Description
Book SynopsisThe present volume contributes to research on historic Arabic texts from late medieval Egypt and Syria. Departing from dominant understandings of these texts through the prisms of authenticity and “literarization,” it engages with questions of textual constructedness and authorial agency. It consists of 13 contributions by a new generation of scholars in three parts. Each part represents a different aspect of their new readings of particular texts. Part one looks at concrete instances of textual interdependencies, part two at the creativity of authorial agencies, and part three at the relationship between texts and social practice. New Readings thus participates in the revaluation of late medieval Arabic historiography as a critical field of inquiry. Contributors: Rasmus Bech Olsen, Víctor de Castro León, Mohammad Gharaibeh, Kenneth A. Goudie, Christian Mauder, Evan Metzger, Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont, Clément Onimus, Tarek Sabraa, Iria Santás de Arcos, Gowaart Van Den Bossche, Koby Yosef.
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors Introduction: History Writing, Adab and Intertextuality in Late Medieval Egypt and Syria: Old and New Readings Jo Van Steenbergen Part 1 Literarization as Adabization: Intertextual Agencies 1 Al-Maqrīzī’s Sulūk, Muqaffā, and Durar al-ʿUqūd: Trends of “Literarization” in the Historical Corpus of a 9th/15th-Century Egyptian Shāfiʿī Religious Scholar Koby Yosef 2 Language and Style in Mamluk Historiography Koby Yosef 3 Ibn al-Khaṭīb and His Mamluk Reception Víctor De Castro León 4 Ibn Qāḍī Shuhba (1377–1448): His Life and Historical Work Tarek Sabraa 5 Andalusi Adab in the Mamluk Period Iria Santas Part 2 Literarization as Creative Authorship: Contextual Agencies 6 Social and Intellectual Rivalries and Their Narrative Representations in Biographical Dictionaries: The Representation of Ibn al-Ṣalāḥ—A Case Study Mohammad Gharaibeh 7 Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī’s Texts and Contexts: Producing a Sufi Environment in the Cairo Sultanate Zacharie Mochtari de Pierrepont 8 If a Governor Falls in Damascus: Early Mamluk Historiography Analyzed through the Story of Sayf al-Dīn Karāy al-Manṣūrī Rasmus Bech Olsen 9 Al-ʿAynī and His Fellow Historians: Questioning the Discursive Position of a Historian in the Academic Field in the Cairo Sultanate Clément Onimus Part 3 Literarization as Social Practice: Textual Agencies 10 Al-Biqāʿī’s Self-Reflection: A Preliminary Study of the Autobiographical in His ʿUnwān al-Zamān Kenneth A. Goudie 11 “And They Read in That Night Books of History”: Consuming, Discussing, and Producing Texts about the Past in al-Ghawrī’s Majālis as Social Practices Christian Mauder 12 Historical Representation as Resurrection: Al-Udfuwī and the Imitation of Allāh Ivan Metzger 13 Literarisierung Reconsidered in the Context of Sultanic Biography: The Case of Shāfiʿ b. ʿAlī’s Sīrat al-Nāṣir Muḥammad (BnF MS Arabe 1705) Gowaart Van Den Bossche Index
