The book is the first study of the 10th century Iraqi poet Ibn al-Hajjaj who popularized a new genre of obscene and scatological parody (sukhf) and is considered the most obscene poet in Arabic literature. Antoon traces the genealogy of this fascinating genre in and examines its rise by placing it in its sociopolitical context.

This book approaches the Qur’an as a primary source for delineating the definition of ugliness, and by extension beauty, and in turn establishing meaningful tools and terms for literary criticism within the discipline of classical Arabic literature (adab). Focusing on the aesthetic dimension of the Qur’an, this methodology opens up new horizons for reading adab by reading the tradition from within the tradition and thereby examining issues of “decontextualisation” and the “untranslatable.” This approach, in turn, invites Comparatists, as well as Arabists, to consider other means and perspectives for approaching adab besides the Bakhtinian carnival. Applying this critical strategy to literary works as diverse as One Thousand and One Nights and The Epistle of Forgiveness, Sarah R. bin Tyeer aims to prove two major points: how Bakhtin’s aesthetics is anachronistic and therefore theoretically inappropriate when applied to certain literary works and how ultimately this literary methodology is sometimes used as a proxy for ungrounded and, sometimes, unfair arguments by other scholars. Foreword by Angelika Neuwirth, Professor of Quranic studies, Freie University, Berlin, Germany.

A robust defense of a poetic genius Abū Tammām (d. 231 or 232/845 or 846) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Arabic language. Born in Syria to Greek Christian parents, he converted to Islam and quickly made his name as one of the premier Arabic poets in the caliphal court of Baghdad, promoting a new style of poetry that merged abstract and complex imagery with archaic Bedouin language. Both highly controversial and extremely popular, this sophisticated verse influenced all subsequent poetry in Arabic and epitomized the “modern style” (badīʿ), an avant-garde aesthetic that was very much in step with the intellectual, artistic, and cultural vibrancy of the Abbasid dynasty. In The Life and Times of Abū Tammām, translated into English for the first time, the courtier and scholar Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyāal-Ṣūlī (d. 335 or 336/946 or 947) mounts a robust defense of “modern” poetry and of Abū Tammām’s significance as a poet against his detractors, while painting a lively picture of literary life in Baghdad and Samarra. Born into an illustrious family of Turkish origin, al-Ṣūlī was a courtier, companion, and tutor to the Abbasid caliphs. He wrote extensively on caliphal history and poetry and, as a scholar of “modern” poets, made a lasting contribution to the field of Arabic literary history. Like the poet it promotes, al-Ṣūlī's text is groundbreaking: it represents a major step in the development of Arabic poetics, and inaugurates a long line of treatises on innovation in poetry. An English-only edition.

A robust defense of a poetic genius Abū Tammām (d. 231 or 232/845 or 846) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Arabic language. Born in Syria to Greek Christian parents, he converted to Islam and quickly made his name as one of the premier Arabic poets in the caliphal court of Baghdad, promoting a new style of poetry that merged abstract and complex imagery with archaic Bedouin language. Both highly controversial and extremely popular, this sophisticated verse influenced all subsequent poetry in Arabic and epitomized the “modern style” (badīʿ), an avant-garde aesthetic that was very much in step with the intellectual, artistic, and cultural vibrancy of the Abbasid dynasty. In The Life and Times of Abū Tammām, translated into English for the first time, the courtier and scholar Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Yaḥyā al-Ṣūlī (d. 335 or 336/946 or 947) mounts a robust defense of “modern” poetry and of Abū Tammām’s significance as a poet against his detractors, while painting a lively picture of literary life in Baghdad and Samarra. Born into an illustrious family of Turkish origin, al-Ṣūlī was a courtier, companion, and tutor to the Abbasid caliphs. He wrote extensively on caliphal history and poetry and, as a scholar of “modern” poets, made a lasting contribution to the field of Arabic literary history. Like the poet it promotes, al-Ṣūlī's text is groundbreaking: it represents a major step in the development of Arabic poetics, and inaugurates a long line of treatises on innovation in poetry. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Why did premodern authors in the Arabic-Islamic culture compile literary anthologies, and why were these works remarkably popular? How can an anthology that consists of reproduced material be original and creative, and serve various literary and political ends? How did anthologists select their material, then record and arrange it? This book examines the life and works of Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (350–429/961–1039), an eminent anthologist from Nīshāpūr, paying special attention to his magnum opus, Yatīmat al-dahr (The Unique Pearl), and its sequel, Tatimmat al-Yatīma (The Completion of the Yatīma). This book is a direct window on to an anthologist’s workshop in the second half of the fourth/tenth century. It examines the methodological consciousness expressed in Thaʿālibī’s selection and arrangement, and his sophisticated system of internal references and cross-references to other works; how he selected from his contemporaries’ oeuvres; how he sought, recorded, memorized, misplaced, and sometimes lost or forgot his selections; how he scrutinized the authenticity of material, accepting, questioning, or rejecting its attribution; and the errors and inconsistencies that resulted from this process.

This book presents theoretical and methodical cultural concerns in teaching literatures from non-American cultures along with issues of cross-cultural communication, cultural competency and translation. Covering topics such as the 1001 Nights, Maqamat, Arabic poetry, women’s writing, classical poetics, issues of gender, race, and class, North African concerns, language acquisition through literature, Arab-spring writing, women’s correspondence, issues connected with the so called nahdah (revival) movement in the 19th century and many others, the book provides perspectives and topics that serve in both the planning of new courses and accommodation to already existing programs.

This Edinburgh Companion seeks to develop a postcolonial framework for addressing the Middle East. The first collection of essays on this subject, it assembles some of the world's foremost postcolonialists to explore the critical, theoretical and disciplinary possibilities that inquiry into this region opens for postcolonial studies. Throughout its twenty-four chapters, its focus is on literary and cultural critique. It draws on texts and contexts from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first centuries as case studies, and deploys the concept of 'post/colonial modernity' to reveal the enduring impact of colonial and imperial power on the shaping of the region. And it covers a wide and significant range of political, social, and cultural issues in the Middle East during that period - including the heritage of Orientalism in the region; the roots and contemporary branches of the Israel-Palestine conflict; colonial history, state formation and cultures of resistance in Egypt, Turkey, the Maghreb and the wider Arab world; the clash of tradition and modernity in regional and transnational expressions of Islam; the politics of gender and sexuality in the Arab world; the ongoing crises in Libya, Iraq, Iran and Syria; the Arab Spring; and the Middle Eastern refugee crisis in Europe.

The book is the first study of the 10th century Iraqi poet Ibn al-Hajjaj who popularized a new genre of obscene and scatological parody (sukhf) and is considered the most obscene poet in Arabic literature. Antoon traces the genealogy of this fascinating genre in and examines its rise by placing it in its sociopolitical context.

Hikayat Abu al-Qasim, probably written in the 11th century by the otherwise unknown al-Azdi, tells the story of a gate-crasher from Baghdad named Abu al-Qasim, who shows up uninvited at a party in Isfahan. Dressed as a holy man and reciting religious poetry, he soon relaxes his demeanour, and, growing intoxicated on wine, insults the other dinner guests and their Iranian hometown. Widely hailed as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, a ikA yah also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts. Painting a picture of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, he is a figure familiar to those who have studied the ancient cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters and saints in literatures from the Mediterranean and beyond. This study therefore compares a ikA yah, a mysterious text surviving in a single manuscript, to other comical banquet texts and party-crashing characters, both from contemporary Arabic literature and from Ancient Greece and Rome.

An online, Open Access version of this work is also available from Brill. A Literary History of Medicine by the Syrian physician Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʿah (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.