Arabic Studies Commons^™

Abū ʿAmr Ibn Al-ʿAlāʾ (D. 154/770) And Qur’Anic Philology In The Second/Eighth Century, Ali Abdel Latif

Theses and Dissertations

The present study examines Abū ʿAmr ibn al-ʿAlāʾ (d. 154/770), an important scholar whose life coincided with the rise of the various disciplines of Qur’anic philology. I examine his contribution to the field Qur’anic philology, focusing on three distinct yet overlapping genres: Qur’anic chronology, Qur’anic counting, and variant readings. Because these genres were still in development during his time, the material examined in this thesis allows us to examine their state before they reached full development. As we do not have a written corpus by Abū ʿAmr, we will analyse material that was transmitted by his students and preserved in …

Adhkār And Aḥzāb In Islamic Thought And Practice: Invocation And Devotion In Egypt Thirteenth-Fifteenth Centuries, Mariam Ghorab

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines discourses around duʿāʾ in the disciplines of ḥadīth, Islamic Law, and Sufism during the thirteenth to fifteenth century Egypt. I argue that duʿāʾ shaped Muslim daily life and solidified a community of prayer. Invocations generated a discursive tradition and social organization that allows us to document the experience of this praying public. Prayer was at the heart of daily life, and its significance to Muslim devotion made it the subject of commentaries that analysed its language and its embodiment. Works of ḥadīth archived the plethora of duʿāʾ’s material. Its various manifestations warranted a thorough legal investigation in …

Assessing L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (Eca) Learners’ Intercultural Communicative Competence, Ahmed Said Mohammed Elgebaly

Theses and Dissertations

This study assesses L2 Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (ECA) Learners' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC). The study participants were 19 L2 (ECA) learners who completed one semester at least in Egypt. The participants were only from two proficiency levels; the advanced and high-intermediate levels. The current study used a mixed methodological approach for data collection, beginning with an ICC test and concluding with a series of follow-up semi-structured interviews with ten participants. The ICC test employed in the current study was created based on a model that includes ten features of the ICC. The current study's findings revealed that although high-intermediate learners …

Zinā In The Criminal Legislation Act (1999-2000): An Evaluation Of The Implication For Muslim Women's Right In Nigeria, Paul Orerhime Akpomie

Theses and Dissertations

The research engages in an exploration of human rights in Islam. Human rights issues are then contrasted with international law positions. The data gotten is then used for investigating women’s human rights issues in Shariʾa penal tradition regarding zinā (adultery) in Nigeria. The re-emergence of Sharia penal codes adopted by 12 Northern states in Nigeria in 1999 as an operative Islamic law has sparked concerns about rulings amounting to stoning to death in several cases of zinā. These events raised concerns about Shariʾa penal traditions’ legality and relationship with other legal traditions operational in Nigeria, a secular political space. …

Reinterpreting Medieval Islamic Autobiography: The Case Of Al-SakhāWī’S Irshād (1428/831 Ah - 1497/902 Ah), Maha Shawki

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis research aims to contribute to the study of medieval Arabic autobiographies by examining the autobiography of one of fifteenth-century Mamluk scholars, Muḥammad Ibn ʿabd al-Raḥmān al-Sakhāwī (1428/831 AH - 1497/902 AH).

The objective of this research is to understand more about the art of writing an autobiography during the late Mamluk period and how it relates to broader Islamic tradition. This will be done by considering al-Sakhāwī’s autobiography in the context of other similar concurrent texts written during the late Mamluk period to detect possible links and investigate how a medieval autobiography can be shaped by the character …

Printing Devotion: Sufi Books And Their Transregional Networks In An Age Of Print, Mariam Elashmawy

Theses and Dissertations

The production of printed books in the Muslim world is a story that encompasses an array of actors, spanning centuries, and taking place in remote, yet connected locales. This thesis provides an intellectual history of Ṣūfī print production of Islamicate mystical works in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries by examining three overlapping genres: poetry, Ṣūfī histories (hagiography), and litanies (aḥzāb). Texts such as the Dīwān of devotional poetry by Ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 632/1234), the litany of Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shādhilī (d. 656/1258), Ḥizb al-baḥr, and Rashaḥāt ʿayn al-ḥayāt, a history of the Naqshbandiyya order by Fakhr …

The Motivation And Attitude Of Arab Heritage Children And Their Parents’ Perspectives Toward Learning Arabic, Nada Naji

Theses and Dissertations

Due to the unstable circumstances in the Middle East in the last decade, a large number of immigrants from Arab origins immigrated to non-Arab countries. This immigration created a new generation of Arab heritage learners who want to learn the Arabic language as a heritage language for different reasons. This study investigates the motivation and attitude of Arab heritage children between 10 and 16 years of age and their parents’ perspectives toward learning Arabic as a heritage language in host countries. 143 participants (92 parents, 51 children) living in 17 different non-Arab countries have participated in this study. The method …

