The purpose of this study is to identify and describe recurrent patterns of composition in the twenty two major panegyrics Mutanabbī wrote to Sayf al-Dawla during his stay at the ḥamdānid court in Aleppo between 337/948 and 345/956. It discusses the types of utterance used in endings and in cadential lines before definable internal boundaries, the organising conventions of the passages that lead into and out of chronicles of military campaigns, the non-random placement of certain crescendo motifs, various means of local organisation in poems without events, etc. It also...

This work comprises a literary comparison of surviving alternative versions of selected narrative-cycles from the Nights. Pinault draws on the published Arabic editions -- especially Bulaq, MacNaghten, and the fourteenth-century Galland text recently edited by Mahdi -- as well as unpublished Arabic manuscripts from libraries in France and North Africa. The study demonstrates that significantly different versions have survived of some of the most famous tales from the Nights. Pinault notes how individual manuscript redactors employed -- and sometimes modified -- formulaic phrases...

This study is an attempt to identify and describe the distinctive features of the poetic style of the acclaimed medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Khafaājah, who has been credited with starting a new school of poetry, in Andalus and elsewhere. It offers a close reading of his poetry, concentrating on the three basic elements of style -- imagery, rhetorical devices, and structural patterns. It shows how Ibn Khafājah creatively uses the poetic tradition available to him to form new images and scenes, create multi-layered poems, and bestow different levels of unity and coherence on his...

Cet ouvrage montre que la filiation par le nom et l'heritage a, dans le monde arabe et musulman, une autre dimension plus fondamentale sinon fondatrice, la filiation symbolique ou le principe du pere.Le conte-cadre met en scene un conflit entre deux freres sur l'origine de la fratrie et, par consequent, de la filiation: est-elle maternelle ou paternelle? Deux contes montrent que la parole vivante est l'espace ou se fonde le principe du pere en tant que principe de vie pour le sujet. Des qu'il y accede, cette parole le delie de la mort, particulierement celle liee au noeud oedipien...

Voices from the Desert is the fifth and concluding volume of P. Marcel Kurpershoek's Corpus Oral Poetry & Narratives from Central Arabia. The first volume appeared in 1994. In the Preface the author looks back on his almost twenty years of involvement with Arabian oral culture. He also discusses some of the striking features of the traditions collected in these volumes, and their significance within the broader political, social, and cultural context of the tribal system stretching from Yemen to the Anatolian highlands. An Introduction is followed by a consolidated Glossary,...