BA ArabicPaper 4: Arabic LiteratureMT-HT 2016-17
DESCRIPTION
Year 3, MT - HT, 16 + 16 hours, equally divided between Classical and Modern, taught concurrently (Classical: Tuesdays 12-1, LR1; Modern: Thursdays 12-1, LR1).
3 tutorials + essays for each of Classical and Modern, over MT and HT.
The Collection will take place at the beginning of TT; there will be written (and, if required, personal) feedback. The format of the Collection will be the same as that of the FHS paper (see SETTING CONVENTIONS at the end of this description).
Teaching staff: Classical: lectures: Professor Julia Bray ; tutorials: Dr Christie Johnson ()
SET TEXTS
(a) classical
(1) Wahb ibn Munabbih (attrib.) (d. c.730)/Ibn Hishām (d.833), Kitāb al-Tījān fi mulūkḤimyar, ed. F. Krenkow, Hyderabad 1928, repr. Ṣanaʿaʾ, pp.274-281: the pre-Islamic seeressẒarīfa foretells the bursting of the Maʾrib dam.
(2) Ibn Aʿtham al-Kūfī (early ninth century?), al-Futūḥ, ed. M. ʿAbd al-MuʿīdKhān, Hyderabad 1968-75, I, pp.1-7: Abū Bakr addresses the Muslims of Medina on the succession to the Prophet; his letter to the apostate Arabs. [For purposes of comparison, we will also read the version in al-Wāqidī (d.207/823), Kitāb al-Ridda “in the riwāya of IbnAʿtham al-Kūfī”, ed. Yaḥyā al-Jabbūrī, Beirut 1410/1990.]
(3) al-Khansāʾ (Tumāḍir bint ʿAmr, d. after 644), Dīwān, ed. A. AbūSuwaylim, ʿAmmān 1409/1988, no.7, pp.123-7 (6 lines); no.24, pp.234-6 (8 lines): two elegies for her brother Ṣakhr.
(4) ʿUmar ibnAbīRabīʿa (d.712 or 721), Dīwān, ed. P. Schwarz, Leipzig 1901, no.20, p.21 (5 lines); no.21, pp.21-2 (6 lines); no.24, pp.24-5 (7 lines): three miniature love poems.
(5) al-Masʿūdī (d.956), Murūj al-dhahabwamaʿādin al-jawhar, eds. C. Barbier de Meynard and Pavet de Courteille, Paris 1861-77, rev. and corr. Ch. Pellat, Beirut 1966-79, IV, ¶¶2619-23, pp.261-2: the dreams of Zubayda, wife of Hārūn al-Rashīd, on conceiving and giving birth to the future caliph al-Amīn.
(6) Ibn al-Muʿtazz (d.908), Ṭabaqāt al-shuʿarāʾ al-muḥdathīn, ed. ʿA. S. Farrāj, Cairo 1956, repr. 1967, pp.366-7: biographical entry on al-Warrāq (d.845) and his slave concubine; his gnomic poetry.
(7) Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d.1008), al-Maqāmāt, ed. MuḥammadʿAbduh, Beirut 1889 and reprs., pp.86-91, al-Qazwīniyya; pp.55-8, al-Ahwāziyya: fictional encounters with a convert and an ascetic.
(8) Ibn Maʿṣūm (d.1708), Sulāfat al-ʿaṣr fi maḥāsin al-shuʿarāʾ bi kullimiṣr, Cairo 1906, pp.420-2: the life and love poetry of the blind physician and mystic Dawūd al-Anṭākī (d. c.1600).
CONTENTS AND PURPOSE
This paper offers a first introduction to Arabic literary texts, both classical—here meaning medieval to early modern—and modern.
The classical (early medieval to early modern) set texts give a brief overview of ninth to seventeenth-century prose, including oratory and rhymed prose (sajʿ), in the form of semi-popular, historical, biographical and fictional narratives, together with short examples of several types of poetry (mourning; love; gnomic; doggerel; mystical) dating from the seventh to the seventeenth centuries.
The writers are from Arabia (the desert: al-Khansāʾ; the city: ʿUmar ibn AbīRabīʿa), Egypt (Ibn Hishām), Iraq (Ibn Aʿtham; al-Masʿūdī; Ibn al-Mutʿazz and al-Warrāq), Iran (Badīʿ al-Zamān), India (Ibn Maʿṣūm), and Syria/Egypt (Dawūd al-Anṭākī) and from a variety of backgrounds (tribal poet: al-Khansāʾ; Qurashī aristocrat: ʿUmar ibn AbīRabīʿa; historian and antiquarian: Ibn Hishām; preacher and historian: Ibn Aʿtham; copyist and slave trader: al-Warrāq; ʿAbbasid prince, poet and literary theorist: Ibn al-Mutʿazz; roving polymath: al-Masʿūdī; freelance littérateur: Badīʿ al-Zamān; physician and mystic: Dawūd al-Anṭākī; courtier and administrator: Ibn Maʿṣūm). Despite this spread of genres, periods and backgrounds, the set texts are in dialogue with shared traditions, and in some cases with each other.
There are translations into English or other European languages of some of the set texts, and further readings in translation of related texts will be suggested. For tutorials, readings of further pieces in paralleltext or Arabic may form part of assignments.
TUTORIAL ASSIGNMENTS
Assignments are designed to develop, progressively, written skills of literary analysis, commentary and discussion, in formats that will include, but not be confined to, the essay. A single assignment may require you to write pieces in more than one format.
Assignments should be submitted at least 48 hours before each tutorial, unless your tutor has agreed beforehand to a later submission, so as to allow time for annotation. It is preferable to submit assignments electronically. If you submit in writing, you must keep a photocopy.
Some General Reference and Background Reading:
Michael Cooperson and Shawkat M. Toorawa (eds.), Arabic Literary Culture, 500-925, Detroit; London, Thomson Gale 2005 (Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol.311), continued as:
Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 950 -1350, Terri De Young (ed.); Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 1350 - 1850, Joseph E. Lowry and Devin J. Stewart (eds.), Wiesbaden, Harrassowitz 2009.
Julie Scott Meisami and Paul Starkey (eds.), Encyclopediaof Arabic Literature, London; New York, Routledge 1998 (2 vols.).
Robert Irwin (ed.), Night & Horses & the Desert. An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature [in translation], London, Allen Lane The Penguin Press 1999 and reprs.
Geert Jan van Gelder(trs.), Classical Arabic Literature. A Library of Arabic Literature Anthology, New York; London, New York University Press 2013.
Julia Bray (ed.), Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam, London; New York: Routledge, 2006.
More specific Secondary Reading lists will be given in lectures and for tutorials.
SETTING CONVENTIONS
The setting conventions for FHS for this half-paper will follow the template used in the Collection set at the end of the course. They mirror those of the Modern half of the Collection/FHS paper
ICommentary. Candidates will choose ONE of three passages, and analyse it as a piece of imaginative and craftsmanly writing, providing whatever contextual and other information they think useful (20%).
IIEssay. Candidates will answer ONE essay question from a choice (30%). The questions will call for discussion of one or more set texts (and relevant further reading) in the form either of close readings or of broader analysis.