Overview

Adab is not an English word, but it could become one. This collection, in honour of Julia Bray, experiments with juxtaposed articles, quotations, translations and lines of poetry to let readers create connections in the same way authors did a thousand years ago in Arabic. The collaboration is inspired by the ongoing work of Julia Bray, which continues to demonstrate the rewards of taking what we read seriously. The field of Arabic studies is increasingly rejecting a hard line between the modern and the premodern. This book is an intervention in that development arguing that the premodern can structure contemporary thinking. It offers translations, commentaries and discussions of important and insufficiently known primary texts together with the original Arabic text of poems. These cross-genre and cross-disciplinary connections can catalyse future research and show how a key feature of the Arabic literary tradition is relevant to how we think about scholarship today. The chapters provide readers with both an academic resource and an intellectual conversation with the past.

Full Product Details

Author:   Alexander Key (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Stanford University) ,  Letizia Osti (Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures, University of Milan)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399543132

ISBN 10:   139954313
Pages:   496
Publication Date:   30 April 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Transliterations, Translations and Thanks List of Illustrations 1. Practical adab and the practice of adab Alexander Key and Letizia Osti 2. Bodily peculiarities and lists in Ibn Qutayba’s Kitab al-maʿarif Antonella Ghersetti 3. Insects: The Tiniest Creatures in Kalila wa-Dimna Beatrice Gruendler with Dima Mustafa Sakran and Mahmoud Kozae 4. The absence of Baghdad in the ʿIqd al-farid--Abbasid myth in the making Isabel Toral 5. Nobility and Prestige (شرف) as Criteria for Inclusion in Anthologies Bilal W. Orfali and Maurice A. Pomerantz 6. The Novel in Adab: a Modern genre placed in conversation with al-Tanukhi Alexander Key 7. Al-birka al-husna and the birkas of Samarra Alastair Northedge 8. Al-Mutanabbi in Tiberias and Shiraz James E. Montgomery 9. Virtue in Misfortune: al-Buhturi on al-Fath ibn Khaqan’s Fall from a Bridge Gabrielle Russo 10. Barmakid Benevolence: An Account from Deliverance Follows Adversity Shawkat M. Toorawa 11. Al-Tanukhi, Storytelling and Adab Wen-chin Ouyang 12. A text from AR3222 Robert Hoyland 13. Letter to a treacherous lover: love and responsibility in Abbasid romance Pernilla Myrne 14. Parody and Play, Gender and Genre Jonny Lawrence 15. Trailing John Greaves’s Timeline Taha Yasin Arslan, Fyza Parviz Jazra 16. In Search of Intertexts: Literary Imitation, Authorial Lineage and Networked Time in Premodern Arabic Criticism James White 17. Death in the monastery: visualising emotions, space, and performance in al-Tanukhi Letizia Osti 18. The flattening of the Arabic lexicon Michael Cooperson 19. Ibn Taymiyya on Reason, Anger and Desire Robert Gleave 20. The Emotional Lives of Prophets in al-Kisaʾi’s Qisas al-anbiyaʾ Helen Blatherwick 21. Remarks on Recognition in Hadith and Akhbar Philip Kennedy 22. Inspired by Ibn al-Farid? An anonymous mukhammas (مُخَمَّس) featuring St. John of Damascus, St. Peter and the Virgin Mary Hilary Kilpatrick 23. From Poem to Song: The Artistry of Singer-Composers in Abu l-Faraj al-Isbahani’s Kitab al-Aghani Dwight F. Reynolds 24. Revisiting The Letter to the Proponents of Freewill (al-Risalah ila l-Qadariyyah) attributed to the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAziz (r. 99-101/717-720) Sean W. Anthony 25. How to be a bad ruler: Miskawayh’s demolition of ʿIzz al-Dawla Bakhtiyar (r. 356/967-367-977) Hugh Kennedy 26. Al-Tanukhi and the Arabian Adventure Tale Peter Webb 27. Ibn Rushd on Fraud, Morality and The Law Joseph E. Lowry 28. You Can Take it with You: Self, Wealth, and Legacy in Arabic Letters Devin J. Stewart Julia Bray’s Published Works to Date Index Bibliography

Reviews

This remarkable volume, paying tribute to Julia Bray, also honors the intellectual rigour and curiosity she has modelled, exemplified in her persistent questioning of what adab is, what it does and why it continues to matter. The essays explore the multiple dimensions of adab, redefining boundaries, challenging assumptions and opening new avenues for understanding the richness and complexity of Arabic literary culture. -- Nadia El-Cheikh, American University in Beirut

This remarkable volume, paying tribute to Julia Bray, also honors the intellectual rigor and curiosity she has modeled, exemplified in her persistent questioning of what adab is, what it does, and why it continues to matter. The essays explore the multiple dimensions of adab, redefining boundaries, challenging assumptions, and opening new avenues for understanding the richness and complexity of Arabic literary culture. -- Nadia El-Cheikh, American University in Beirut

Author Information

Alexander Key is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Stanford University. He is the author of Language between God and the Poets: Ma‘na in the Eleventh Century (University of California Press, 2018) and is currently working on an under-contract edition and translation of al-Jurjani's Dala'il al-I'jaz for the Library of Arabic Literature. Letizia Osti is Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures at the University of Milan. She is the author/editor of numerous books, including most recently The Historian of Islam at Work: Essays in Honor of Hugh N. Kennedy (co-edited with Maaike van Berkel, Brill, 2022) and History and Memory in the Abbasid Caliphate: Writing the Past in Medieval Arabic Literature (Bloomsbury, 2022).

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