This is the inaugural paper of a series on material attested in ancient North Arabia inscriptions that is of particular importance to the history of Arabic, its linguistic context, and its development and classification. The article edits eleven Safaitic inscriptions, inscribed on seven stones, discovered during the 2019 Badia Survey in Northeastern Jordan. Most of these texts attest new grammatical

The Ḥiǧāz in the 11th/17th century has long been considered the center of a “revival” movement in ḥadīṯ studies. This assumption has spread widely among scholars of the 11th-/17th- and 12th-/18th-century Islamic world based on the fact that the isnāds of many major ḥadīṯ scholars from almost all parts of the Islamic world from the 11th/17th century onward return to a group of scholars in the Ḥiǧāz

During his travels in Egypt, Edward William Lane attended “a low and ridiculous farce,” he reports, performed by the muḥabbaẓūna, before Muḥammad ʿAlī Bāšā. Lane described its plot and concluded that the farce was played before the Pasha to open his eyes to the conduct of the tax collectors. When recounting farces in the Ottoman Empire, some travellers and critics confirm the narrative of ridiculous

Résumé Cet article propose d’étudier la période de l’émergence de l’activité théâtrale en Palestine à partir du fonds d’archives François Abou Salem car il apporte un éclairage particulier sur plusieurs processus en cours à ce moment : processus historique de l’émergence de la pratique et sa pérennisation, processus de création théâtrale et professionnalisation du mouvement. Le fonds François Abou

Résumé Pour le grammairien Raḍī l-Dīn al-Astarābāḏī (m. après 688/1289), le fāʾ al-sababiyya (« causal ») constitue une intersection entre deux des trois fāʾ distingués par la grammaire arabe : le fāʾ d’apodose (fāʾ al-ǧawāb ou al-ǧazāʾ), apparaissant entre protase et apodose d’un système conditionnel (in p fa-q) et systèmes assimilés, c’est-à-dire circonstancielles et relatives ayant une valeur conditionnelle

This article presents editions of three Arabic parchment deeds of sale from the 4th/10th-century Fayyūm Oasis belonging to two monks, Babā Banīla and Babā Buṭrus, of the Dayr al-Qalamūn monastery. The transactions recorded in our documents are mundane in and of themselves. But put together they offer bits of insight into Christian society in rural medieval Egypt, the notarial practice of provincial

A growing body of literature on trade and cultural exchange between the Indian Ocean regions has already contributed significantly to our understanding of these processes and the role of language and writing within them. Yet, the question remains how Arabic correspondence played a part in communications between South Asian powers and the rulers in the Red Sea region. In order to begin filling this

In his article, “Between History and Exegesis: the Origins and Transformation of the Story of Muḥammad and Zaynab bt Ǧaḥš,” published in Arabica, 65/1-2 (2018), p. 31-63, Andreas Görke argues that the reference in Kor 33, 37 to Muḥammad’s marriage to the former wife of a man named Zayd “seems to refer to an historical event” and that later exegetical expansions of the episode are based on an “historical

Résumé L’envoi de délégations (wafds) par des groupes vers le souverain est généralement associé à la politique du Prophète et des premiers califes, notamment Muʿāwiya (r. 41/661-60/680). En s’appuyant sur l’exemple des délégations égyptiennes auprès du pouvoir impérial aux trois premiers siècles de l’Islam, le présent article montre non seulement que le phénomène des délégations continua bien au-delà

L’ouvrage de M. Ali Lakhani, Faith and Ethics: The Vision of the Ismaili Imamat, se donne l’objectif de faire connaitre la pensee spirituelle du prince Karim al-Husseini ou Karim Aga Khan IV, l’actuel imam de la communaute nizarite ismaelienne. Il promeut egalement les actions de l’AKDN (Aga Khan Development Network) en montrant leur adequation a la philosophie culturelle et charitable du prince Karim

Résumé La présente note est consacrée à la présentation d’un dictionnaire hagiographique, relatif aux saints de la vallée de Chélif, située dans le Maghreb central, à la fin du Moyen Âge, récemment publié en Algérie. Il s’agit de l’abrégé de Dībāǧat al-iftiḫār fī manāqib awliyāʾ Allāh al-aḫyār de Mūsā b. ʿĪsā l-Māzūnī (m. vers 833/1430), dont la seule copie manuscrite a fait l’objet de trois éditions

