A groundbreaking exposition of Islamic mysticismThe Essence of Reality was written over the course of just three days in 514/1120, by a scholar who was just twenty-four. The text, like its author ¿Ayn al-Qü¿t, is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which that it is in all likelihood the earliest philosophical exposition of mysticism in the Islamic intellectual tradition. This important work would go on to exert significant influence on both classical Islamic philosophy and philosophical mysticism.Written in a terse yet beautiful style, The Essence of Reality consists of one hundred brief chapters interspersed with Qur¿anic verses, prophetic sayings, Sufi maxims, and poetry. In conversation with the work of the philosophers Avicenna and al-Ghaz¿l¿, the book takes readers on a philosophical journey, with lucid expositions of questions including the problem of the eternity of the world; the nature of God¿s essence and attributes; the concepts of ¿before¿ and ¿after¿; and the soul¿s relationship to the body. All these discussions are seamlessly tied into ¿Ayn al-Qü¿t¿s foundational argument¿that mystical knowledge lies beyond the realm of the intellect.A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
Poems and tales of a literary forefather of the United Arab EmiratesLove, Death, Fame features the poetry of al-M¿yid¿ ibn ¿¿hir, who has been embraced as the earliest poet in what would later become the United Arab Emirates. Although little is known about his life, he is the subject of a sizeable body of folk legend and is thought to have lived in the seventeenth century, in the area now called the Emirates. The tales included in Love, Death, Fame portray him as a witty, resourceful, scruffy poet, at times combative and at times kindhearted.His poetry primarily features verses of wisdom and romance, with scenes of clouds and rain, desert migrations, seafaring, and pearl diving. Like Arabian Romantic and Arabian Satire, this collection is a prime example of Nabä¿ poetry, combining vernacular language of the Arabian Peninsula with archaic vocabulary and images dating to Arabic poetry¿s very origins. Distinguished by Ibn ¿¿hir¿s unique voice, Love, Death, Fame offers a glimpse of what life was like four centuries ago in the region that is now the UAE.A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
Includes insights into Ibn hanbal's childhood, travels, and teachings, descriptions of his way of life, and an account of his legendary confrontation with the caliphal Inquisition
Authoritative and reliable editions of the Arabic and modern, lucid English translations introducing treasures of the Arabic literary heritage
This is the very first English translation of the work and reproduces the original edition, published under the author's supervision in 1855
The first complete translation in any language, retaining the many digressions, difficult passages, and convoluted grammatical discussions of the original
This is the very first English translation of the work and reproduces the original edition, published under the author's supervision in 1855
Trenchant and witty critiques of life in Cairo under British ruleWhat ''Isa ibn Hisham Told Us is a masterpiece of early 20th-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, this highly original work was first introduced in serialized form in his family’s pioneering newspaper Misbah al-Sharq (Light of the East) and later published in book form in 1907. Widely hailed for its erudition and mordant wit, What ''Isa ibn Hisham Told Us was embraced by Egypt’s burgeoning reading public and soon became required reading for generations of school students.Bridging classical genres and modern Arabic fiction, What ''Isa ibn Hisham Told Us is divided into two parts. Sarcastic in tone and critical in outlook, the first part of the book relates the excursions of its narrator, ''Isa ibn Hisham, and his companion, the Pasha, through a rapidly westernizing Cairo and provides vivid commentary on a society negotiating—however imperfectly—the clash between traditional norms and imported cultural values. The second half takes the narrator to Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle of 1900, where al-Muwaylihi casts a critical eye on European society, modernity, and the role of Western imperialism as it ripples across the globe.Paving the way for the modern Arabic novel, What ''Isa ibn Hisham Told Us is invaluable both for its insight into colonial Egypt and its pioneering role in Arabic literary history.
A merchant¿s remarkable travel account of an African kingdomMüammad al-T¿nis¿ (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-T¿nis¿ was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-T¿nis¿ set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur.In Darfur is al-T¿nis¿¿s remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state, featuring descriptions of the geography of the region, the customs of Darfur¿s petty kings, court life and the clothing of its rulers, marriage customs, eunuchs, illnesses, food, hunting, animals, currencies, plants, magic, divination, and dances. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author.In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of an African society on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane.An English-only edition.
Includes a survey of the importance of Arabic as the language of revelation, principles of textual interpretation to be applied to the Qur'an and prophetic traditions, techniques for harmonizing apparently contradictory precedents, legal epistemology, rules of inference, and discussions of when legal interpretation is required.
Presents 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. This book contains anecdotes, a fairy-tale, a bawdy story, and samples of literary criticism.
