Interpreting Arabs: Defining their Name and Constructing their Family

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Webb
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Family Tree ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
Dictionary Definitions

Chapter 4 investigates the changing faces of Arabness in early Islam. As an identity, Arabness was a fluid intellectual construct, and because Arab communal consciousness developed unevenly in early Islam, Muslims faced manifold challenges when they tried to define the word ‘Arab’ and delineate the boundaries of Arab community. The uneven parameters of Arabness and the debates over the identity’s meaning manifest in this chapter’s findings from the evolving dictionary definitions of ʿarabī, the disputes over membership to the Arab community, and the protracted process by which Muslims constructed Arab genealogy by fusing disparate pre-Islamic groups into one consolidated Arab family tree. By the early tenth century AD, Arabic literature articulates a largely cohesive sense of Arab identity and genealogy traced through a succession of ancient prophets, Judaic and Arabian: this chapter questions how that archetype of Arabness emerged by undertaking comprehensive analysis of the earlier disagreements which accompanied the processes of imagining Arabness in Islam’s first centuries.

Philologists, ‘Bedouinisation’ and the ‘Archetypal Arab’ after the Mid-Third/Ninth Century

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Webb
Keyword(s):  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Ninth Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
Elite Identity ◽  
Novel Association ◽  
Islamic Identity

How was Arab identity imagined in a world where most Middle Eastern populations stopped calling themselves Arabs? After the mid-ninth century AD, descriptions of Arabs proliferated in Arabic literature, whilst Arab identity as a social/political asset was in decline. In this period, the key spokesmen for the idea of Arabness were philologists who fundamentally reworked impressions of Arab identity as part of new theories about the Arabic language. Diachronic survey of the development of Arabic philology from the late eighth to eleventh centuries reveals shifting intentions and values which standardised the Arabic language via a unique process that focused on the idealisation of Bedouin as paragons of the ‘original Arabs’. Studying Arabic philology within its socio-historical contexts reveals how the grammarians transcended language study and forged paradigmatic changes to the ways Arab history and culture are interpreted. The novel association of Arab with Bedouin became a popular theme in Arabic literature from the early tenth century, and the weight of the resultant writings comprehensively transformed Arabness from the former expression of urban/Muslim elite identity in early Islam to a desert/Bedouin pre-Islamic identity which has cast a long shadow on the notion of Arab identity to the present.

Excerpta Historica Constantiniana: An Encyclopaedia from Tenth-Century Byzantium?

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-263
Author(s):  
Dariya Rafiyenko
Keyword(s):  
Future Study ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Comparative Perspective ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Reading Aids

Abstract When approaching Byzantine-Greek texts that organize knowledge in one way or another, Byzantinists encounter similar issues to those facing Arabists working on pre-modern Arabic literature. In this article, I discuss two of these more specifically: (1) The layout of the medieval manuscripts has been hitherto systematically neglected, although many manuscripts contain chapter headings, lists of contents and other features that provide “reading aids” or “finding devices” and thus offer clues as to how the text they contain were conceived and designed to be read; and (2) The term “encyclopaedia” has been used in too vague a fashion with regard to Byzantine works of the tenth to twelfth centuries CE and has to be reconsidered. This article discusses both issues with reference to the example of the Excerpta historica Constantiniana (henceforth, Excerpta), apparently a reference work, written in Ancient Greek in Constantinople in the tenth century CE. The goal is to make a description of the Excerpta available to Arabists, laying the ground for future study of the two traditions in comparative perspective.

SULIMAN BASHEAR, Arabs and Others in Early Islam, Studies in Late Antiquity and Early Islam 8 (Princeton, N.J.: Darwin Press, 1997). Pp. 169. $32 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 277-279
Author(s):  
Jamsheed K. Choksy
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Past ◽  
Arab Muslim ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Narrative Reconstruction ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
Contextual Framework ◽  
Great Complexity