Résumé Depuis l’affaire de la censure du roman Awlād ḥāratinā (Les fils de la médina) de Naǧīb Maḥfūẓ, publié en 1968, aucun roman n’avait suscité autant de polémiques en Égypte que le roman historique de Yūsuf Zaydān ʿAzāzīl, paru en 2008. Centré sur l’histoire du christianisme égyptien et oriental au IVe siècle, le roman aborde notamment les questions des querelles christologiques entre les Églises

Did Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī complete his great Koranic commentary? Scholars have suggested that al-Rāzī’s disciple Šams al-Dīn al-Ḫuwayyī may have contributed to the final tafsīr, but were unable to come to any definitive conclusions, partly because they had no tafsīr by al-Ḫuwayyī that could be used for comparison. In fact, we know of two commentaries of al-Ḫuwayyī: a section of his encyclopedia which

Within some of the earliest textual and material evidence for the history of Islam, pilgrimage appears as an important ritual of devotion, identity, and community. Yet modern scholarship has given little attention to early Muslims’ sensory experiences of pilgrimage sites and what they physically encountered while there. This article examines the importance of smell within Islamic pilgrimage practices

This article investigates the phonological patternings in the speech of il-Limbi, an immensely popular character in Egyptian comedy; and it stands therefore at a crossroads between cultural studies and linguistics. Il-Limbi represents the urban working classes, and his speech often mocks social conventions through ludicrous parody of educated speech. Masquerading as socially superior personas, his

When a classical Arabic poem lacked a noticeable degree of thematic coherence and formal structure, it was at risk of foreign intervention aiming to improve it. Who was recognized in such a case as the author of the poem and on which grounds? This article looks at the interrelated questions of the poem’s unity and its authorship through the lens of collaborative poetry that was practiced by completing

Ibrāhīm al-Naḫaʿī (d. 96/714) was the most prominent Follower (tābiʿī) in the Kufan legal tradition, also prominent in the areas of hadith transmission, koranic commentary, and piety. Later adherents of both hadith and raʾy cited his opinions as authoritative precedents. Presumptively, most quotations of him give us the gist of what he said, not his very words; an undetermined proportion of quotations

The City of the Dead is a large area on the periphery of Cairo where people live in house-like tombs. This study focuses on two Egyptian novels Šakāwā l-miṣrī l-faṣīḥ (1981-1985) by Yūsuf al-Qaʿīd and Madad (2014) by Maḥmūd al-Wirwārī, in which living in the cemeteries is portrayed as a paradoxical reality where life and death overlap. Limits between the two are blurred, and this creates a confusing

Résumé L’art des poètes des débuts de l’époque abbasside est soumis à de fortes contraintes que leur dictent leurs patrons. Cette influence est maximale dans les genres par lesquels le poète exprime sa satisfaction ou son déplaisir. Mais elle est également sensible sur d’autres genres, telle la poésie amoureuse ou la description. Les joutes satiriques offrent en revanche, à première vue, un espace

Résumé Si la déploration de la perte et les lamentations autour du brancard funèbre sont le fait des pleureuses, depuis la plus haute antiquité arabe, si les poétesses pleureuses dans l’Arabie antique ne sont point rares, bien rares, néanmoins, sont les poétesses qui ont chanté publiquement leur amour pour un homme. Or, il est une poétesse du Ier/VIIe siècle, qui, justement, est célèbre pour les poèmes

This article aims to determine the specificity of the notion of taḫyīl in ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī’s (d. 471/1078) work. We will attempt to define this rhetorical device and explain the rhetorician’s interest in it. Taḫyīl consists in taking a word or sentence used in a figurative sense, in its literal sense. Although this definition is well-known, it remains uncertain in many respects (what is its

Résumé Parmi les usages du vers attestés dans la culture arabe classique, thème d’une journée d’étude organisée en 2017 à l’INALCO, notre étude a retenu celui consistant à faire du vers un šāhid, ou « citation probante » (Gilliot, 1996). En effet, de nombreuses sciences arabes, au premier plan desquelles figurent les sciences du langage (grammaire, lexicologie, philologie…), ont eu recours aux šawāhid

This essay argues that biblical genealogy serves as a fundamental organizing principle in the Qurʾān. In particular, the Qurʾān anchors the cultic and scriptural aspects of the Prophet’s mission squarely on his community’s descent from Abraham via Ishmael. The first part of the essay marshals qurʾānic evidence in support of this claim and critiques a number of recent studies that downplay or deny the

