articles

Thomas Bauer’s landmark article “Mamluk literature: Misunderstandings and new approaches” of 2005, opens with the following observation:
We live in hard times for pioneers and discoverers. There are no more blank spots on the map of our globe, there are no undiscovered continents,
no unexplored jungles, and no unknown tribes to be found. But still there is Mamluk literature.

This article provides an editio princeps of a maqāma entitled “The Eloquence of the Lover Concerning the Elegance of the Beloved” (Faṣāḥat al-mashūq fī malāḥat al-maʿshūq) composed by the well-known Damascene poet Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad b. Sulaymān b. ʿAlī al-Tilimsānī (d. 688/1289) known as al-Shābb al-Ẓarīf. We offer this brief article and edition in honor of our dear colleague Thomas Bauer, who is without doubt one of the great pioneers of the field of Mamluk literature who has encouraged us to explore this particular area of uncharted territory.

The Maqāma Šāmiyya of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamaḏānī (d. 398/1008) has long been overlooked as a result of the decision of Muḥammad ʿAbduh to remove it from the first modern published edition of the Maqāmāt. This article provides a scholarly edition of the maqāma, a translation, and a study. It argues that al-Hamaḏānī’s Šāmiyya uses the rhetorical device of kināya to reflect on the power of language and literary performance.

"الفقه الإسلامي في الأدب: أهميّة الإجراءات القضائية في كتاب الفرج بعد الشدّة للتنوخي"، ضمن نحو إعادة بناء الدراسات الإسلامية، تحرير ساري حنفي، رضوان السيّد، وبلال الأرفه لي. بيروت: الدار العربية للعلوم، 2019، 253-276.

هجاء المدن في الشعر العربي/ المشرق الرقمية 14 (2019)

“Kitāb intizāʿāt al-Qurʾān al-ʿaẓīm: A Compendium of Quranic Quotations Attributed to the Fatimid Secretary Abū l-Qāsim ʿAlī Ibn al-Ṣayrafī (d. 542/1147),” in Light upon Light: Essays in Islamic Thought and History in Honor of Gerhard Bowering. Edited by Jamal Elias and Bilal Orfali. Leiden: Brill, 2019, 91-135.

“Islamic Law in Literature: The Importance of Procedure in Tanūkhī’s al-Faraj baʿda l-shidda,” in Tradition and Reception in Arabic Literature. Ed. Margaret Larkin and Jocelyn Sharlet. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2019, 189-205. [with Intisar Rabb]

“Ibn Fāris and the Origins of the Maqāma Revisited,” in Arabic Belles-Lettres. Ed. Joseph E. Lowry and Shawkat M. Toorawa. Atlanta: Lockwood Press, 2019, 95-114 [with Maurice Pomerantz].

“Against Cities: On hijā’ al-mudun in Arabic Poetry”, in The City in Pre-Modern and Modern Arabic Literature. Edited by Nizar Hermes and Gretchen Head. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 38-62. [with Huda Fakhreddine]

“Employment Opportunities in Literature in Tenth-Century Islamic Courts,” in Studying the Near and Middle East at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 1935-2018. Edited by Sabine Schmidtke. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018, 243-250.

"إني آنست نارًا: كتاب الاقتباس من القرآن الكريم للثعالبي"، مجلة التفاهم 15 (2018)، 275-302.