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Arabic Oration: Art and Function
Winner of the 2021 Sheikh Zayed Book Award (category: Arab Culture in Other Languages) Browse a preview of Arabic Oration: Art and Fuction. In Arabic Oration: Art and Function, a narrative richly infused with illustrative texts and original translations, Tahera Qutbuddin presents a comprehensive theory of this preeminent genre in its foundational oral period, 7th-8th centuries AD. With speeches and sermons attributed to the Prophet Muḥammad, ʿAlī, other political and military leaders, and a number of prominent women, she assesses types of orations and themes, preservation and provenance, structure and style, orator-audience authority dynamics, and, with the shift from an oral to a highly literate culture, oration’s influence on the medieval chancery epistle. Probing the genre’s echoes in the contemporary Muslim world, she offers sensitive tools with which to decode speeches by mosque-imams and political leaders today.
Light in the Heavens
Humanitarian lessons and practical insights from the prophet of Islam The words of Muhammad, messenger of God and prophet of Islam, have a special place in the hearts of his followers. Wielding an authority second only to the Qur'an, they are cited by scholars in a vast array of disciplines—including law, theology, metaphysics, poetry, grammar, history, and medicine—and are quoted by Muslims to one another in their daily lives. Light in the Heavens by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, a Sunni judge in the Fatimid court in Egypt, is an outstanding example of a compilation of these sayings, known as hadiths, that circulated orally and were later assembled and written down. From North Africa to India, generations have used Light in the Heavens as a teaching text for children as well as adults, and many of its 1,200 sayings are familiar to individuals of diverse denominations and ethnicities. For Muslims—who consider Muhammad’s teachings the fount of wisdom and the beacon of guidance in all things, mundane and sublime—these sayings provide a direct window into the inspired vision of one of the most influential humans to have walked the Earth. An English-only edition.
The Rise of the Arabic Book
The little-known story of the sophisticated and vibrant Arabic book culture that flourished during the Middle Ages. 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.
Opposing the Imam
Examines the enduring legacy of the nawasib, early Muslims who were hostile to Islam's fourth caliph, Ali, and his descendants.
Reason, Esotericism, and Authority in Shiʿi Islam
This volume advances the critical study of exegetical, doctrinal, and political authority in Shiʿi Islam. Naive dichotomies of “reason” and “esotericism” in Islamic Studies have often marginalized Shiʿi thought or impeded its understanding. The studies presented here aim to foster more exacting frameworks for interpreting the diverse modes of rationality and esotericism in Twelver and Ismaili Shiʿism and the socio-epistemic values they represent within Muslim discourse. The volume’s contributions highlight the cross-sectarian genealogy of early Shiʿi esotericism; the rationale behind Fatimid Ismaili Quranic taʿwīl hermeneutics; the socio-political context of religious authority in nascent Twelver Shiʿism; authorial agency wielded by Imami hadith compilers; the position of esoteric Shiʿi traditions in Timurid-era Ḥilla; and Shiʿi-Sufi relations with Uṣūlī jurists in modern Iran. Contributors: Rodrigo Adem, Alessandro Cancian, Edmund Hayes, Sajjad Rizvi, Tahera Qutbuddin, Paul Walker, George Warner
Nahj al-Balāghah: The Wisdom and Eloquence of ʿAlī
Nahj al-Balāghah, the celebrated compendium of orations, letters, and sayings of ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (d. 40/661) compiled by al-Sharīf al-Raḍī (d. 406/1015), is a masterpiece of Arabic literature and Islamic wisdom studied and memorized avidly and continually for over a thousand years. Showcasing ʿAlī’s life and travails in his own words, it also transcribes his profound reflections on piety and virtue, and on just and compassionate governance. Tahera Qutbuddin’s meticulously researched critical edition based on the earliest 5th/11th-century manuscripts, with a lucid, annotated facing-page translation, brings to the modern reader the power and beauty of this influential text, and confirms the aptness of Raḍī’s title, “The Way of Eloquence.”
كتاب جهات الأئمة الخلفاء من الحرائر والإماء المسمى نساء الخلفاء
Consorts of the Caliphs is a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were, as the title suggests, consorts to those in power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by Ibn al-Saʿi (d. 674 H/1276 AD). Ibn al-Saʿi was a prolific Baghdadi scholar who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city, and whose career straddled the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656 H/1258 AD.
Uncoupling Language and Religion
This book is an invitation to rethink our understanding of Turkish literature as a tale of two “others.” The first part of the book examines the contributions of non-Muslim authors, the “others” of modern Turkey, to the development of Turkish literature during the late Ottoman and early republican period, focusing on the works of largely forgotten authors. The second part discusses Turkey as the “other” of the West and the way authors writing in Turkish challenged orientalist representations. Thus this book prepares the ground for a history of literature which uncouples language and religion and recreates the spaces of dialogue and exchange that have existed in late Ottoman Turkey between members of various ethno-religious communities.
Christian Martyrs Under Islam
A look at the developing conflicts in Christian-Muslim relations during late antiquity and the early Islamic era How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? Christian Martyrs under Islam explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, Christian Sahner introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Mu...
Attitudes to Endangered Languages
An in-depth study of endangered language revitalisation, which assesses the implications of changing language attitudes for language campaigners and policy-makers.
