Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World

Rulers as Authors in the Islamic World PDF

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 691

ISBN-13: 9004690611

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How widespread was authorship among rulers in the premodern Islamic world? The writings of different types of rulers in different regions and periods are analyzed in this book, from the early centuries in the central lands of Islam to 19th century Sudan. The composition of poetry appears as the most fertile area for authorship among rulers. Prose writings show a wide variety, from astrology to bookmaking, from autobiography to creeds. Some of the rulers made claims to special knowledge, but in all cases authorship played a special role in the construction of the rulers' authority and legitimacy. Contributors: Ahmed Ibrahim Abushouk, Sean W. Anthony, María Luisa Ávila†, Teresa Bernheimer, Philip Bockholt, Sonja Brentjes, Christiane Czygan, David Durand-Guédy, Anne-Marie Eddé, Sinem Eryılmaz, Maribel Fierro, Adam Gaiser, Angelika Hartmann†, Livnat Holtzman, Maher Jarrar, Robert S. Kramer, Christian Mauder, Matthew Melvin-Koushki, Letizia Osti, Jürgen Paul, Petra Schmidl, Tilman Seidensticker.

In the Sultan’s Salon: Learning, Religion, and Rulership at the Mamluk Court of Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 1501–1516) (2 vols)

In the Sultan’s Salon: Learning, Religion, and Rulership at the Mamluk Court of Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 1501–1516) (2 vols) PDF

Author: Christian Mauder

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2021-08-09

Total Pages: 1328

ISBN-13: 9004444211

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Building on his award-winning research, Christian Mauder’s In the Sultan’s Salon constitutes the first detailed study of the intellectual, religious, and political culture of the court of the Mamluk Sultanate (1250–1517), one of the most important polities in Islamic history.

Constructions of Media Authorship

Constructions of Media Authorship PDF

Author: Christiane Heibach

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 3110679698

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The author is dead, long live the author! This paradox has shaped discussions on authorship since at least the 1960s, when the dominant notion of the individual author-genius was first critically questioned. The ongoing discussion has mainly focused on literature and the arts, but has ignored nearly any artistic practice beyond these two fields. “Constructions of Media Authorship” aims to fill this gap: the volume’s interdisciplinary contributions reflect historical and current artistic practices within various media and attempt to grasp them from different perspectives. The first part sheds a new light on different artistic and design practices and questions the still dominant view on the individual identifiable author. The second part discusses creative practices in literature, emphasizing the interrelation of aesthetic discourses and media practices. The third part investigates authoring in audiovisual media, especially film and TV, while the final part turns to electronic and digital media and their collective creativity and hybrid mediality. The volume is also an attempt to develop new methodological approaches, focusing on the interplay between various human and non-human actors in different media constellations.

Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature

Contrariness in Classical Arabic Literature PDF

Author: Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2024-03-28

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 9004691014

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In his Beautifying the Ugly and Uglifying the Beautiful (Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan) the prolific anthologist al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) offers a thematically arranged selection of Arabic poems and prose anecdotes or sayings with contrary or paradoxical purport, such as praise of miserliness, boredom, sickness, and death, or condemnation of generosity, intelligence, youth, and music. The book is both entertaining and informative, giving insight in premodern Arab and Islamic culture. It contains a new edition of the Arabic text and a complete English translation (the first in any language) with extensive annotation, preceded by an introduction with the necessary background of the genre.

A History of Muslim Views of the Bible

A History of Muslim Views of the Bible PDF

Author: Martin Whittingham

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2020-11-23

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 3110335883

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This book is the first of two volumes that aim to produce something not previously attempted: a synthetic history of Muslim responses to the Bible, stretching from the rise of Islam to the present day. It combines scholarship with a genuine narrative, so as to tell the story of Muslim engagement with the Bible. Covering Sunnī, Imāmī Shī'ī and Ismā'īlī perspectives, this study will offer a scholarly overview of three areas of Muslim response, namely ideas of corruption, use of the Biblical text, and abrogation of the text. For each period of history, the important figures and dominant trends, along with exceptions, are identified. The interplay between using and criticising the Bible is explored, as well as how the respective emphasis on these two approaches rises and falls in different periods and locations. The study critically engages with existing scholarship, scrutinizing received views on the subject, and shedding light on an important area of interfaith concern.

The Rise of the Arabic Book

The Rise of the Arabic Book PDF

Author: Beatrice Gruendler

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2020-10-13

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0674250265

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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.

Arabic Belles Lettres

Arabic Belles Lettres PDF

Author: Joseph E. Lowry

Publisher: Lockwood Press

Published: 2019-09-15

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1948488116

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Arabic Belles Lettres brings together ten studies that shed light on important questions in the study of Arabic language, literature, literary history, and writerly culture. The volume is divided into three sections. Early Narratives comprises: Joseph Lowry on the Qurʾan's allusive legal language; Abed el-Rahman Tayyara on matrilineal lineages in the context of Badr and Uhụd; Ruqayya Khan on the ramifications of public courtship in ʾUdhrī romances; and Philip Kennedy on firāsah (reading for signs and traces) in medieval narrative. Medieval Authors comprises: Shawkat Toorawa on ʿUbaydallāh ibn Aḥmad ibn Abī Ṭāhir's History of Baghdād; Maurice Pomerantz and Bilal Orfali on Ibn Fāris and the origins of the maqāmah genre; Everett Rowson on al-Tawḥīdī and his predecessors (a reprint of his 1996 ZDMG article); and Ghayde Ghraowi on al-Khafājī and his Rayḥānat al-alibbāʾ. Modern Egypt comprises: Roger Allen on a cultural controversy in the Cairo newspapers of 1902; and Devin Stewart on preposterous boasting and ingenuity in on modern Egyptian Arabic.

A Bridge to the Sky

A Bridge to the Sky PDF

Author: Glaire Anderson

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2024-01-25

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 019091324X

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A Bridge to the Sky explores the close connections between science, arts, and visual culture as they developed in the medieval Islamic lands. It presents a significant study of the career of 'Abbas Ibn Firnas, (d. 887), the most celebrated 'scientist' and polymath of early Islamic Spain, best known for conducting an experiment that has been celebrated as a milestone in the history of human flight.