Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Near Eastern Languages and Societies Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Near Eastern Languages and Societies

Compilation As Narrative Art In Medieval Islam: The Redemption Of Kuthayyir In The Book Of Songs, Kirsten Beck Jul 2025

Compilation As Narrative Art In Medieval Islam: The Redemption Of Kuthayyir In The Book Of Songs, Kirsten Beck

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article examines the narrative art of Abū ‘l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī through a close reading of the chapter on the poet Kuthayyir ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān (d. 723). Though Kuthayyir is mocked throughout for his short stature, unorthodox beliefs, and supposed insincerity, the chapter ends with a surprising scene: his death is mourned by the people of Medina in a large public funeral, suggesting a reevaluation of his character. I argue that this tonal shift is not incidental but the result of Iṣbahānī’s deliberate narrative arrangement. By analyzing the structure of the chapter—including the juxtaposition of genealogical accounts, the gradual …


The Silmarillion By J.R.R. Tolkien And Shahnameh By Firdausi: A Sadraic Interpretation Of Free Will And Determinism, Mohsen Hanif, Masoud Tadayoni Jun 2022

The Silmarillion By J.R.R. Tolkien And Shahnameh By Firdausi: A Sadraic Interpretation Of Free Will And Determinism, Mohsen Hanif, Masoud Tadayoni

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Fate, doom, and free will have always proved to be controversial terms among philosophers. The chief problem is whether a deterministic power prescribes the destiny of creatures or they possess pure free will in shaping their destinies. Mulla Sadra, a 17th century Iranian philosopher, believes in a blending of determinism and free will which he develops in the terms of Qaza and Qadar respectively. He introduces a model of fate through which determinism and free will equally participate. Using the human soul as a model, Mulla Sadra points out that people meet their fate through several factors, one of which …


“The Poem Is What Lies Between A Between”: Mahmoud Darwish And The Prosody Of Displacement, Ayelet Even-Nur Apr 2020

“The Poem Is What Lies Between A Between”: Mahmoud Darwish And The Prosody Of Displacement, Ayelet Even-Nur

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish grew up in Israel as an internal refugee living under Israeli military rule, legally classified as a “present-absentee alien.” This article focuses on his 1995 volume of poetry, Limādhā tarakta al-ḥiṣān waḥīdan? (Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?), to study the manner in which Darwish’s cultivation of the musical and aural aspects of poetry serves as a means of poetically attending to the effects of dispossession and displacement. Through a discussion of the poems in the collection’s fourth section, Ghurfa l’il kalām maʿ al-nafs (A Room to Talk to Oneself …


Queering Identity Politics In Shimon Adaf’S Aviva-No, Yael Segalovitz Apr 2020

Queering Identity Politics In Shimon Adaf’S Aviva-No, Yael Segalovitz

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

This article offers a queer reading of Shimon Adaf’s volume of poetry, Aviva-No (2009), analyzing it in conjunction with his recent collection of essays on identity formation, Ani aherim (I am others) (2018). Adaf’s oeuvre has been primarily studied through the lens of ethnicity and race. This article demonstrates that gender plays a key role in his body of work. Aviva-No, which is a lamentation for the poet’s sister, destabilizes the boundaries between the mourning brother and the absent sister. This ontological deconstruction stimulates in Aviva-No a broader undoing of gender as an embodied identity. The volume is replete …


Arab Music And Mizraḥi Poetry, Yochai Oppenheimer Apr 2020

Arab Music And Mizraḥi Poetry, Yochai Oppenheimer

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The concept of “Arab Jews,” which has appeared in Israeli Mizraḥi (Oriental) discourse over the last decade, resists the framework of Israeli national culture that demands the elimination of Arab identity. For this music suggests possibilities of remembering and “re-presenting” this partially-repressed element. Moreover, the experience of remembering Arab music represents, more than anything else, the diasporic attitude of the Mizraḥim (Oriental Jews). It demonstrates a common legacy that Israeli culture is unwilling to accept and understand. Extrication from the boundaries of Zionist culture (which has historically rejected the diasporic past and its cultures, especially the Arab-Jewish past) manifests itself, …


The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond Jun 2018

The Subversion Of East And West In Orhan Pamuk’S Novel, The White Castle, Adile Aslan Almond

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The subversion of East and West in Orhan Pamuk's novel, The White Castle" Adile Aslan seeks to show how Orhan Pamuk plays with the theme of East versus West in his third novel The White Castle (1985), with the aim of de-essentializing both concepts. In 1928, Perso-Arabic script, in use for centuries as the main writing system in the Ottoman Empire, was replaced with Latin alphabet (accompanied by an intensive Turkification of the Ottoman language in the coming years) as a part of a larger modernization-Westernization project in the new nation state, a move which effectively …


Arab Women Writers As Revolutionary Orators And Catalytic Agents Of Emancipation, Safaa S. Nasser Sep 2014

Arab Women Writers As Revolutionary Orators And Catalytic Agents Of Emancipation, Safaa S. Nasser

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Contemporary Egyptian and Palestinian Women's Writing as 'Committed Literature'" Safaa S. Nasser discusses the role of Arab women writers whose works were harbingers of the Arab Spring of 2011. Nasser's analysis demonstrate that the majority of Arab women writers acted as agents of feminist action and social change through their critique of patriarchal, phallocentric domi-nation and through their call for a secular sensibility. Their works demonstrate the symbiotic relation-ship between political, national, and feminist struggle for equality between genders. To exemplify this revolutionary perspective, Nasser analyzes texts by Nawal El Saadawi, Ahdaf Soueif, Salwa Bakr, Saki-na Fuad, …