Assistant Professor of Arabic Studies
Director of CAMES Arabic Summer Program
Advisor for Undergraduate Studies
bo00@aub.edu.lb

Ph.D., Yale Univ. (2009), M.Phil., Yale Univ. (2006)
M.A., AUB. (2003), B.A., AUB (2001), B.S., AUB (2000)

Orfali's interests in Arabic literature include Abbasid prose and poetry, Arabic stylistics and metrics, literary anthologies, and artistic prose. His research contributes to understanding key literary and social issues of the 4th/10th century such as the significance and nature of the genre of Arabic literary anthology, patronage and courtly life, the working and reworking of books in classical Arabic literature, oral versus aural and written transmission of literary reports, as well as prose, poetry, and the several ways in which they are combined and juxtaposed in literary and Sufi accounts. He has worked extensively on the works of the litterateur Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038 ) who was the subject of his PhD dissertation and a number of his articles. He is currently collaborating with Maurice Pomerantz on two projects, one on the practice of quoting the Qurʾān in classical Arabic literature and another on the Maqāmāt of Badīʿ al-Zamān al-Hamadhānī (d. 398/1008 ) and the history of this foundational text.

Orfali hopes that studying the links between adab and other Islamic disciplines will reward scholars with a far more nuanced understanding of the complex relationships between the various, sometimes alienated, disciplines. His research on Qurʾān, Sufism, and Arabic grammar highlights some of these links and this is reflected in the volume he edited in honor of Ramzi Baalbaki entitled In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture (Brill, 2011). He also firmly believes that critical editions of classical texts are essential to the progress of the field of Arabic and Islamic studies and has published for the first time a number of key texts in adab and Sufism and is planning to continue his efforts in this area.

In Sufism, Orfali focused on the early period especially the works of the Sufi author, hagiographer, and Qurʾān commentator Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021).  His research and critical editions of Sulamī's works, conducted with Gerhard Böwering, were published in two volumes in Dar al-Machreq, Beirut. Orfali has also researched Sufi handbooks from the 5th/11th century especially K. al-Bayāḍ wa-l-sawād of Abū l-Ḥasan al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077) and Salwat al-ʿārifīn wa uns al-mushtāqīn of Abū Khalaf al-Ṭabarī (d. 470/1077), his studies and critical editions of these two important texts, with Nada Saab and Gerhard Böwering respectively, are published in the series of Islamic History and Civilization by Brill.

Orfali’s interests in Arabic literature and Islamic Studies merge in the field of Sufi poetry. His research in this area studies the performance of poetry in Sufi beatific auditions and tracks the genesis and development of early Sufi poetry by examining the origins of the Sufi poetic motifs in light of other genres of Arabic poetry such as wine, ghazal and panegyric poetry.