This book examines the life and times and poetry of the extremely prolific and versatile 'Abb?sid poet Ibn al-R?m? (d. 283/896). Particular attention is devoted to tracing the influences in his distinctive poetic style and themes.

In the long literary history of the Middle East, the notion of 'the beloved' has been a central trope in both the poetry and prose of the region. This book explores the concept of the beloved in a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary manner, revealing how shared ideas on the subject supersede geographical and temporal boundaries, and ideas of nationhood. The book considers the beloved in its classical, modern and postmodern manifestations, taking into account the different sexual orientations and forms of desire expressed. From the pre-Islamic 'Udhri (romantic unrequited love), to the erotic same-sex love in thirteenth century poetry and prose, the divine Sufi reflections on the topic, and post-revolutionary love encounters in Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, The Beloved in Middle Eastern Literatures connects the affective and cultural with the political and the obscene. In focusing on the diverse manifestations of love and tropes of the lover/beloved binary, this book is unique in foregrounding what is often regarded as a 'taboo subject' in the region. The multi-faceted outlook reveals the variety of philological, philosophical, poetic and literary forms that treat this significant motif.

Muslims boast to all and sundry that they are the followers of the true religion of Abraham, but beneath the lofty claim are Muslim scholars, leaders and apologists’ presumptuous efforts to conceal the religion’s thriving pagan bedrock. In an attempt to bridge over the vast chasm between paganism and monotheism, Islam, through unsubstantiated links to Ishmael, audaciously placed Abraham, his mistress Hagar and son, Ishmael, down in Mecca and then assigned Abrahamic legends to every pagan belief, practice and ritual. Mohammed was also unashamedly presented as a monotheist in the midst of pagan Mecca, despite irrefutable evidence that proves he was also a habitual pagan. In addition to these deceptions, attempts to morph the pagan god, Allah into the God of the Bible were made but, to all intents and purposes, in vain. This book unpacks Islam’s lofty religious claims, and the common misconceptions of what the religion is and what it is not. With meticulous care, evidence from primarily the Islamic scriptures were collected, analyzed and then presented to prove this book’s assertions. The book also examines the uncensored history of the religion to expose its obscure beginnings, shortcomings, subsequent cover-ups, and outright deceptions. Islamic scriptures have also been successfully linked to the contemporary issues of the religion’s violent coercion, terrorism, intolerance, misogyny, antisemitism and supremacism. Targeted at all truth-seekers in general, this book is the ultimate handbook for anyone in pursuit of knowledge and truths. It is the first handbook of its kind that examines and conducts nuanced analysis of the un-sanitized scriptures of Islam in order to demonstrate that it is certainly not what it claims to be. Indeed, if one follows the evidence of the rise of Islam, one will undoubtedly discover the religion’s thriving Arab pagan bedrock.

The International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR) is the pree- nent international meeting on case-based reasoning (CBR). ICCBR 2003 (http://www.iccbr.org/iccbr03/)isthe?fthinthisseriesofbiennialinter- tional conferences highlighting the most signi?cant contributions to the ?eld of CBR.TheconferencetookplacefromJune23throughJune26,2003attheN- wegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, Norway. Previous ICCBR conferences have been held in Vancouver, Canada (2001), Seeon, G- many (1999), Providence, Rhode Island, USA (1997), and Sesimbra, Portugal (1995). Day 1 of ICCBR 2003, Industry Day, provided hands-on experiences utilizing CBR in cutting-edge knowledge-management applications (e.g., help-desks,- business, and diagnostics). Day 2 featured topical workshops on CBR in the healthsciences,theimpactoflife-cyclemodelsonCBRsystems,mixed-initiative CBR, predicting time series with cases, and providing assistance with structured vs. unstructured cases. Days 3 and 4 comprised presentations and posters on theoretical and applied CBR research and deployed CBR applications, as well as invited talks from three distinguished scholars: David Leake, Indiana University, H ́ ector Munoz-Avila, ̃ Lehigh University, and Ellen Rilo?, University of Utah. The presentations and posters covered a wide range of CBR topics of in- rest both to practitioners and researchers, including case representation, si- larity, retrieval, adaptation, case library maintenance, multi-agent collaborative systems, data mining, soft computing, recommender systems, knowledge ma- gement, legal reasoning, software reuse and music.

Machine generated contents note: 1. Introduction; 2. Phonological motivation in language evolution and development; 3. Phonetic symbolism; 4. Onomatopoeia; 5. Rhyme and alliteration in blends and compounds; 6. Words, words, words: rhyme and repetition in multi-word expressions; 7. Conclusions: the piggy in the middle.

Verse and prose, from the 6th century CE (pre-Islamic) to the early 18th century CE.

This book continues the work of The Qur’ān in its Historical Context, in which an international group of scholars address an expanded range of topics on the Qur’ān and its origins, looking beyond medieval Islamic traditions to present the Qur’ān’s own conversation with the religions and literatures of its day. Particular attention is paid to recent debates and controversies in the field, and to uncovering the Qur’ān’s relationship with Judaism and Christianity. After a foreword by Abdolkarim Soroush, chapters by renowned experts cover: method in Qur'ānic Studies analysis of material evidence, including inscriptions and ancient manuscripts, for what they show of the Qur'ān’s origins the language of the Qur'ān and proposed ways to emend our reading of the Qur'ān how our knowledge of the religious groups at the time of the Qur'ān’s emergence might contribute to a better understanding of the text the Qur'ān’s conversation with Biblical literature and traditions that challenge the standard understanding of the holy book. This debate of recent controversial proposals for new interpretations of the Qur'ān will shed new light on the Qur’anic passages that have been shrouded in mystery and debate. As such, it will be a valuable reference for scholars of Islam, the Qur’an, Christian-Muslim relations and the Middle East.

Situating Nima's life firmly within the context of 20th century Iranian history this book contributes to an emerging trend in literary scholarship on Persian literature that views Persian poetry as a living and constantly evolving tradition rather than an icon of some fading glory.

Publisher description: This widely used book in many printings begins with answers to forty commonly asked questions of first-year law students. It specifies a six-step approach to briefing a case with specific guidelines for accomplishing each step. The process of briefing cases is then demonstrated with excellent and poor briefs of increasing complexity. Emphasis is placed initially on the techniques of briefing as an introduction to the learning of legal reasoning, the first priority of the first year of law school. In addition, the book also demonstrates the relevance of more advanced modes of legal reasoning, including positivist, pragmatic, policy oriented, natural-law and other perspectives applied in decoding and understanding cases. In its introduction of jurisprudential perspectives, Learning Legal Reasoning transcends the typical technical/positivist orientation of most first-year materials.

In Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition Huda J. Fakhreddine expands the study of metapoesis to include the Abbasid age in Arabic literature. Through this lens that is often used to study modernist poetry of the 20th and the 21st century, this book detects and examines a meta-poetic tendency and a self-reflexive attitude in the poetry of the first century of Abbasid poets. What and why is poetry? are questions the Abbasid poets asked themselves with the same persistence and urgency their modern successor did. This approach to the poetry of the Abbasid age serves to refresh our sense of what is “modernist” or “poetically new” and detach it from chronology.