Bedouin and 'Abbāsid cultural identities : the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Bedouin and 'Abbāsid cultural identities : the Arabic Majnūn Laylā story
（Culture and civilization in the Middle East）
Routledge, 2020
- : hbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [215]-226) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of "the ideological work" that the Arabic Majnun Layla story performed for 'Abbasid urbanite, imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the "Bedouin cosmos."
The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majnun in the romance of Majnun Layla as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the 'Abbasid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover, this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majnun. As markers of "strangeness" and "foreignness" in the 'Abbasid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity, culture, identity, religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such "cultural work" is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g., temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g., affective). Lastly, the Majnun Layla love story demonstrates, in its text and reception, that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of 'Abbasid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled, received and performed.
Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter, this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies, Arabic and comparative literature, Middle East and gender studies.
Table of Contents
Introduction 1. Song Culture, Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs) and the Love Story of Majnun Layla 2. On the term 'Udhri and its Symbolic Universe for Understanding Majnun Layla 3. The Night in the Ghayl-Love, Meaning, and Language 4. Umayyad and 'Abbasid Constructs of Masculinities in the Love Story of Majnun Layla 5. A Lost 'Bedouin Arcadia'-The Tree Man and the Umayyad Tax Man 6. Majnun as the Knight-Errant: Language and the Significance of Errancy (Huyam) 7. 'Abbasid Culturally Primitivist Readings of Layla as Object and Subject 8. 'Abbasid Readings of the 'Udhri Romances: Female Unchastity & the Love Triangle Conclusion Glossary Bibliography
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