As a continuation to the “
Pick of the Month" news series highlighting special items from the library collections and launched in April, the UL is happy to announce this month's pick: a book published by Brill and written by Drs. B. Orfali and R.
Baalbaki (2022), entitled "Radiant lights, eloquent words: A scholarly edition of al-Anwāral-bahiyya fī taʿrīf maqāmāt fuṣaḥāʾ al-bariyya".
This book is a
work of adab attributed to the renowned littérateur and historian of
literature Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī.
The work consists of an introduction and four chapters. The first three chapters are concerned with knowledge (ʿilm): chapter one discusses the merit and application of knowledge. Chapter two the definition of knowledge and its true meaning, and chapter three the conditions of knowledge. The fourth chapter, which constitutes the bulk of the book, is concerned with occasions on which scholars and sages made speeches in the presence of rulers. It is divided into two parts: part one presents pre-Islamic (jāhiliyya) speeches, incorporating Arab, Greek, Byzantine, Persian, and Indian traditions, and part two presents Islamic speeches. The work is introduced by an analytical study discussing the attribution of the work, its relation to the Maqāmāt genre, and the manuscripts used.
Authors' biographies:Bilal Orfali is Professor, and Sheikh Zayed Chair of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut and previously held the M.S. Sofia Chair in Arabic Studies at the Ohio State University. He specializes in Arabic literature, Sufism, and Qurʾānic Studies. His recent publications include: The Anthologist's Art (Brill, 2016), The Book of Noble Character (Brill, 2015), The Comfort of the Mystics (Brill, 2013), Sufism, Black and White (Brill, 2012), In the Shadow of Arabic (Brill, 2011). He is co-editor of Brill's series Texts and Studies on the Qurʾān, co-editor of Brill's Encyclopedia of Islamic Mysticism, and serves on the board of several journals, book series, and academic projects across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. He has a BS in Mathematics, a BA and MA in Arabic language and literature from the American University of Beirut, and an MPhil and PhD in Arabic Studies from Yale University.
Ramzi Baalbaki is the Margaret Weyerhaeuser Jewett Chair of Arabic at the American University of Beirut and the Head of the Academic Council of the Doha Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language. He has published extensively in Arabic and English on the Arabic Grammatical Theory and Arabic lexicography. His books include The Legacy of the Kitāb: Sībawayhi's Analytical Methods within the Context of the Arabic Grammatical Theory (Brill, 2008) and The Arabic Lexicographical Tradition from the 2nd/8th to the 12th/18th Century (Brill, 2014). He has also produced critical editions of numerous classical Arabic texts and co-authored, with his late father Mounir Baalbaki, the famous English-Arabic dictionary, al-Mawrid, and its comprehensive counterpart, al-Mawrid al-Akbar (Beirut, 2005). In 2010, he was granted the King Faisal International Prize for his contribution to the study of Arabic grammar.
The title is
available to AUB community as an e-book accessible through this link.