Walter WERKMEISTER, Quellenuntersuchungen zum Kitāb al-'Iqd alfarīd des Andalusiers Ibn Abdrabbih (246/860-328/940). Ein Beitrag zur arabischen Literaturgeschichte, Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin 1983, 551 p

This article focuses on the method of transmission in aḫbār belonging to the Arabic literary genre of love prose. The survey of the system of quotations in thirteen love treatises written between the 4th/10th and the 11th/17th centuries indicates that the traditional isnād, in which the names of the transmitters are included, was progressively abandoned. Authors starting from Muġulṭāy (d. 762/1361) chose instead to favour quotations of books by their titles, even though the preferred method of transmitting knowledge was still oral during the Mamluk period. Use of written 'references' not only indicates a formal change of conventional practice, but also implies the willingness of later authors to claim a kind of authorship in reshaping stories taken from old material. L'histoire de la littérature arabo-islamique compte une quinzaine de traités d'amour conservés, dont la production s'est étendue sur huit siècles environ. Du point de vue chronologique, les premières...

Studia Islamica, 2015

Scholars in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition have mainly been focusing their attention on the formative stage of the Arabic grammatical theory (2nd-4th/8th-10th centuries). This dissertation aims at broadening the scope and is intended to contribute to our knowledge of this discipline at the post-classical period and in the western periphery of the Islamic world. The starting point of research is represented by a 4th/10th century grammarian of Persian origin who settled in Damascus: ʾAbū al-Qāsim al-Zaǧǧāǧī. Nowadays he is one of the best-known Arabic grammarians, but that was not the case in the beginning. Indeed his fame grew steadily thanks to one of his treatises, the Kitāb al-Ǧumal fī al-naḥw. The presentation of al-Zaǧǧāǧī and of his book sets the frame for the study, whose main focus is to trace the history of this text through time and space. This enquiry leads to al-Andalus: whereas the Ǧumal seemed to be abandoned in the Islamic East, it was adopted by Andalusian scholars as one of the main texts for grammatical studies. The analysis of its chains of transmission and the presentation of all of its commentaries show not only that this treatise was the main grammatical text in this periphery of the Islamic world, but even that it came to be a sort of mirror of Andalusian history and identity. The journey of this book starts at the 4th/10th century and may be followed almost uninterruptedly until today: imported to al-Andalus from the Islamic East during the formative stage of Andalusian culture, it was then brought to Maghreb thanks to Andalusian emigration flows and was eventually edited in Algiers in 1927.

ORIENS, 2018

In this article, we defend the hypothesis according to which that what al-Ğāḥiẓ attempted to expose, criticize, and problematize in Kitāb al-Buḫalāʾ (the Book of the Misers), is not only the phenomenon of miserliness as socioeconomic conduct, but also especially the speech of misers as the revealing symptom of the choice of a form of life. To use a concept developed by Marcel Mauss, we would say that for al-Ğāḥiẓ the phenomenon of miserliness constitutes a ‘total social fact’ in that al-Ğāḥiẓ analyzes and treats miserliness not as a simple act to give and/or to receive involving only an economic aspect, but as a summary of all the facts which constitute the sociocultural space, a kind of cross-section in the body of society. The question asked by al-Ğāḥiẓ in this work is one of the social link generally, community life in particular and, more specifically still, the sense of friendship that the other member of the dyad is capable of showing. Thus, we see al-Ğāḥiẓ insist on the fact that miserliness is not a fact of economy. Instead, it shows itself and acts especially as it involves the choice of a form of life and a mode of presence in society, a choice which determines, in turn, a mode of appropriation and employment of the language in the speech of the misers.

Arabica, 67 (2020), p. 125-199.

The practice of sending delegations (wafd-s) to the ruler has generally been interpreted as typical of the time of the Prophet and the first caliphs, particularly Muʿāwiya. Drawing on the example of Egyptian delegations to the imperial government in the first three centuries of Islam, this article argues that this phenomenon persisted well beyond the Sufyānid period, and that their composition reflected the evolution of socio-political dominations in Fusṭāṭ. Often overseen by the governor, and composed of civilian as well as military elites, these delegations represented the population of the provincial capital and maintained a direct link between them and the caliph.

"Savants, Amants, Poètes et Fous", Hommage à Katia Zakaria , 2019

Les ʿUqalāʾ al-maǧānīn wa-l-mawsūsīn d’Abū Muḥammad al-Ḥusayn b. Ismāʿīl al-Ḍarrāb (m. 392/1001) est un court recueil de vingt-cinq aḫbār qui relatent les dires de célèbres savants et mystiques, comme ʿUlyān ou Bahlūl, ou d’autres moins connus, auxquels fut attribué le sobriquet de maǧnūn. Dans cet article, nous analyserons le folie décrite dans l'ouvrage d'al-Ḍarrāb afin d'en déduire sa vision de la folie. Cette étude se fondera en partie sur une comparaison entre l’ouvrage d’al-Ḍarrāb et celui de son contemporain Ibn Ḥabīb al- Nīsābūrī (m. 406/1015), auteur d’un recueil plus volumineux de récits relevant du même genre. Ce dernier est mieux connu, notamment grâce aux travaux de Katia Zakharia, qui lui a consacré son article « Le statut du fou dans le Kitāb ʿUqalāʾ al-maǧānīn de Nīsābūrī : les modalités d’une exclusion », Bulletin d’Études Orientales (1997).

Al-Qanṭara, 2004

Abstract: Ibn Qutayba's preface to his Adab al-katib has been considered for centuries the most important section of this work and it has been the object of many commentaries, both in the Muslim East and West. This paper deals with Ibn al-Sid al-Batalyawsi's commentary al-Iqtidab, trying to show the peculiar way in which Ibn al-Sid develops his own critique of Ibn Qutayba's controversial thesis on the relation between orthodoxy, falsafa and kalam. At the same time, the Andalusi author works out his own conception of adab, deeply influenced by his biographical experience. Finally a full translation of Ibn Qutayba's preface is proposed, half a century after G. Lecomte's partial one.

Annales islamologiques, 2008