The earliest period of Islamic thought has emerged as a major focus of contemporary scholarship during the past few decades, with a variety of techniques—ranging from historical documentation and historiographical analysis to narrative reconstruction and source criticism—being applied to comprehend more accurately the ideas and events that fueled the rise of Muslim societies in the Middle East. Suliman Bashear has made a fascinating addition to the writing that has emerged from this scholarly quest to configure the Middle Eastern Muslim past. The book under review probes available early Arabic literature, largely on its own terms and occasionally in relation to later Arabic writings, to determine the great complexity of Arab, Muslim, and Arab–Muslim views about themselves and about members of other communities during and shortly after the 7th century. Bashear's work also endeavors to trace how such views changed over the next few centuries. At the same time, however, the book is difficult to appreciate fully. Each chapter involves mainly the analysis of a series of hadith (and, to a lesser extent, tafsir and akhbar) linked together by general themes, with little contextual framework or broader discussion of the issues' significance. As a result, the considerable erudition and informative detail that permeates this book provide disparate nuggets of knowledge that, when taken together, fall short of providing the reader with a clear overall notion of how and why the earliest Muslims perceived themselves and others in particular ways.

scholarly journals A Translation and Study of Chán Master Jìngxiū’s 淨修禪師 Preface to the Zǔtáng jí 祖堂集

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (11) ◽  
pp. 974
Author(s):  
Laurent Van Cutsem ◽  
Christoph Anderl
Keyword(s):  
Tenth Century ◽  
Comprehensive Analysis ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Idiomatic Expressions ◽  
Textual History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Annotated Translation

This paper examines Chán master Jìngxiū’s preface to the original Zǔtáng jí in one scroll, which was presented to him by Jìng and Yún at the Zhāoqìng monastery in Quánzhōu around the mid-tenth century. Building on a recent TEI-based edition, it offers an annotated translation and comprehensive analysis of the preface, with special attention to its structure, linguistic features, and issues of intertextuality. The essay focuses on elements of textual history, the possible incentives behind the compilation of the Zǔtáng jí, and Jìngxiū’s perception of the text. Most importantly, this study investigates in detail two idiomatic expressions used by Jìngxiū (i.e., “[cases of] shuǐhè easily arise”; “[the characters] wū and mǎ are difficult to distinguish”), showing their significance for understanding the preface. In addition, we demonstrate that further research is needed to support the hypothesis according to which the original Zǔtáng jí would correspond to the first two fascicles of the received Goryeo edition of 1245. Eventually, this article serves as the first part of a research summary on the textual history of the Zǔtáng jí aimed at facilitating further studies on this highly important Chán text.

New Materials on the Tabaqāt al-shu‘arā’ of al-Jumahī

1949 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-22
Author(s):  
A. J. Arberry
Keyword(s):  
Great Part ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Subsequent Paper ◽  
New Materials ◽  
Additional Material ◽  
Considerable Fraction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Manu Script ◽  
Unknown Manuscript

IIT is well known that the Ṱabaqāt al-shu‘arā’ of Muḥammad b. Sallāam al-Jumahi is one of our most important source-books for the history of Arabic poetry and poetic theory; it is equally well known that the text as at present available is both deficient, because of lacunae in the manuscripts hitherto discovered and used, and otherwise unsatisfactory, on account of inadequate editing. Despite the very numerous emendations to Joseph Hell's edition (Leiden, 1916) proposed by several eminent scholars, the book still remains lamentably short of perfection; though there can be few texts in the whole of Arabic literature which it would be more desirable to have in good and proper shape.It has now been my unusual fortune to study in Mr. Chester Beatty's library an exceedingly fine old copy of the Ṱabaqāt al-shu‘arā’, undated but certainly of the fourth/tenth century. This hitherto unknown manuscript not only supplies a great part of the major lacuna in Hell's text (p. 19), but also contains other extensive additions summing up to a considerable fraction of the whole work; it presents moreover a very reliable recension of the book, and its numerous variants will make it possible at last to establish a satisfactory edition.In the present paper a collation is offered of all the passages contained in Hell's text for which new readings are provided by the Chester Beatty manu-script. It is hoped in a subsequent paper to publish the additional material for which that manuscript constitutes the sole authority. Scholars will be interested to note how remarkably this fresh evidence confirms many of the brilliant emendations proposed by the famous Arabists who have from time to time devoted themselves to the improvement of Hell's edition.

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