(10/22) Adab Colloquium: Proto-Secular Spaces? Mapping Infidelity in the Poetry of ʿAṭṭār

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Dr. Cyrus Ali Zargar, Distinguished Professor in Islamic Studies at the University of Central Florida, and discussant Dr. Ali Altaf Mian, Assistant Professor of Religion and Izzat Hasan Sheikh Fellow in Islamic Studies at the University of Florida, on "Sober in Mecca, Drunk in Byzantium: Antinomian Space in the Poetry of ʿAṭṭār.”

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(9/24) Adab Colloquium: From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Though

Join us for this Adab colloquium with Dr. Haifa S. alFaisal, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at King Saud University and discussant Dr. Boutheina Khaldi, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at the American University of Sharjah on "From Balāgha to ʾIntiqād: Politicising the Science of Literature in Modern Arabic Literary Thought.”

Any cursory account of the history of Arabic poetics will reveal that it is not reducible to stylistics and grandiloquence, as a significant number of reformist(nahdawist) literati, assume. The nahdawists were members of what is referred to as the nahḍa, or the Arab renaissance, which is a period extending from the late 18th to early 20th century in which the Arab and Islamic world fell under the influence of European colonial modernity. The misconceptions regarding balāgha are particularly notable in the writings of early modern Arab literary comparatists, whose exposure to Eurocentric literary modernity drove them to compare their own literary heritage with that of the European nations. This comparison generated the transition from balāgha to critique (naqd); from what they perceived was a defunct focus on formal rhetoric to a more modern, that is socially and politically engaged, focus on criticism, or naqd. This chapter will map the various ways in which the concept of naqd emerged to replace balāgha in the works of early modern comparatists.

(9/28) Readings in the Khalidiyya: EXCAVATIONS IN THE SCRAP PAPER BASKET

EXCAVATIONS IN THE SCRAP PAPER BASKET

Join us for the next installment of Readings in the Khalidiyya with Ahmed El Shamsy and Torsten Wollina on 28 September 2021 at 1pm New York / 8pm Jerusalem.

The Damascene manuscript aficionado Tahir al-Jaza'iri (1852-1920) not only catalogued the Khalidiyya library; he also used the manuscript fragments he found in the library's scrap paper cache to reconstruct its oldest texts. His activities illustrate the change in attitudes toward manuscripts and their value during his lifetime.

Ahmed El Shamsy is Associate Professor at the University of Chicago. He studies the intellectual history of Islam, focusing on the evolution of the classical Islamic disciplines and scholarly culture within their broader historical context. His research addresses themes such as orality and literacy, the history of the book, and the theory and practice of Islamic law.

El Shamsy’s first book, The Canonization of Islamic Law: A Social and Intellectual History, traces the transformation of Islamic law from a primarily oral tradition to a systematic written discipline in the eighth and ninth centuries. In his second book, Rediscovering the Islamic Classics: How Editors and Print Culture Transformed an Intellectual Tradition, he shows how Arab editors and intellectuals  in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries used the newly adopted medium of printing to rescue classical Arabic texts from oblivion and to popularize them as the classics of Islamic thought. Other recent research projects investigate the interplay of Islam with other religious and philosophical traditions, for example by exploring the influence of the Greek sage Galen on Islamic thought and the construction of a distinct self-identity among early Muslims. More Info

Torsten Wollina is Research Associate at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz. He received his Ph.D. from Freie University in Berlin and his MA degree from the University of Jena. He has worked at the Orient-Institut Beirut, Hamburg University and has received a Marie Curie Cofund fellowship from Trinity College, University of Dublin (cohort 2019-20). He is currently working in the DFG funded project "Orient-Digital" at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. Torsten’s research focuses on questions of provenance, especially the translocations of Damascene manuscripts in the 19th and 20th centuries. Another research interest is in how intellectual and social history affect each other in textual production, e.g. in the writing of contemporary history. Some of his research can be followed at his blog Damascus Anecdotes.