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"the poetry of al-Māyidī ibn Ẓāhir, the earliest poet in what would later become the United Arab Emirates"--
"But his greatest discovery was an old, poor, illiterate and unruly Bedouin, the poet ad-Dindan, whose magnificent poetry offered contemporary proof of the authenticity of the great pre-Islamic tradition in Arabian oral poetry." "Kurpershoek's expedition and encounters are recorded in detail in this part travelogue, part book of poems and study of traditional Saudi society."--BOOK JACKET.
The heroic deeds and words of a warrior poet of northern Arabia An epic hero and a poet, the semi-legendary Shāyiʿ al-Amsaḥ was a prominent ancestor of the Shammar tribal confederation that stretches across the Great Nafūd desert in the northern Arabian Peninsula. Shāyiʿ’s corpus of extant poems are preserved in narratives about his chivalrous exploits transmitted orally for centuries. In this volume, Marcel Kurpershoek vividly translates the deeds and verses of this compelling poet, based on recordings of late-twentieth century reciters, a testament to Shāyiʿ’s prominence as an embodiment of Bedouin virtue, courage, wiliness, and generosity. Born with one eye, Shāyiʿ presents...
Scenes from Arabian life at the turn of the twentieth century Arabian Romantic captures what it was like to live in central Arabia before the imposition of austere norms by the Wahhabi authorities in the early twentieth century: tales of robbery and hot pursuit; perilous desert crossings; scenes of exhaustion and chaos when water is raised from deep wells under harsh conditions; the distress of wounded and worn-out animals on the brink of perdition; once proud warriors who are at the mercy of their enemy on the field of battle. Such images lend poignancy to the suffering of the poet’s love-stricken heart, while also painting a vivid portrait of typical Bedouin life. Ibn Sbayyil, a town dwe...
This volume presents and analyses the work of four contemporary Saudi Bedouin poets, based on taped records, with special emphasis on this poetry's reflection of the tribal society's evolving self-image at a time of rapid social, economic, and political transformation.
This volume presents in translation and transcription the oral text of narratives about and poems by Slēwīḥ, one of Arabia's most famous nineteenth-century robber barons, recorded by Xālid, a sheikh of the 'Utaybah tribe of Saudi Arabia and the great-grandson of Slēwīḥ.
Questions and answers from two great philosophers Why is laughter contagious? Why do mountains exist? Why do we long for the past, even if it is scarred by suffering? Spanning a vast array of subjects that range from the philosophical to the theological, from the philological to the scientific, The Philosopher Responds is the record of a set of questions put by the litterateur Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī to the philosopher and historian Abū ʿAlī Miskawayh. Both figures were foremost contributors to the remarkable flowering of cultural and intellectual life that took place in the Islamic world during the reign of the Buyid dynasty in the fourth/tenth century. The correspondence between a...
"A Physician on the Nile begins as a description of everyday life in Egypt at the turn of the seventh/thirteenth century, before becoming a harrowing account of famine and pestilence"--