al-Jāḥiẓ

• الأدب

In modern Arabic, adab is often associated with “literature” and “politeness.” During the formative period of Arabic literature (second/eighth to third/ninth centuries), however, it denotes a broad concept of ethical erudition. Although one may assume some proximity to “humanism,” “paidea” or “Bildung” in their all-encompassing sense of multidisciplinary education, the authors of adab usually emphasize its relevance for both this world and the hereafter, thus linking it to Islamic conceptions of knowledge production. In more general terms, in the writings attributed to early ʿAbbāsid authors like the state scribe Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ and the polymathic theologian al-Jāḥiẓ, adab refers both to teaching the particulars of general morality, which may derive from a variety of sources (e.g., scripture, wise men, former civilizations, sometimes in the plural: ādāb), and to the very relation of these particulars to the human intellect (al-ʿaql), which alone is able to use and assess them. The early theologian al-Muḥāsibī, one of the first Sufi writers on adab, alludes to a similar understanding grounded in a relational definition. In this early stage, adab is typically defined through images, often drawn from the natural world, that express the very interdependence of moral instructions and a “fertile” human faculty of intellection (al-ʿaql), which itself needs to be “nurtured” by adab in order to “grow.” By drawing on the interplay between moral particulars and the human intellectual disposition, adab connects ethics with epistemology, thereby suggesting a universal dimension of literature.

This article traces the conceptual history of the Arabic term badīʿ from its early usage in the second/eighth century to the end of the seventh/thirteenth century. Initially, badīʿ referred to a controversial “new style” associated with the “modern” ʿAbbasid poets (al-muḥdathūn) and characterized in particular by its innovative metaphorical language. Ibn al-Muʿtazz’s Kitāb al-Badīʿ provided the first influential attempt to define the concept by identifying it with a limited number of linguistic art forms, while at the same time defending badīʿ by arguing that these forms were not genuinely “new” but already present in earlier poetry and the Quran. From the fourth/tenth century onwards, the term underwent a significant semantic shift. Later scholars progressively expanded the corpus of badīʿ forms, equating badīʿ with linguistic embellishments (maḥāsin) and applying the concept across discussions of poetics, literary criticism, and Quranic hermeneutics. This development was accompanied by a gradual change in the attitude toward badīʿ: while its association with innovation had initially invited criticism, it increasingly came to be regarded as a positive stylistic quality, even as concerns about excessive artificiality remained an important theme in literary criticism. The article argues that the history of badīʿ during this period is best understood not merely as an expansion of a catalogue of rhetorical devices, but as a transformation in the concept’s meaning and evaluation.

• الغزل العذري

The Banū ʿUdhra have long been associated with an intense, idealized, and often tragic form of love that came to be known in the Arabic literary tradition as ʿudhrī love. Drawing primarily on narratives and poetic accounts preserved in Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī (The Book of Songs), this article examines the origins, development, and literary construction of the ʿudhrī tradition. It investigates the cultural and literary conditions that shaped theʿudhrī ghazal, while also addressing questions concerning the historical authenticity of its narratives and the role of ruwāt (transmitters) in shaping, transmitting, and elaborating the stories of ʿudhrī lovers. Particular attention is given to the narrative structure of the ʿudhrī love story and to the distinctive conventions and characteristics through which it is constituted. The article concludes by tracing the enduring influence and transhistorical circulation of the ʿudhrī tradition in world literature, highlighting its contribution to the representation of idealized, unattainable, and tragic love across different literary and cultural contexts.

• الحكاية على ألسنة البهائم

Neither the classical nor premodern Arabic language has a single term to denote the literary genre “fable” that is widely known in the European literatures since antiquity. Studies of the relevant genre in premodern Arabic literature mainly adopted the modern Western definition of the beast fable. Even the few existing comprehensive studies, such as those by Carl Brockelmann, Iḥsān ʿAbbās, or Robert Irwin, did not attempt to define the Arabic genre in relation to its dominantly perceived Western sibling. The present analysis and definition rely on a pragmatic bottom-up approach premised on the hypothesis that tales featuring speaking animals in premodern Arabic literature resemble the fables of the Graeco-Latin tradition in their central features. It focuses on the anonymous narratives featuring speaking animals scattered as single items or in small clusters or specific chapters in a large variety of different works of premodern Arabic literature. The presently identified corpus consists of about 160 items in a total of more than 1,000 individual attestations. The analysis of the corpus leads to a detailed definition of the Arabic fable, identified as a narrative (ḥikāya, ḥadīth, nādira, ramz) in which speaking beasts/animals (ʿalā alsinat/alsun/lisān al-bahāʾim/al-ḥayawān or equivalent) feature as protagonists. This definition is both more exclusive and more inclusive than that of its sibling genre in the Graeco-Latin tradition. On the one hand, the Arabic genre is predominantly an animal tale excluding narratives that prominently feature human beings; on the other hand, the genre also includes short linguistic exercises that lack a narrative dimension.

• الترجمة

Rooted in Aramaic targum, tarjama was used in the early history of Arabic both for interpretive explication and interlingual, primarily oral translation; early sources show the term’s meaning expanding to accommodate material practices, anticipating its consolidation as a standardized practice in Abbasid Baghdad. Focusing on Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq’s Risāla, this article reads tarjama as a patronage‑driven, materially constrained, and philologically self‑conscious practice. The Risāla inventories translated and untranslated works, names translators and patrons, records revisions and retranslations, evaluates competence, and links the quality of Arabic versions to the availability and condition of Greek exemplars. Translation appears here (1) as proprietary labor, commissioned, revised, and circulated as owned textual goods within courtly and professional medical contexts and (2) as iterative work of collation, correction, and verification. Unfolding against the backdrop of rigorous contemporary standards, such as those articulated by al-Jāḥiẓ, Ḥunayn’s practice frames tarjama as a term conceptualizing a critical, curatorial, interpretative, and self-evaluative practice requiring a specific translator profile. This practice, the article ultimately suggests is distinct from simple linguistic transfer, often associated with the term naql.