In a recent volume of the Encyclopaedia of Arabic Literature, Ibn Ḥibbān is credited as the author of the Kitāb al-Ṯiqāt, and is described as “a widely travelled traditionist and prolific writer.” The Kitāb al-Ṯiqāt is one of the most valuable sources for the study of the biographies of the transmitters of the ḥadīṯs over the first three centuries and is a record of medieval Islamicate history, even

The Levantine-Mesopotamian dialect continuum is the result of important linguistic contacts through the centuries, and the existence of an Aramaic substrate in both areas. The linguistic situation in the Levant today is extremely heterogeneous. Among the different vernaculars spoken there, Damascus Arabic has established itself as the model urban Levantine variety. Therefore, it is commonly heard in

The particular style of the Granadan notaries (muwaṯṯiqūn) incorporates atypical letters, graphs and symbols that give their documents a formal and original character that is more befitting of the works of the secretaries (kuttāb). The presence of these features in documents within an official and administrative environment (dīwān al-inšāʾ) yields the question of whether the training of Granadan notaries

Résumé Écrire l’histoire d’une dynastie, d’une institution, d’un phénomène ou d’une personne exige en premier lieu une consultation minutieuse des archives et l’étude de l’histoire des institutions qui produisaient systématiquement ces archives. L’histoire des chancelleries musulmanes du Moyen Âge, et surtout celle de la chancellerie de l’empire almohade, reste encore à faire, à refaire ou à compléter

Résumé Les lettres de chancellerie almohade qui nous ont été transmises l’ont été pour une partie à travers des chroniques rédigées entre la seconde moitié du VIe/XIIe siècle et la fin du VIIIe/XIVe siècle. Or la recherche contemporaine n’a probablement qu’insuffisamment mis l’accent sur le fait qu’il existait de grandes différences entre les lettres citées dans les chroniques rédigées par des obligés

Résumé À travers l’analyse de l’Iqtiḍāb fī šarḥ adab al-kuttāb (L’abrégé : commentaire de L’éducation des secrétaires) d’Ibn al-Sīd al-Baṭalyawsī (m. 521/1127) et de l’Iḥkām ṣanʿat al-kalām (La maîtrise de l’art de la prose) d’Ibn ʿAbd al-Ġafūr al-Kalāʿī (m. après 542/1148), cet essai se propose de montrer que le discours andalou autour de l’adab al-kātib a cherché à rénover la tradition de ce genre

This article discusses theories designed by medieval Arabic grammarians to explain one of the most puzzling topics in Arabic grammar, mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf (diptotes). The mainstream theory of mamnūʿ min al-ṣarf probably took on its definitive form in the early 4th/10th century; it differs from Sībawayhi’s (d. ca 180/796) theory, yet consists of a generalisation of features found in the latter. A later

The story of the annunciation to Mary and the birth of Jesus in the Qur’an and the Bible has been the subject of several recent literary studies that bring up the use of textual silences, and the significance of speech and speechlessness as themes in the text. This paper focuses on three recensions of the story available to us in printed editions of al-Kisāʾī’s Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ in similar vein, through

Les premiers traites du Canon druze dont la redaction remonte au V e / XI e siecle jettent les bases d’une doctrine religieuse nouvelle et ebauchent succinctement et de maniere souvent ambigue les preceptes moraux, mais aussi juridiques et juridictionnels auxquels les adeptes devaient desormais se soumettre, les lois ( sarāʾiʿ ) anterieures ayant ete abrogees par la Volonte divine. Les savants druzes

Le dimanche 3 ramaḍān 702/21 avril 1303, a Saqḥab, une localite situee a une quarantaine de kilometres au sud de Damas, les Mamelouks vainquirent l’armee ilkhanide apres deux jours de rudes combats. Cette nouvelle defaite des Mongols ilkhanides marqua la fin de tout espoir pour ces derniers de reconquerir un jour la Syrie. Outre la victoire, la maniere par laquelle les Mamelouks battirent leurs ennemis

Cet article s’interesse aux fonctions de l’alternance entre arabe standard et vernaculaire ainsi qu’aux connotations des deux codes dans un discours prononce par Hassan Nasrallah. Au regard des travaux anterieurs adoptant une approche fonctionnelle – comme c’est le cas ici – de l’alternance dans le discours politique arabophone, l’interet du texte analyse est double. Le premier aspect interessant de

