Arabic Literature & Poetry
Elegy as a Medium for the Indictment of Arab Culture: Death Transformed and Politicized
A Reading-Translation of Medieval and Modern Arabic Elegies
Mansour Ajami – 2025-01
The book consists of a critical introduction and six chapters on two famous great medieval poems by Ibn al-Anbari and Abu Tammam, and three unique and remarkable poems by Khalil Hawi, Nizar Qabbani, and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab. The author applies a deconstructive critical interpretation (analysis) to the two medieval poems and a reading translation of the modern ones. The introduction contains new ideas on translation from Arabic into English and a new reading of the rhyme in medieval and modern Arabic poetry....
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Constantinople and the Bosphorus
Translated from the French and annotated by G. Rex Smith and Jonathan M. G. Smith
Pierre Loti with Samuel Viaud – 2024-04
First English translations of Pierre Loti’s ‘Suprêmes Visions d’Orient’ and ‘Constantinople. Fin de siecle’. Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was born Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud into a Protestant family in Rochefort in Saintonge, South-West France (now Charente Maritime). He was an officer of the French Navy and a prolific author of considerable note in 19th-/early-20th-century France, publishing many novels and numerous accounts of his travels around the world. He was a member of the French Academy. Apart from his literary talents, ...
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The Holy Land: Travels Through Galilee to Damascus and Baalbek.
And the Green Mosque of Bursa
Pierre Loti – 2022
First English translation of ‘La Galilée’, an account of Pierre Loti’s travels in the Holy Land from Jerusalem to Beirut, via Damascus and many other interesting places, in 1894. Pierre Loti (1850-1923) was born Louis-Marie-Julien Viaud into a Protestant family in Rochefort in Saintonge, South-West France (now Charente Maritime). He was an officer of the French Navy and a prolific author of considerable note in 19th-/early-20th-century France, publishing many novels and numerous accounts of his travels around the world. H...
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The Way to Isfahan and Passing through Muscat
An Account of a Trip to Persia and Oman in 1900
Pierre Loti – 2021
From 17 April, 1900, to 6 June of that year, Pierre Loti travelled in a private capacity from Bushire on the Persian Gulf, northwards through Shiraz, Persepolis, Isfahan and Tehran, before returning via the Caspian Sea to Europe. It is the personal day-by-day account of his journey, the hardships of the mountainous terrain and the empty desert. Loti excels in his descriptions of the world around him: the sky, the mountains, the fertile plains, the deserted desert. His descriptions of the people he meets, their dress and mann...
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Pouring Water on Time: A Bilingual Topical Anthology of Classical Arabic Poetry
with a foreword by Sadik J. Al-Azm
Mansour, Ajami – 2016
This bilingual anthology presents the best of Arabic classical poetry's musings over the many faceted states of the human condition, among them love, generosity, life, time, youth, beauty, ecstasy, longing, wine, death and plenty more. Mansour Ajami's selection of topical verses and poems is guided by what was deemed best in its genre by the consensus of the great classical Arab literary critics and theoreticians. „For Mansour Ajami, Arabic poetry is that Midas touch which transmutes the most common-place words, th...
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Der Orient - Fiktion oder Realität? The Orient - Fiction or Reality?
A Critical Analysis of 19th Century German Travel Reports [Text in German with English Summary]
Mohammed Khalifa – 2015
Following the great expeditions of the 18th and 19th century, travel activity in general increased from the end of the 18th century onwards. In addition to European destinations, the Orient and above all Egypt now became the goal of this movement embracing travel and exoticism. This work centers on the question of the received patterns of thought and argumentation that were applied consciously or unconsciously by those travelers. By way of example, the reports of the Austrian scholar and scientist Joseph (Ritter von) Russegg...
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