-known texts: Abu Shama’s The Book of the Two Gardens, and Ibn Wasil’s The Dissipater of Anxieties. These texts describe events during the life of the sultans Nur-al-Din and Salah al-Din, who are primarily known in modern times as the champions of the anti-Crusade movement. Hirschler shows that these two authors were active interpreters of their society and has considerable room for manoeuvre in both their social environment and the shaping of their texts. Through the use of a fresh and original theoretical approach to pre-modern Arabic historiography, Hirschler presents a new understanding of these texts which have before been relatively neglected, thus providing a significant contribution to the burgeoning field of historiographical studies. Reviews: (11) Journal of the American Oriental Society 130/4 (2010), Reuven Amitai; (10) MESA Review of Middle East Studies 44/1 (2010), Eric Hanne; (9) British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 37/2 (2010), Bruno De Nicola; (8) Orientalische Literaturzeitung 105/1 (2010), Axel Havemann; (7) Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 160/1 (2010), Albrecht Fuess; (6) The American Historical Review 114/3 (2009), Tarif Khalidi; (5) Bulletin of SOAS 72/2 (2009), Yehoshua Frenkel; (4) Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 20/2 (2008), Amira K. Bennison; (3) Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 82/3 (2007), Fred M. Donner; (2) The Muslim World Book Review 28/1 (2007), Fozia Bora; (1) Sehepunkte 7 (2007), Kurt Franz.

Islamic Literature: An Attempt at A Historical Overview

Korkut Ata Türkiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi, 2023

This study aims to provide an overview of the development of Islamic literature, particularly in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish languages, from the birth of Islam to the 20th century. It will encompass four main historical periods: The early Islamic period (7th-10th centuries), the middle Islamic period (11th-15th centuries), the 16th-18th century dynasties, and the modern period. The study describes the main literary genres, themes, trends, figures, and works that emerged in Islamic communities, explores the motives and outcomes of interactions with various Eastern and Western traditions in different periods, and draws attention to the significant shifts in Islamic literature during the modern era. Available compact studies in Islamic literature predominantly deal with a specific language area or undertake thematic research. The present study, which demonstrates the historical course of the literature of Islamic communities in three widespread languages, helps to pinpoint the general trends of continuity, transformation, and interaction among these traditions. For instance, it brings out the key role Arabic literature played in defining the main poetic forms of Islamic literature, such as ghazal, qasida, mathnawi, and promoting the literary prose, adab, which were subsequently elaborated and transformed within other linguistic traditions. Again, it shows how the dissolution of the Abbasid political power impacted the revival of Persian literature, which later took the lead in establishing mystic philosophy as a major vein in general Islamic literature. Another common experience of Islamic literatures that stands out in this survey is the transformation of formal and thematic features due to the expanding Western influence and stimulus of modernization in the 19th century.

Roger Allen and D. S. Richards, eds., Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Pp. 492. $220.00 cloth

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2008

... Page 2. Reviews 709 period, such as The Thousand and One Nights, Sirat ↩Antar ibn Shaddad, Sirat Bani Hilal, other siras and popular narratives, and popular religious narratives. Given its size (very small in relation to the ...