Authoritative and reliable editions of the Arabic and modern, lucid English translations introducing treasures of the Arabic literary heritage
Authoritative and reliable editions of the Arabic and modern, lucid English translations introducing treasures of the Arabic literary heritage
The life, birth, and early years of 'the Fariyaq'¿the alter ego of the Arab intellectual Ahmad Faris al-ShidyaqLeg over Leg recounts the life, from birth to middle age, of ¿the Fariyaq,¿ alter ego of Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, a pivotal figure in the intellectual and literary history of the modern Arab world. The always edifying and often hilarious adventures of the Fariyaq, as he moves from his native Lebanon to Egypt, Malta, Tunis, England, and France, provide the author with grist for wide-ranging discussions of the intellectual and social issues of his time, including the ignorance and corruption of the Lebanese religious and secular establishments, freedom of conscience, women¿s rights, sexual relationships between men and women, the manners and customs of Europeans and Middle Easterners, and the differences between contemporary European and Arabic literatures, all the while celebrating the genius and beauty of the classical Arabic language.Volumes Three and Four see the peripatetic Fariyaq fall in love and convert to Catholicism for twenty-four hours in order to marry. Although the narrative revolves around a series of debates over the nature of male-female relationships, opportunities also arise for disquisitions on the physical and moral significance of such diverse topics as the buttocks, the unreliability of virginity tests, and the human capacity for self-delusion. Lengthy stays in England and France allow for animadversions on the table manners and sexual aberrations of their citizens, but the discussion, whether it involve dance-halls, pleasure gardens, or poetry, almost always ends up returning to gender relations.Akin to Sterne and Rabelais in his satirical outlook and technical inventiveness, al-Shidyaq produced in Leg over Leg a work that is unique and unclassifiable. It was initially widely condemned for its attacks on authority, its religious skepticism, and its ¿obscenity,¿ and later editions were often abridged. This is the first complete English translation of this groundbreaking work.
Represents an important testimony to the earliest Muslims' memory of the lives of Muhammad and his companions, and is an indispensable text for gaining insight into the historical biography of both the Prophet and the rise of the Islamic empire.
With What ¿¿s¿ ibn Hish¿m Told Us, the Library of Arabic Literature brings readers an acknowledged masterpiece of early twentieth-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Müammad al-Muwayli¿¿, this exceptional title was first introduced in serialized form in his family¿s pioneering newspaper Mi¿b¿¿ al-Sharq (Light of the East), on which this edition is based, and later published in book form in 1907. Widely hailed for its erudition and its mordant wit, What ¿¿s¿ ibn Hish¿m Told Us was embraced by Egypt¿s burgeoning reading public and soon became required reading for generations of Egyptian school students.Bridging classical genres and the emerging tradition of modern Arabic fiction, What ¿¿s¿ ibn Hish¿m Told Us is divided into two parts, the second of which was only added to the text with the fourth edition of 1927. Sarcastic in tone and critical in outlook, the book relates the excursions of its narrator ¿¿s¿ ibn Hish¿m and his companion, the Pasha, through a rapidly Westernized Cairo at the height of British occupation, providing vivid commentary of a society negotiating¿however imperfectly¿the clash of imported cultural values and traditional norms of conduct, law, and education. The ¿Second Journey¿ takes the narrator to Paris to visit the Exposition Universelle of 1900, where al-Muwayli¿¿ casts the same relentlessly critical eye on European society, modernity, and the role of Western imperialism as it ripples across the globe.Paving the way for the modern Arabic novel, What ¿¿s¿ ibn Hish¿m Told Us is invaluable both for its sociological insight into colonial Egypt and its pioneering role in Arabic literary history.A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
Maq¿m¿t Ab¿ Zayd al-Sar¿j¿ is a scholarly, Arabic-only edition of the celebrated work by al-¿ar¿r¿, which is also available in English translation from the Library of Arabic Literature as Impostures. Al-¿ar¿r¿'s text consists of fifty stories about the adventures of the itinerant con man and master of persuasion Ab¿ Zayd al-Sar¿j¿, as told by the equally itinerant and often gullible narrator al-¿¿rith ibn H¿mmam. Al-¿ar¿r¿ was a virtuoso writer of the rhymed prose narrative genre known as the maq¿mah, which would continue as a popular literary form into the twentieth century.An Arabic edition with an Arabic foreword and English scholarly apparatus.
