A major translation achievement, this anthology presents a rich assortment of 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. Both entertaining and informative, Classical Arabic Literature ranges from the early Bedouin poems with their evocation of desert life to refined urban lyrical verse, from tender love poetry to sonorous eulogy and vicious lampoon, and from the heights of mystical rapture to the frivolity of comic verse. Prose selections include anecdotes, entertaining or edifying tales and parables, a fairy-tale, a bawdy story, samples of literary criticism, and much more. With this anthology, distinguished Arabist Geert Jan van Gelder brings together well-known texts as well as less familiar pieces new even to scholars. Classical Arabic Literature reveals the rich variety of pre-modern Arabic social and cultural life, where secular texts flourished alongside religious ones. This masterful anthology introduces this vibrant literary heritage including pieces translated into English for the first time to a wide spectrum of new readers. " Geert Jan van Gelder was Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford from 1998 to 2012. He is the author of several books on classical Arabic literature, including Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem and Of Dishes and Discourse: Classical Arabic Literary Representations of Food.

The Expeditions is one of the oldest biographies of the Prophet Muhammad to survive into the modern era. Its primary author, Maʿmar ibn Rashid (714-770 AD/96-153 AH), was a prominent scholar from Basra in southern Iraq who was revered for his learning in prophetic traditions, Islamic law, and the interpretation of the Qurʾan. This fascinating foundational seminal work contains stories handed down by Maʿmar to his most prominent pupil, ʿAbd al-Razzaq of Sanʿaʾ, relating Muhammad’s early life and prophetic career as well as the adventures and tribulations of his earliest followers during their conquest of the Near East. Edited from a sole surviving manuscript, the Arabic text offers numerous improved readings over those of previous editions, including detailed notes on the text’s transmission and variants as found in later works. This new translation, which renders the original into readable, modern English for the first time, is accompanied by numerous annotations elucidating the cultural, religious and historical contexts of the events and individuals described within its pages. The Expeditions 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.

A compelling account which is, among other things, the earliest first-hand description of travel from the Muslim world. _Times Literary Supplement _ Mission to the Volga is the earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic 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 Fa?lan 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 Fa?lan 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."

Paves the foundation of Islamic legal tradition Al-Qadi al-Nu'man was the chief legal theorist and ideologue of the North African Fatimid dynasty in the tenth century. This translation makes available for the first time in English his major work on Islamic legal theory (usul al-fiqh), which presents a legal model in support of the Fatimid claim to legitimate rule. Composed as part of a grand project to establish the theoretical bases of the official Fatimid legal school, Disagreements of the Jurists expounds a distinctly Shi'i system of hermeneutics. The work begins with a discussion of the historical causes of jurisprudential divergence in the first Islamic centuries and goes on to engage, point by point, with the specific interpretive methods of Sunni legal theory. The text thus preserves important passages from several Islamic legal theoretical works no longer extant, and in the process throws light on a critical stage in the development of Islamic legal theory that would otherwise be lost to history.

Trenchant and witty critiques of life in Cairo under British rule What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is a masterpiece of early twentieth-century Arabic prose. Penned by the Egyptian journalist Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī, this highly original work was first introduced in serialized form in his family’s pioneering newspaper Miṣbāḥ al-Sharq ( Light of the East ) and later published in book form in 1907. Widely hailed for its erudition and mordant wit, What ʿĪsā ibn Hishām 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 ʿĪsā ibn Hishām 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, ʿĪsā ibn Hishām, 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 ʿĪsā ibn Hishām Told Us is invaluable both for its insight into colonial Egypt and its pioneering role in Arabic literary history. An English-only edition.

Abu Tammam (d. 231 or 232 H/845 or 846 AD) is one of the most celebrated poets in the Arabic language. Born in Syria of Greek Christian background, he soon made his name as one of the premier Arabic poets in the caliphal court of Baghdad. Abu Tammam vigorously promoted a new style of poetry that merged abstract and complex imagery with archaic Bedouin language. Both highly controversial and extremely popular, Abu Tammam s sophisticated verse epitomized the modern style (badi) that influenced all subsequent Arabic and Arabic-inspired poetry 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 Abu Tammam, translated into English for the first time, the courtier and scholar Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Suli (d. 335 or 336 H/946 or 947 AD) mounts a robust defense of modern poetry and of Abu Tammam 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-Suli was a courtier, companion, and tutor of the Abbasid caliphs who wrote extensively on caliphal history and poetry and, as a scholar of modern poets, made indelible contributions to the field of Arabic literature. Like the poet it promotes, al-Suli 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."

Patronage, power, and competition in the Sultan’s court The Sword of Ambition opens a new window onto interreligious rivalry among elites in medieval Egypt. Written by the unemployed bureaucrat 'Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi, it contains a wealth of little-known historical anecdotes, unusual religious opinions, obscure and witty poetry, and humorous cultural satire. Leaving no rhetorical stone unturned, al-Nabulusi pours his deep knowledge of history, law, and literature into the work―addressed to the Ayyubid sultan―as he argues against the employment of Coptic and Jewish officials. Written at a time when much of the inter-communal animosity of the era was conditioned by fierce competition for scarce resources that were increasingly controlled by an ideologically committed Sunni Muslim state, The Sword of Ambition reminds us that “religious” conflict must always be considered in its broader historical perspective. An English-only edition.

Unique in pre-20th-century Arabic literature for taking the countryside as its central theme, Yusuf al-Shirbini's Brains Confounded combines a mordant satire on seventeenth-century Egyptian rural society with a hilarious parody of the verse-and-commentary genre so beloved by scholars of his day. In Volume One, Al-Shirbini describes the three rural -types—-peasant cultivator, village man-of-religion and rural dervish—offering numerous anecdotes testifying to the ignorance, dirtiness, illiteracy, lack of proper religious understanding, and criminality of each. He follows it in Volume Two with a 47-line poem supposedly written by a peasant named Abu Shaduf, who charts the rise and fall of his fortunes and bewails, above all, the lack of access to delicious foods to which his poverty has condemned him. Wielding the scholarly tools of elite literature, al-Shirbini responds to the poem with derision and ridicule, dotting his satire of the ignorant rustic with numerous digressions into love, food, and flatulence. Witty, bawdy, and vicious, Brains Confounded belongs to an unrecognized genre from an understudied period in Egypt's Ottoman history, and is a work of outstanding importance for the study of pre-modern colloquial Egyptian Arabic, pitting the -coarse- rural masses against the -refined- and urbane in a contest for cultural and religious primacy, with a heavy emphasis on the writing of verse as a yardstick of social acceptability.