A. Schippers

Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic

Drawing on the recent discussions on Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic, this book offers a comprehensive survey of the various fields of Muslim, Jewish and Christian Arabic texts (folklore, religious and linguistic literature) as well as the matters of mixed language and diglossia.

Love and War: a Poem of Ibn Khafajah

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

Judeo-Arabic literature in Tunisia, 1850–1950

on a general sense of belatedness and distance as a key feature of a third-generation consciousness, the extent to which this cohort still lives in the shadow of the survivors’ trauma is a point of contention. Many authors, including the editors, do not consider the third generation to be traumatised in the strictest sense. They rather see the lack of any reliable knowledge about the family past as the core challenge encountered by this group. In spite of these difficulties, many of the contributors feel inspired by their relationship with the survivor generation and their memories, which they translate into a legacy of solidarity and/or social justice. In the Shadows of Memory paints a nuanced picture of the third generation as an exceptionally diverse group, as is reflected in the interdisciplinary mix of genres, methodologies and national or cultural perspectives. The possible downside of this approach is that the reader might lose track of distinct generational features or boundaries among the plethora of people, perspectives and positions presented. This is especially the case when trying to separate the third from the second generation, which in many respects appear so close as to form one big “generation after.”Moreover, the collection’s intense focus on personal and familial memories of the Holocaust leaves little space for considering the wide and ever-growing arena of cultural memories and representations of the event. This bias is also reflected in the lacking engagement with newer approaches in Holocaust and Memory studies which try to move beyond the familial and generational paradigm. The volume is therefore best understood as a much needed starting point for a broader and very timely conversation, which promises to open up new and productive fields of enquiry in Holocaust, Memory and Jewish studies.

[Review of: A.A. Hussein (2009) The lightning-scene in Ancient Arabic poetry: function, narration and idiosyncrasy in pre-Islamic and early Islamic poetry]

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

The rise of the individual style in Andalusian Arabic poetry: the case of Ibn Khafâja (1056-1138)

To define an Arabic poet and his style as individualistic is highly problematic. From the beginning Arabic poetry was extremely conventional. Most themes in early Bedouin poetry were well established and primarily focused on love and the desert. While the desert motifs remained in later Arabian poetry, new urban themes such as drinking scenes and the poet’s longing for the young female or male servant who poured the wine came into vogue. The paper looks at Ibn Khafāja’s poetry, its poetic form and how the poet’s individualistic use of stock motifs gives his oeuvre a unique character.

Medieval opinions on the Spanish school of Hebrew poetry and its epigones

Since Solomon Ibn Gabirol left the world and Moses Ibn Ezra, Jehudah Halevi, and Abraham Ibn Ezra died, the well of poetry has dried up, inspiration has disappeared, and God’s spirit no longer manifests itself. None of their successors can compare with them. We backward ones, like beggars, gather the crumbs and refuse that have fallen from their table. We hasten day and night over the ways trodden by them, but we cannot equal them.1

A Muwashshah from the Genizah

The literary genre called muwashshab is a specific form of Arabic and Hebrew Andalusian poetry with striking rhyme and metrics.1 It originated in the tenth century and has five strophes and a rhyme scheme [ZZ]/aaaZZ/bbbZZ/-eeeZZ, thus deviating from the normal Arabic ode, which has only one metre and no strophes. At the linguistic level, different poetic languages can coexist, especially the refrain part (ZZ) of the fifth and last strophe (eeeZZ) can be in a language other than Classical Arabic or Hebrew, such as Colloquial Andalusian Arabic or even a Romance language. This last refrain part of the muwashshab is called kharjah (‘exit’). Especially muwashshab s with a love theme or a wine theme can have a Romance or vernacular Arabic kharjah: a girl who is suffering from love passion speaking to her beloved or her mother, or a drunkard asking for the way to the tavern.

Spanish Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition: Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry

Offers an introduction to the history of the Jews of the Iberian peninsula and the political situation of Muslim Spain during the 11th century as well as an introduction to Arabic poetry, its genres and poetical theory, and the relation between Arabic poetry from the East and that of al-Andalus. This book deals extensively with the different Arabic poetic genres and their Hebrew equivalents, focusing on the four main poets Samuel Ha-Nagid, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Moses Ibn Ezra and Yehuda Ha-Lewi. At the end conclusions are drawn about the use of Arabic themes in Hebrew Andalusian poetry.

The Poetry of Ibn Khafājah: A Literary Analysis@@@The Poetry of Ibn Khafajah: A Literary Analysis

This study is an attempt to identify and describe the distinctive features of the poetic style of the acclaimed medieval Andalusian poet Ibn Khafaajah, who has been credited with starting a new school of poetry, in Andalus and elsewhere. It offers a close reading of his poetry, concentrating on the three basic elements of style - imagery, rhetorical devices, and structural patterns. It shows how Ibn Khafajah creatively uses the poetic tradition available to him to form new images and scenes, create multi-layered poems, and bestow different levels of unity and coherence on his poems. The study demonstrates some of the ways by which the various elements of style are combined and interrelated, to produce original, meaningful, and highly moving poems in the Khafajian style.