Written in mid-17th centuryEgypt, Risible Rhymesis in part a short, comic disquisition on “rural” verse, mocking thepretensions and absurdities of uneducated poets from Egypt’s countryside.The interestin the countryside as a cultural, social, economic, and religious locus inits own right that is hinted at in this work may be unique in pre-twentieth-centuryArabic literature. As such, the work provides a companion piece to its slightlyyounger contemporary, Yusuf al-Shirbini’s Brains Confounded by the Ode of AbuShaduf Expounded, which also takes examples of mock-rural poems andsubjects them to grammatical analysis. The overlap between the two texts mayindicate that they both emanate from a common corpus of pseudo-rural verse thatcirculated in Ottoman Egypt.Risible Rhymes also examines various kinds of puzzlepoems—another popular genre of the day—and presents a debate between scholarsover a line of verse by the tenth-century poet al-Mutanabbi. Taken as a whole, RisibleRhymes offers intriguing insight into the critical concerns of mid-OttomanEgypt, showcasing the intense preoccupation with wordplay, grammar, andstylistics that dominated discussions of poetry in al-Sanhuri’s day andshedding light on the literature of this understudied era.
A merchant''s account of his travels through an independent African state Muhammad ibn ''Umar al-Tunisi (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-Tunisi was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tunisi set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur. In Darfur is al-Tunisi''s remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state. In Volume One, al-Tunisi relates the history of his much-traveled family, his journey from Egypt to Darfur, and the reign of the noted sultan ''Abd al-Rahman al-Rashid. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author. In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of Africa on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane.
A merchant''s account of his travels through an independent African state Muhammad ibn ''Umar al-Tunisi (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-Tunisi was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tunisi set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur. In Darfur is al-Tunisi''s remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state. In Volume Two al-Tunisi describes the geography of the region, the customs of Darfur''s petty kings, court life and the clothing of its rulers, marriage customs, eunuchs, illnesses, food, hunting, animals, currencies, plants, magic, divination, and dances. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author. In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of Africa on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane.
Features an almost entirely different set of stories, however, each one more thrilling, amusing, and disturbing than the last. This book includes tales of epic warriors, buried treasures, disappearing brides, cannibal demon women, fatal shipwrecks, and clever ruses, where human strength and more.
The earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in ArabicMission to the Volga is a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. In its pages, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. In this colorful documentary from the tenth century, the enigmatic Ibn Fadlan relates his experiences as part of an embassy sent by Caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, body painting, and a striking account of a ship funeral. Together, these anecdotes illuminate a vibrant world of diversity during the heyday of the Abbasid Empire, narrated with as much curiosity and zeal as they were perceived by its observant beholder.An English-only edition.
The ninth and tenth centuries witnessed the establishment of a substantial network of maritime trade across the Indian Ocean, providing the real-life background to the Sinbad tales. An exceptional exemplar of Arabic travel writing, Accounts of China and India is a compilation of reports and anecdotes about the lands and peoples of this diverse territory, from the Somali headlands of Africa to the far eastern shores of China and Korea. Traveling eastward, we discover a vivid human landscape¿from Chinese society to Hindu religious practices¿as well as a colorful range of natural wilderness¿from flying fish to Tibetan musk-deer and Sri Lankan gems. The juxtaposed accounts create a kaleidoscope of a world not unlike our own, a world on the road to globalization. In its ports, we find a priceless cargo of information. Here are the first foreign descriptions of tea and porcelain, a panorama of unusual social practices, cannibal islands, and Indian holy men¿a marvelous, mundane world, contained in the compass of a novella.An English-only edition.
The Life of Ibn ¿anbal is a translation of the biography of Ibn Hanbal by the Baghdad preacher, scholar, and storyteller Ibn al-Jawz¿ (d. 597/1200), newly abridged for a paperback readership by translator Michael Cooperson. A¿mad ibn ¿anbal (d. 241/855), renowned for his profound knowledge of hadiths¿the reports of the Prophet¿s sayings and deeds¿is a major figure in the history of Islam. He was famous for living according to his own strict interpretation of the Prophetic model and for denying himself the most basic comforts, even though his family was prominent and his city, Baghdad, was then one of the wealthiest in the world. Ibn ¿anbal¿s piety and austerity made him a folk hero, especially after he resisted the attempts of two caliphs to force him to accept rationalist doctrine. His subsequent imprisonment and flogging is one of the most dramatic episodes of medieval Islamic history, and his principled resistance influenced the course of Islamic law, the rise of Sunnism, and the legislative authority of the caliphate. Set against the background of fierce debates over the role of reason and the basis of legitimate government, The Life of Ibn ¿anbal tells the formidable life tale of one of the most influential Muslims in history. An English-only edition.
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