Dans le present article, nous proposons de voir dans la phrase bihi ǧinna la base meme du nom maǧnūn (« fou ») : les deux expressions sont synonymes, ayant la meme distribution dans le Coran (Cor 34, 46 et 81, 22). De maǧnūn est derive regressivement le passif ǧunna (« etre fou »), seul atteste. Celui-ci coincide avec le passif de ǧanna (« cacher »). Cette coincidence explique la contamination d’une

In light of Amīn Fikrī’s biography and the composition of his journey to Europe, Irsād al-alibbā ilā maḥāsin Ūrūbbā ( The Guide for Enlightened Minds to the sights of Europe ), this article is an attempt to explain the circumstances of his visit to the World Exhibition of 1889 in Paris and to contextualize his description of the Rue du Caire. This passage was made the object of a famous comment at

Dans l’al-Andalus de l’epoque naṣride (629/1232-897/1492) et son epilogue mudejar-morisque ( IX e / XV e - X e / XVI e siecles), la propriete de la terre fut une strategie du pouvoir a trois niveaux (politique, economique et social) excercee par trois acteurs principaux (les souverains, les notables et les familles aisees). Dans le present travail, nous allons demontrer (1) que le souverain naṣride

Historically, the siyar saʿbiyya (sing. sīra ) corpus—a collection of popular, orally-performed Arabic chivalric legends—have been cast as being outside of the ambit of adab ( belles-lettres ). Rather, scholars and critics both classical and modern have tended to regard them as tall tales and pseudo-histories. In closing his 1887 Judeo-Arabic edition of Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan ( Sīrat al-azaliyya )

The historical chronicle al-Kāmil fī l-ta⁠ʾrīḫ ( The Complete History ) of Ibn al-Aṯīr al-Ǧazarī (555/1160-630/1233) treats conservatively the existing corpus of narratives of the fitna , the first Muslim civil war (36/656-41/661). Ibn al-Aṯīr alters his main source’s accounts of troublesome moments, usually through omission, to present a universal history that serves to rehabilitate the reputation

In his significant Arabic translation and interpretation of the Pauline Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, Bisr b. al-Sirrī used muʿtazila to translate Pharisee throughout his work. This paper elaborates upon the multiple difficulties in revealing the connotations of muʿtazila in Bisr’s work from the middle of the third/tenth century. Furthermore, it offers an explication of his particular use

The Medinan stratum of the Qurʾān ascribes to Muḥammad a noticeably elevated status and a far wider range of functions than the earlier Meccan layer. Although this shift may well have responded to, and been facilitated by, historical circumstances, it is nonetheless appropriate to inquire whether specific aspects of it might be drawing on pre-Qurʾānic precedents. I argue that the Christian episcopate

This article examines the origins of the story of the Prophet Muḥammad’s controversial marriage with Zaynab bt Ǧaḥs as well as its transformation and reinterpretation through the centuries. The fact that the story features in different genres of Islamic literature as well as in non-Muslim sources allows for a reconstruction of how and where the story emerged, how it spread and to what extent it was

This article seeks to explore what the ḥadīṯ literature is from a theoretical perspective. Developing ideas first formulated by Andrew Newman, it will be argued that the “ ḥadīṯ literature” is an abstract concept, which, subsequently, raises a number of issues and questions. Using a comparison of two works on ǧihād as a case study—al-Biqāʿī’s (d. 885/1480) Ḏayl al-istishād bi-āyāt al-ǧihād and al-Suyūṭī’s

Evidence of collaborative composition of poetry goes back to the earliest documented phases in the history of Arabic literature. Already during pre-Islamic times, poets like Imruʾ al-Qays used to challenge others to complete their impromptu verse and create poetry collaboratively with them. This practice—commonly called iǧāza or tamlīṭ and essentially different from the better known poetic dueling

A chronology of an author’s works is necessary for understanding his or her intellectual evolution. Al-Qāḍī l-Nuʿmān wrote numerous books on diverse disciplines, such as jurisprudence, history, traditions of the Messenger of God and the Ismāʿīlī imams, biographies of the Fāṭimid caliph-imams, refutations of the Sunnī schools of law, and allegorical interpretation of the Qurʾān and the sarīʿa . The

Contemporary Egyptian author Aḥmad Murād writes works of fiction as well as crime novels. The detective genre emerged very late on the Arab literary scene in comparison to its birth in the 19th century in the West. Al-Fīl al-azraq ( The blue elephant ), that we are about to analyse, is based on a psychological story. It fits into the matrix of the black novel as it appeared in the United States in

