Al Jahiz In Praise Of Books

Author : James E. Montgomery
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 074868333X
Total Pages : 592 pages
Book Rating : 4.38/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books written by James E. Montgomery and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-11-13 with total page 592 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Edinburgh University Press will publish two self-contained guides to reading al-Jahiz that also shed light on his society and its writings. This first volume, 'In Praise of Books', is devoted to bibliomania and al-Jahiz's bibliophilia. Volume 2, In Censure of Books, explores Al-Jahiz's bibliophobia. Al-Jahiz was a bibliomaniac, theologian, and spokesman for the political and cultural elite, a writer who lived, counselled and wrote in Iraq during the first century of the 'Abbasid caliphate. He advised, argued and rubbed shoulders with the major power brokers and leading religious and intellectual figures of his day, and crossed swords in debate and argument with the architects of the Islamic religious, theological, philosophical and cultural canon. His many, tumultuous writings engage with these figures, their ideas, theories and policies. They give us an invaluable but much-neglected window onto the values and beliefs of this cosmopolitan elite.

Author :
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Life and Works of Jahiz written by and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1969 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jāḥiẓ
Publisher : Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nine Essays of Al-Jahiz written by Jāḥiẓ and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 1989 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Al-Jahiz (d.868/869 A.D.) was a master of Arabic prose and a major influence on modern Arabic literature. A theologian with a huge vocabulary and a well developed sense of humor, he is known for the style, depth, and humor of his works. He wrote most often in a combined essay and anthology form and sought to instruct his readers while amusing them. This book is the first collection of English translations of several of his essays in their complete, extant form. The topics covered range from personal relationships, to ethnic stereotypes and ethical conduct.

Author : Ibn Qutaybah
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479863335
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Excellence of the Arabs written by Ibn Qutaybah and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2019-09-04 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited defense of Arab identity from a time of political unrest In ninth-century Abbasid Baghdad, the social prestige attached to claims of Arab identity had begun to decline. In The Excellence of the Arabs, the celebrated litterateur Ibn Qutaybah locks horns with those members of his society who belittled Arabness and vaunted the glories of Persian heritage and culture. Instead, he upholds the status of Arabs and their heritage in the face of criticism and uncertainty. The Excellence of the Arabs is in two parts. In the first, Arab Preeminence, which takes the form of an extended argument for Arab privilege, Ibn Qutaybah accuses his opponents of blasphemous envy. In the second, The Excellence of Arab Learning, he describes the fields of knowledge in which he believed pre-Islamic Arabians excelled, including knowledge of the stars, divination, horse husbandry, and poetry. By incorporating extensive excerpts from the poetic heritage—“the archive of the Arabs”—Ibn Qutaybah aims to demonstrate that poetry is itself sufficient evidence of Arab superiority. Eloquent and forceful, The Excellence of the Arabs addresses a central question at a time of great social flux, at the dawn of classical Muslim civilization: What does it mean to be Arab? An English-only edition.

Author : Rkia Elaroui Cornell
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1786075229
Total Pages : 416 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Rabi'a From Narrative to Myth written by Rkia Elaroui Cornell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-01-03 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rabi‘a al-‘Adawiyya is a figure shrouded in myth. Certainly a woman by this name was born in Basra, Iraq, in the eighth century, but her life remains recorded only in legends, stories, poems and hagiographies. The various depictions of her – as a deeply spiritual ascetic, an existentialist rebel and a romantic lover – seem impossible to reconcile, and yet Rabi‘a has transcended these narratives to become a global symbol of both Sufi and modern secular culture. In this groundbreaking study, Rkia Elaroui Cornell traces the development of these diverse narratives and provides a history of the iconic Rabi‘a’s construction as a Sufi saint. Combining medieval and modern sources, including evidence never before examined, in novel ways, Rabi‘a From Narrative to Myth is the most significant work to emerge on this quintessential figure in Islam for more than seventy years.

