Abstract
This conclusion articulates the book’s main argument that has highlighted several practices of literary criticism and ‘ways of speaking’ about Arabic literary works and Arab-Islamic culture that are not conducive to the study of adab or the development of Arab poetics and literary criticism. It puts to the fore some practices that instrumentalise Arabic literary works for the production of damaging conclusions through decontextualised and anachronistic readings. It therefore argues for the importance of developing literary tools and key terms from within adab.
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Notes
- 1.
Hämeen-Anttila, Maqama: A History of a Genre, 114.
- 2.
The Act of Reading, (London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 28, 34. Original German: Der Akt des Lesens (Munich, 1976) quoted in Selden, The Theory of Criticism: from Plato to the Present, 215.
- 3.
Maqāmāt, 7.
- 4.
Kāẓim, al-Maqāmāt wa l-Talaqqı̄, 153 ff. On Najı̄b al-Ḥaddād, Rūḥı̄ al-Khālidı̄ and Qusṭākı̄ al-Ḥimṣı̄—all influenced by French literature—who were amongst the first to voice this need with regards to the unsuitability of the literary heritage, with respect to the Maqāmāt—as the subject of the author’s book—to the times they were living in.
- 5.
Kāẓim, al-Maqāmāt wa l-Talaqqı̄, 159 [My translation].
- 6.
See, Sinan Antoon, The Poetics of the Obscene in pre-modern Arabic poetry: Ibn al-Ḥajjāj and sukhf (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
- 7.
Hasan Azad, ‘Knowledge as Politics by Other Means: An Interview with Wael Hallaq (Part One),’ Jadaliyya May 16 2014 Accessed December 25 2014. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/17677/knowledge-as-politics-by-other-means_an-interview-
- 8.
Teun A. van Dijk, Prejudice Discourse (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co., 1984), 30.
- 9.
Ibid.
- 10.
Ibid., 31.
- 11.
RAHW, 90–91.
- 12.
The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to Nineteenth-Century (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969), 10.
- 13.
Ibid.
- 14.
Ibid., 81–5.
- 15.
The highlighting quality of this nobility of character is jūd (generosity) not only expressed materially but also in spirit and magnanimity of character, to the extent that a person possessing qualities contrary to this definition (jealousy, envy, cowardice, etc.) is deemed akin to a slave even if the person was legally free. See ibid., 81–99. The moral dimension of ḥurriyya could also be traced in pre-modern Arabic book titles or literary phrases such as ḥurr al-kalām, which as Rosenthal maintains, ‘does not refer to “free speech” but to speech of a high literary quality.’ See ibid., 10.
- 16.
Ibid., 109–115. It is worth mentioning that al-Qushayrı̄ was the first Sufi writer to discuss and define freedom in his epistle, as also noted by Rosenthal. Note here also the parallels between the Sufi concept of futuwwa as the possession of noble qualities and the concept of freedom.
- 17.
Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to Nineteenth-Century, 12.
- 18.
Miskawayh and Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥı̄dı̄, al-Hawāmil wa l-Shawāmil, ed. A. Amı̄n and A. Ṣaqr (Cairo, 1370/1951), 220–26 quoted in Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to Nineteenth-Century, 19 [Rosenthal’s translation].
- 19.
Amber Haque, ‘Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists,’ Journal of Religion and Health 43, no.4, (2004): 368.
- 20.
Rosenthal, The Muslim Concept of Freedom Prior to Nineteenth-Century, 116. Rosenthal discusses this concept with respect to an individual’s relationship with God. However, it is used here to include all relationships.
- 21.
Literature as System (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1971), 4.
- 22.
Ibid., 5.
- 23.
RAHW, 19.
- 24.
RAHW, 17.
- 25.
For more on hijāʾ, see van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly.
- 26.
van Gelder, ‘Hijā’ in EAL, 1:284.
- 27.
An example would be the poet Ibn al-Ḥajjāj who listened to verbal assaults in the market and recorded them and would ask people in the market the following day about meanings he did not understand, see van Gelder, The Bad and the Ugly, 81–82.
- 28.
RAHW, 148.
- 29.
RAHW, 273.
- 30.
RAHW, 260.
- 31.
For a classification of the types of fools in Arabic literature and culture (the romantic fool, the wise fool, the holy fool), see Michael Dols, Majnūn: The Madman in Medieval Islamic Society, 313–422.
- 32.
Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction, 170.
- 33.
Taneli Kukkonen, ‘The Good, the Beautiful and the True Aesthetical Issues in Islamic Philosophy,’ Studia Orientalia 111 (2011):100.
- 34.
Biliana Kassabova, ‘Stanford scholar explores Arabic obsession with language.’ January 23rd 2015. Accessed April 16th 2015. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/january/arabic-language-key-012315.html
- 35.
Alexander Key, ‘Arabic: Acceptance and Anxiety’. March 5th 2015. Accessed April 16th 2015. http://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/arabic-acceptance-and-anxiety
- 36.
Mohamed-Salah Omri, ‘Notes on the Traffic between Theory and Arabic Literature’, International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 732.
- 37.
Mottahedeh, ‘‘Ajāʾib in The Thousand and One Nights,’ 38.
- 38.
Emily Apter, Against World Literature: On the Politics of Untranslatability (London and New York: Verso, 2013).
- 39.
Martha C. Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age, (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 58.
- 40.
James E. Montgomery, ‘Jahiz: Dangerous Freethinker?’ in Critical Muslim Issue 12, (October–December 2014): 15.
- 41.
Robert Marquand, ‘Conversations With Outstanding Americans: Edward Said,’ The Christian Science Monitor. May 27, 1997. Accessed March 13, 2014. http://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0527/052797.feat.feat.1.html
- 42.
Robert Marquand, ‘Conversations With Outstanding Americans: Edward Said,’ The Christian Science Monitor. May 27, 1997. Accessed March 13, 2014. http://www.csmonitor.com/1997/0527/052797.feat.feat.1.html
- 43.
Julia Bray, ‘Global Perspectives on Medieval Arabic Literature’ in Islam and Globalisation: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Agostino Cilardo in, (Leuven and Paris: Uitgeverij Peeters, 2013), 215.
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bin Tyeer, S.R. (2016). CODA: The Interpretation and Misinterpretation of adab in Modern Scholarship. In: The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59875-2_11
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