Marlé Hammond

G. J. H. van Gelder

Takhyil is a term from Arabic poetics denoting the evocation of images. It has a broad spectrum of connotations throughout classical philosophical poetics and rhetoric, and it is closely linked to the Greek concept of phantasia. This volume is comprised of annotated translations of key texts on this topic from major philosophers and literary theoreticians, including Alfarabi (al-Farabi), Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Averroes (Ibn Rushd), and 'Abd al-Qahir al-Jurjani. In her preface, the classicist Anne Sheppard relates takhyil to Greek poetics, and in his introduction, Wolfhart Heinrichs traces the development of the term in the Arabic tradition. The second part of the book contains eight studies on takhyil and various aspects of image-evocation and how it relates to musical theory, literary criticism and rhetoric. The opening essay is by Katrin Kohl, a specialist in European poetics, who places takhyil in the wider context of poetic universals.

The Imaginary in Classical Arabic Poetics

Takhyīl

Attitudes Towards Invective Poetry (hijāʼ) in Classical Arabic Literature

The Bad and the Ugly

Simon Swain

Emilie Savage-Smith

Ignacio Javier Sánchez Rojo

"A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybi'ah (d. 1270) is the earliest comprehensive history of medicine. It contains biographies of over 432 physicians, ranging from the ancient Greeks to the author's contemporaries, describing their training and practice, often as court physicians, and listing their medical works; all this interlaced with poems and anecdotes. These volumes present the first complete and annotated translation along with a new edition of the Arabic text showing the stages in which the author composed the work. Introductory essays provide important background. The reader will find on these pages an Islamic society that worked closely with Christians and Jews, deeply committed to advancing knowledge and applying it to health and wellbeing. Contributors: Ignacio Sánchez, N. Peter Joosse, Alasdair Watson, Bruce Inksetter, Franak Hilloowala"--

The 'Uyūn Al-anbā' Fī Ṭabaqāt Al-aṭibbā', of Ibn Abīuṣaybi'ah

A Literary History of Medicine

Attitudes Towards Invective Poetry (Hijāʼ) in Classical Arabic Literature

Otto Zwartjes

Ed de Moor

Eduardus Cornelius Maria de Moor

From the contents: Ibn Khafaja (1058-1139) in Morocco: analysis of a laudatory poem addressed to a member of the Almoravid clan (Arie Schippers).- Berbers in al-Andalus and Andalusians in the Maghrib as reflected in 'tawshih' poetry (Th. Marita Wijntjes).- l'elite savante andalouse a Fes (XVeme et XVIeme siecle (Fernando R. Mediano). and politcal roots of the accidental.

Cultural Transfer Between the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa

Poetry, Politics and Polemics

A major achievement in the field of translation, this anthology presents a rich assortment of classical Arabic poems and literary prose, from pre-Islamic times until the 18th century, with short introductions to guide non-specialist students and informative endnotes and bibliography for advanced scholars. Like many pre-modern Arabic anthologies it aims at being both entertaining and informative. It ranges from the early Bedouin poems with their evocation of desert life to refined urban lyrical verse, from tender love poetry to sonorous eulogy or vicious lampoons, and from the heights of mystical rapture to the frivolity of comic verse. The prose contains anecdotes, entertaining or edifying tales and parables, a fairy-tale, a bawdy story, samples of literary criticism, and much more. With this anthology, distinguished Arabist Geert Jan van Gelder brings together well-known texts as well as less familiar pieces that will be new even to scholars in the field. Many recent studies and anthologies of Middle Eastern literatures are primarily interested in Islam and religious matters--an emphasis that leads to the common misconception that almost everything in the region was and is dominated by religion. Classical Arabic Literature instead brings to life the rich variety of pre-modern Arabic social and cultural life, where secular texts happily coexisted with religious ones. This masterful anthology, in English only, will introduce this vibrant literary heritage to a wide spectrum of new readers.

A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology

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No justification is needed for the selection of the much-studied but inexhaustible general theme of the new annual publication. Orientations: the history of the numerous and multifarious relations and contacts between the Middle East and the West, political, economic, cultural and literary. In the first volume, entitled The Middle East and Europe: Encounters and Exchanges, Jacques Waardenburg provides a broad survey of Muslim attitudes towards other religions in the medieval period. Mercedes García-Arenal compares the methods of Spanish conquest and evangelization in Spain and in the New World. The Dutch share in the 17th-century slave trade in Yemen is studied by C.G. Brouwer. The life of Ahmad ibn Qasim ibn al-Hajari, born in Spain, living in Morocco, and a traveller in France and the Low Countries in the early 17th century, is the subject of an article by Gerard Wiegers. The experiences of Egyptians who visited France in the 19th and early 20th centuries are discussed by Ed de Moor. Rotraud Wielandt explores the concept of the Enlightenment in the works of the 19th-century Syrian writer Marrash. Bassam Tibi analyzes the contemporary Muslim fundamentalist response to the challenge of modernity.

Encounters and Exchanges

The Middle East and Europe

Han J. W. Drijvers

H. L. Herman L. J. Vanstiphout

Wout Jacques van Bekkum

Gerrit Jan Reinink

This collection of studies treats the theme of cultural (and other) confrontations between different groups (ethnic, or linguistic, or political, or religious...) within the Middle East, but also in some contributions, the types of confrontation between the West and the Middle East.

Cultural Encounters Within and with the Near East : Studies Presented to Hans Drijvers at the Occasion of His Sixty-fifth Birthday by Colleagues and Students

All Those Nations --

G. J. H. van Gelder

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