This paper examines the feminine ending -at in the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text. It argues that from the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text, and various data of comparative linguistic evidence, it is likely that the language of the Qurʾānic Consonantal Text goes back to a variety of Arabic where the feminine ending was treated as a diptote. It is moreover argued, that this feminine ending was likely also diptotic

Previous research on cross-cultural pragmatics has primarily focused on how native speakers of different languages perform speech acts in relation to politeness and directness. However, Gabriele Kasper (2006), among others, has called for adopting a more discursive approach rather than analyzing data according to the Cross-Cultural Speech Act Realization Project (CCSARP) coding scheme. Therefore, this

Naǧīb al-Kīlānī is an Egyptian novelist and theorist whose work acquires more importance by virtue of its unique position as a literary manifestation of the thought and worldview of the Society of the Muslim Brotherhood. To embark on such a writing career in Egypt at mid-twentieth century meant first the antagonisation of certain power centers, leading to political jail, and ultimate diaspora; and

This paper is concerned with the process of language change whereby lexical items and constructions, in specific contexts, come to serve new grammatical functions. Emirati Arabic provides us with a wide range of grammaticalization phenomena. The aim of this paper is twofold: to shed light on the basic concepts relating to grammaticalization phenomena and to examine the grammaticalization of a number

The lunar zodiac, generally known as the manāzil al-qamar in Arabic, served both as an astronomical and an astrological system. This was a system of 28 lunar “mansions” or “stations” in which the moon was said to station ( nazala ) each night of the sidereal month. For each of the asterisms of the mansions there were prognostications, astrological and mystical connections. One of the more widely traveled

The late 8th/14th century saw a renaissance of high occultism throughout Islamdom—a development alarming to puritan scholars. This includes Ibn Ḫaldūn (d. 808/1406), whose anti-occultist position in the Muqaddima is often assumed to be an example of his visionary empiricism; yet his goal is simply the recategorization of all occult sciences under the twin rubrics of magic and divination, and his veto

Islamic talismanic shirts from pre-Mughal South Asia form a stylistically cohesive subset within the larger corpus of Islamic talismanic shirts from the patrimonial-bureaucratic period. These objects have eluded sustained study due, in large part, to their wide geographical purview and dissimilarity from other period textiles. While these objects bear some similarities with talismans of smaller shape

There is much evidence that Ottoman Turks were interested in talismans and magic. However, this area has not yet been studied in depth. A few recent studies present information about material artifacts, but without deep analysis of the use of talismans and magic among Ottoman Sufis. The present study examines talismanic shirts prepared for the Ottoman sultans, in particular the shirts of Murād III

In recent years, we have witnessed an efflorescence of research on Islamic esoteric traditions and occult thought. Such scholarly activity has established that the occult sciences are part of Islamic intellectual history that cannot be overlooked; rather, they constituted a primary mode by which people thought about the hidden, the extraordinary, and their potential for partaking in the divine and

In the tenth/sixteenth century six treatises on physiognomy ( ʿilm-i firāsat )—a science widely considered able to predict inner moral dispositions ( aḫlāq-i bāṭina ) based on external appearances ( aḥwāl-i ẓāhira )—were written for the Ottoman court. In a world in which statecraft and politics were ultimately based on questions of morality ( aḫlāq ), physiognomy was presented as a particularly useful

This article attempts to establish basic biographical information about the prolific Egyptian alchemist ʿIzz al-Dīn Aydamir al-Ǧildakī, more specifically his birth and death dates and his origin. To this end, the article makes use of and critics manuscripts and secondary sources in order to untangle probable facts from unsubstantiated assumptions. The result moves closer to identifying the time and

A la fin de l’epoque medievale, les cercles du pouvoir se sont beaucoup interesses aux sciences occultes. Que l’on etudie les civilisations chretienne ou islamique, on constate que des gouverneurs, leurs conseillers ou leurs agents faisaient la promotion de l’astrologie, de l’alchimie, de la magie, etc. A titre d’exemple, nous trouvons des copies de l’ouvrage de magie le plus important de l’Islam medieval

This study seeks to determine the extent of the patronage of the science of the stars ( ʿilm al-nuǧūm ) at the court of the eighth Ottoman sultan Bāyezīd II (r. 886/1481-918/1512). Throughout the medieval and early modern Islamicate world munaǧǧim s (astronomer-astrologers) offered rulers their expertise in calculating heavenly configurations and interpreting them with a view to predicting future events;