Abū Tammām and the Poetics of the ʿabbāsid Age

Erscheinungsjahr 2020
ISBN: 978-90-04-42551-4
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 406 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Foremost among the poetic accomplishments of the 'Abbasid age was the sudden flowering of a highly rhetorical and strikingly modern style of poetry, termed "badi'." It found its most radical and controversial exponent in the celebrated panegyrist to the courts of al-Ma'mun and al-Mu'tasim, Abu Tammam Habib ibn Aws al-Ta'i.
The present study offers a reevaluation of the Arabic literary dispute over Abu Tammam and badi'. It then proposes a redefinition of his diwan and of his major anthology, the Hamasah, as a metapoesis that served to decode the poetic tradition of the pre-Islamic desert for the Islamic 'Abbasid caliph and his urbane and urban courtiers and subjects, and conversely, to encode contemporary Arab-Islamic political experiences in classical form.
This book is extensively illustrated with original translations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Stetkevych, Suzanne Pinckney

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Lyrik und Dichter
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturen sonstiger Sprachräume Literatur des Nahen Ostens & Nordafrikas

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Note on Translations

Preface

Part One: Abu Tammam and the Arabic Critical Tradition

Introduction

1. A Reformulation of Badi'

2. Al-Suli's Akhbar Abi Tammam

3. Al-Amidi's Muwazanah

4. Al-Jurjani's Wasatah

Conclusion

Part Two: Panegyrist to the Caliphal Court

Introduction

5. Time's Beardless Youth: A Panegyric to the Caliph al-Ma'mun

6. The Tragacanth's Fruit: A Panegyric to Abu Sa'id Thaghri

7. A Morsel in Destruction's Hand: A Panegyric to al-Mu'tasim on the Capture of Babak al-Khurrami

8. The Virgin whom the Hand of Fate Had Not Deflowered: The Panegyric to al-Mu'tasim on the Conquest of 'Ammuriyah

9. The Poet Sets His Brilliant Gems: The Panegyric to al-Mu'tasim on the Immolation of al-Afshin

Conclusion

Part Three: Abu Tammam and the Arabic Anthology

Introduction

10. The Process of Collection: Hadith and Poetry

11. The Hamasah as Literary Ijma'

12. Composition and Conception of the Hamasah

13. Bab al-Hamasah: Theme and Variations

14. Metaphorical Relationships

15. Antithetical Relationships: Bab al-Hija'

Conclusion

Appendix

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Suzanne P. Stetkevych is Sultan Qaboos bin Said Professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies at Georgetown University, Executive Editor of the book series Brill Studies in Middle East Literatures and co-winner of the Shaikh Zayed Book Award for Cultural Personality of the Year 2019. She received her Ph.D. in 1981 in Classical Arabic Literature from the University of Chicago. She has published in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Journal of Semitic Studies and others.