Research Catalog

Title

Bedouin and 'Abbāsid cultural identities : the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story / Ruqayya Yasmine Khan.

Author

Khan, Ruqayya Yasmine

Publication

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

x, 232 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of 'the ideological work' that the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story performed for 'Abbāsid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the 'bedouin cosmos.' The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnūn in the romance of Majnūn Laylā as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the 'Abbāsid empire after the Graeco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnūn. As markers of 'strangeness' and 'foreignness' in the 'Abbāsid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such 'cultural work' is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g. affective). Lastly, the Majnūn Laylā love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian sub-culture thrived in the centers of 'Abbāsid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed. Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and Gender Studies"--

Series Statement

Culture and civilization in the Middle East

Uniform Title

Culture and civilisation in the Middle East.

Subjects

• Abbasids > Intellectual life
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Majnūn Laylá > Criticism and interpretation

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction -- 1. Song Culture, Kitāb al-Aghānī (Book of Songs) and the Love Story of Majnūn Laylā -- 2. On the term ʻUdhrī and its Symbolic Universe for Understanding Majnūn Laylā -- 3. The Night in the Ghayl -- Love, Meaning, and Language -- 4. Umayyad and ʻAbbāsid Constructs of Masculinities in the Love Story of Majnūn Laylā -- 5. A Lost 'Bedouin Arcadia' -- The Tree Man and the Umayyad Tax Man -- 6. Majnūn as the Knight-Errant: Language and the Significance of Errancy (Huyām) -- 7. ʻAbbāsid Culturally Primitivist Readings of Laylā as Object and Subject -- 8. ʻAbbāsid Readings of the ʻUdhrī Romances: Female Unchastity & the Love Triangle -- Conclusion -- Glossary -- Bibliography.

Call Number

JFE 20-985

ISBN

• 9780367333942
• 0367333945
• 9780429319617 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781000699982 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781000700596 (canceled/invalid)
• 9781000701203 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2019031600

OCLC

1104867337

Author

Khan, Ruqayya Yasmine, author.

Title

Bedouin and 'Abbāsid cultural identities : the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story / Ruqayya Yasmine Khan.

Publisher

Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, 2020.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Culture and civilization in the Middle East

Culture and civilisation in the Middle East.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 20-985