Concepts of Authorship in Pre-Modern Arabic Texts (original) (raw)
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Ibn Qutayba and the Rise of Conceptions of Authorship in the Classical 'Abbasid Period
Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam, 2019
Written works created during the third Islamic century provide evidence of wide-ranging literary developments and innovations: a transition from a tradition of compilation and transmission to an era of independent and creative authorship; from an environment of anonymity or dependence on the great names of the past to one in which the current, the named, and the new gained significant value; and from a tradition of largely oral transmission of learning and aural instruction to one in which written transmission became increasingly valued. This transition took centuries to occur, and while it began in the third/ninth century or even slightly earlier, only many years later were the permanent results of the process apparent. In this article I evaluate the role played by Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd Allāh b. Muslim b. Qutayba (213-76/828-89) in this period of transition, on the basis of the analysis of some dozen prefaces with which this scholar-judge-litterateur introduced his works. Numerous characteristics of Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces demonstrate his comparative lack of concern with asserting his own “possession” of his works as their author, as well as that the preface form apparent in them is a developing and somewhat inconsistent one, not yet the form of the classic book preface that would come into being in generations following him. While Ibn Qutayba’s prefaces are innovative examples of composition and of presentation of material in the third/ninth century, examination of their content and form reveals that they represent a transitional stage in the creation of the authored book.
ASSEMBLING AN AUTHOR: ON THE MAKING OF AL-HAMADHĀNĪ’S MAQĀMĀT
Modern readers encounter a book assuming that the author has played a vital role in its creation. They anticipate (rightly or wrongly) that the name prominently displayed on the cover has played an active role in the making of the book: i.e., drafting the text; dividing the work into sections; and arranging the contents. In some cases, they might imagine that this author selected the pictures, decided on the captions, and have chosen such material features such as the typeface and paper. While readers know that editors and publishers often shape the final form of modern books in important ways, few would hesitate to affirm that the role of the author is central to the production of the modern book. There were authors in the medieval Arabic world who were also involved in many aspects of the production of their own books. For instance, the author may have selected the individual poems, letters, stories, or speeches. He may have considered their arrangement. He may have even made an autograph copy on particular paper and using particular ink. Alternatively, the author may have dictated the work aloud to multiple scribes, and authorized them to teach the work through the granting of an ijāza. The particular features of authorial control in an age prior to mechanical reproduction are certainly of vital concern to the student of classical Arabic literature in general and deserve greater awareness on the part of their modern students. In this article, we address these problems of authorship and authorial control through a particular example: the collection of the maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī. One of the central works of Classical Arabic literature, the Maqāmāt of al-Hamadhānī has long been known mainly through Muḥammad ʿAbduh’s standard edition first print 1889.
2024
This research paper seeks to explore trends or tendencies in as- Sīrah an-Nabawiyyah (Prophetic Biography) emphasizes the historical investigation of selected writings on this subject from the first century of Islam until contemporary times. Muslims and others find exemplary qualities in every aspect of the Prophet’s life that inspire them to love him, understand his sayings and follow his deeds, and accept all his decisions. Also, Muslim scholars rely on the Prophetic Sīrah to understand and explain the Islamic Sources, al-Qur’an and as-Sunnah. Initially, most works on Sīrah focused on the composition of the Prophet’s biography, and subsequently, their writers became interested in recording its events in separate books. This study aims to highlight the writing trends on the Prophetic Sīrah throughout Islamic history, and then, examine selected writings addressing the demands and concerns of their times. This work starts with an introduction, and then, continues the discussion on the literal and technical definition of the Prophetic Sīrah, the phases of its writing trends, firstly, from the first century to the third century, secondly, from the fourth century to the golden age of Orientalism, and, lastly, from nineteenth century to contemporary age. This study arrives at insightful findings that for each age, there has been a trend or tendency in the writing of the Prophetic Sīrah according to the demands and concerns of the time. The researchers propose that the demands of modern-day writing trends on the Prophetic Sīrah include rhetorical (Kalāmī), philosophical (Falsafī), and social (Ijtimā’ī) approaches.
New Readings in Arabic Historiography from Late Medieval Egypt and Syria: Proceedings of the themed day of the Fifth Conference of the School of Mamluk Studies , 2021
While the historiography of late medieval Egypt and Syria is exceptionally well documented and many, if not most, of its major sources have by now been edited and studied, manuscript repositories still contain several historical texts that have received little to no attention from scholars. This essay will present one such unpublished and mostly unstudied excerpt of a historical biography devoted to Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (r. 693-4/1293-4, 698-708/1299-1309, 709-41/1309-41) preserved in the manuscript Arabe 1705, held by the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. It will be argued that its author can be identified as Shāfiʿ b. ʿAlī (d. 730/1330), who also wrote two well-known historical biographies of the sultans Baybars (r. 658-76/1260-77) and Qalāwūn (r. 678-89/1281-90). Using this particular text as a case study, I will discuss how the concept of "Literarisierung," first applied to Mamluk historiography by Ulrich Haarmann almost half a century ago, may still be used fruitfully to think about how historiography and literary modes of expression interacted. In a famous article published in 1971, Ulrich Haarmann argued that historiography in late medieval Egypt and Syria underwent a particular innovation, which he defined as a "Literarisierung der inneren Form," or "literarization of the inner form." According to Haarmann, the chronicles and biographical dictionaries produced between the 7th/13th and early 10th/16th centuries should not be considered as innovative in their formal, outer form, as they generally adhered to characteristics set by earlier precedents. There was, however, something distinctive about their inner form (i.e., on the level of individual segments within the larger works). At this level, one would come across a much higher attestation of literary elements, that is, anecdotes, topoi, colloquialisms, and especially miraculous stories, ʿajāʾib wa-gharāʾib pervading the annalistic historical narratives.1 This argument and related observations from Haarmann's dissertation, Quellenstudien zur frühen Mamlukenzeit, sparked a