Maẓālim Between Politics And Justice Under The Mamluks, Menna Rashad

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to explore the place of the maẓālim institution in the Mamluk state and to study maẓālim as a product of its period rather than following the strict provisions of al-Māwardī’s theory. This thesis’s primary objective is to explore the place of maẓālim in the Mamluk state by identifying the extent to which this institution was politically utilized and used by rulers to assert their power in different ways. The second objective of this thesis is to study maẓālim in relation to other forms of justice: sharīʿah, siyāsah, and Yāsā. On the basis of this objective, …

Texts, Language, And History In The Madhab-Law Tradition: A Study Of The ShāfiʿĪ School, Tarek Ghanem

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis advances the study of the legal literature from the madhhab-law tradition by way of studying the Shāfiʿī literary tradition and its two most authoritative classics. These two works are al-Nawawī’s (d. 676/1278) digest Minhāj al-ṭālibīn and Ibn Ḥajar al-Haytamī’s (d. 974/1567) commentary on it, Tuḥfat al-minhāj. This study will provide a typology of the development of the Shāfiʿī juristic texts. The typology is based on an indigenous and coherent periodization centered around an analysis of the intellectual and social developments within the Shāfiʿī legal tradition, not the classical Eurocentric periodization scheme. The main objective of this typology is …

Readers’ Perceptions Towards Two English Translations Of The Quran, Nour Alanbari

Theses and Dissertations

This study aimed to examine readers’ perceptions towards two notable English translations of the Quran, investigating if the readers’ language groups affected their perception of translation quality in terms of fluency, accuracy, clarity, formality, and likability. A total of 136 participants completed a survey where they rated the researched attributes of two different English translations of the Quran. Independent t-tests, paired t-tests, and ANOVA tests were conducted to compare the overall ratings of the two translations to each other, as well as between and within language groups. Ratings of the four attributes were also compared amongst themselves. Significant …

Arabic Beyond Arabic, Abir Zakzok

Theses and Dissertations

Arabic is the best and the most complicated language of all time!” Even though this statement seems like an exaggeration, it is what I grew up hearing; from my Arab parents as a child, my Arab teachers as a student, and my Arab customers as a salesperson. The Arabic language has a significant role in Arabs’ identity, yet most Arabs only scratch the surface and do not fully grasp the embedded meaning of the language. I have long been fascinated by the relationship between language and community as well as how it translates to design - specifically, the relationship between …

The Fallen Female: A Testimony, Husney Farwa Naqvi

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a collection of thematically related nonfiction works that offers a cultural critique of the author’s three cultures – Pakistani, American, and Muslim – through a feminist lens. The author attempts to offer an intersectional feminist’s insight based on her lived experiences as a Pakistani American woman – born in Karachi, raised in Louisiana and the Rio Grande Valley in Deep South Texas. It explores feminist theory, focusing heavily on rape culture (“Shame and Regrets,” “Bollywood’s Rape Fetish”) and religious influences (“Infallible,” “The Hijab”). It also details the author’s experience as a Muslim woman who chose to observe …

The Image Of Women In The Interpreted Qur'an: Translations Of Pickthall, Ali, Hilali And Abdel Haleem, Yassmine Muhammad Mahfouz Muhammad

Theses and Dissertations

The Image of Women in the Interpreted Qur’ān: Translations of Pickthall, Ali, Hilālī, and Abdel Haleem By Yassmine Muhammad Mahfouz (Under the supervision of Professor Tahia Abdel Nasser, The American University in Cairo). I have intended this work with the premise of shedding light on the rights of women in the Qur’ān through examining its English translations since this topic has undergone much controversy between patriarchal and Islamophobic camps. However, through the examination of the translations, I have touched on how translation cannot only be problematic but also dangerously influential in presenting the sacred text. The main finding was that …

Claiming The Mad, Samar Nour

Theses and Dissertations

Mental asylums in Egypt during the colonial period.

Students' Perceptions Of Interaction In A Hybrid Foreign Language (L2) Arabic Course In Light Of Their Affective Domain, Hanan Elsayed Ahmed Eltayeb Youssef

Theses and Dissertations

Abstract Hybrid courses were developed to maintain the advantages associated with distance learning, while solving the problem of learner-instructor interaction. This would indicate that successful learner-instructor interaction is one of the core features of this type of class which enables it to best serve the learner. To verify the above, a descriptive, qualitative case study was designed to investigate students' perceptions of interaction (student-instructor and student-student) in a hybrid foreign language Arabic course, taking into account their affective domain. The structure of the hybrid course which was investigated consisted of a videoconferencing session conducted by the main teacher, followed by …

Is There An Arab State?, Jeneen Hazem Ezzat

Theses and Dissertations

The nature of the Arab state has been one that has perplexed many scholars.