Author : Robert Irwin
Publisher : ABRAMS
ISBN 13 : 1590209141
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Night & Horses & The Desert written by Robert Irwin and published by ABRAMS. This book was released on 2016-06-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of Arabic literature is “a joy to read. . . . a journey through eleven centuries of a lost world, with a surprise on almost every page” (Financial Times). Spanning the fifth to the sixteenth centuries, from Afghanistan to Spain, Night & Horses & The Desert includes translated extracts from all the major classics in an invaluable introduction to the subject of classical Arabic literature. Robert Irwin has selected a wide range of poetry and prose in translation, from the most important and typical texts to the very obscure. Alongside the extracts, Irwin’s copious commentary and notes provide an explanatory history of the subject. What were the various genres and to what extent were they constrained by rules? What were the canons of traditional Arabic literary criticism? How were Arabic prose and poetry recited and written down? Irwin explores the literary environments of the desert, salon, mosque, and bookshop and provides brief biographies of the caliphs, princesses, warriors, scribes, dandies, and mystics who created such a rich and diverse literary culture. Night & Horses & The Desert gives western readers a unique taste of the sheer vitality and depth of the medieval Arab past. “Superb . . . . a revelation.” —The Washington Post “[A] treasure-house of a book. . . . Unequaled for scholarship and entertainment.” —The Independent

Author : Thomas Hefter
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 0748692754
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reader in al-Jahiz written by Thomas Hefter and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the intricately crafted rhetorical strategies used by al-Jahiz in his letters The 9th-century essayist, theologian and encyclopedist 'Amr b. Bahr al-Jahiz has long been acknowledged as a master of early Arabic prose writing. Many of his most engaging writings were clearly intended for a broad readership but were presented as letters to individuals. Despite the importance and quantity of these letters, surprisingly little academic notice has been paid to them. Now, Thomas Hefter takes a new approach in interpreting some of al-Jahiz's 'epistolary monographs'. By focusing on the varying ways in which he wrote to the addressee, Hefter shows how al-Jahiz shaped his conversations on the page in order to guide (or manipulate) his actual readers and encourage them to engage with his complex materials.

Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004526358
Total Pages : 890 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

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Download or read book L’adab, toujours recommencé written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2023-08-21 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of adab is at the very heart of the Islamicate cultures. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilisations of the Late Antiquity period, nourished by Greek, Syriac and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated range of meanings, ranging from good behaviour, good manners, etiquette, proper knowledge of the rules, to belles-lettres, and finally, literature. This volume addresses the notion of adab through four perspectives, which correspond to the four parts into which it is divided: “Origins”; “Transmissions”; “Metamorphosis” of the “Origins” and finally “Origins” through the lens of modernity.

Author : al-Qadi al-Quda'i,
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479888427
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book A Treasury of Virtues written by al-Qadi al-Quda'i, and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Treasury of Virtues is a collection of sayings, sermons, and teachings attributed to 'Ali ibn Abi Talib (d. 40 H/661 AD), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, the first Shia Imam and the fourth Sunni Caliph. An acknowledged master of Arabic eloquence and a sage of Islamic wisdom, 'Ali was renowned for his eloquence: his words were collected, quoted, and studied over the centuries, and extensively anthologized, excerpted, and interpreted. Of the many compilations of 'Ali’s words, A Treasury of Virtues, compiled by the Fatimid Shafi'i judge al-Quda'i (d. 454 H/1062 AD), arguably possesses the broadest compass of genres and the largest variety of themes. Included are aphorisms, proverbs, sermons, speeches, homilies, prayers, letters, dialogues, and verse, all of which provide instruction on how to be a morally upstanding human being. The shorter compilation included here, One Hundred Proverbs, is attributed to the eminent writer al-Jahiz (d. 255 H/869 AD). This volume presents the first English translation of both of these important collections.

Author : J. Cale Johnson
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110642689
Total Pages : 486 pages
Book Rating : 4.81/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Visualizing the invisible with the human body written by J. Cale Johnson and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 486 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Physiognomy and ekphrasis are two of the most important modes of description in antiquity and represent the necessary precursors of scientific description. The primary way of divining the characteristics and fate of an individual, whether inborn or acquired, was to observe the patient’s external characteristics and behaviour. This volume focuses initially on two types of descriptive literature in Mesopotamia: physiognomic omens and what we might call ekphrastic description. These modalities are traced through ancient India, Ugaritic and the Hebrew Bible, before arriving at the physiognomic features of famous historical figures such as Themistocles, Socrates or Augustus in the Graeco-Roman world, where physiognomic discussions become intertwined with typological analyses of human characters. The Arabic compendial culture absorbed and remade these different physiognomic and ekphrastic traditions, incorporating both Mesopotamian links between physiognomy and medicine and the interest in characterological ‘types’ that had emerged in the Hellenistic period. This volume offer the first wide-ranging picture of these modalities of description in antiquity.