Kashefi's Anvar-e Sohayli


Book Description

Kashefi’s Anvar-e Sohayli (15th c. A.D.) is a Persian rewriting of the timeless and influential Kalila wa-Dimna text, done at the Timurid court. Christine van Ruymbeke offers a first in-depth analysis of the contents and style of this important text and also addresses the Kalila wa-Dimna field across its full rewriting history. This analysis shows how Kashefi’s additions function as an invaluable commentary that opens up our understanding and the appreciation of this seminal text. This studies revisits several received ideas and current misapprehensions about the text and shows why it has been such an international best-seller before being unjustly relegated to children’s literature. In Van Ruymbeke’s words, Kalila wa-Dimna is a grim text, exposing the mechanisms of sophisticated psychological manipulation and exploring universal philosophical themes, known since Antiquity and still relevant today.




The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation


Book Description

The Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation offers a detailed overview of the field of Persian literature in translation, discusses the development of the field, gives critical expression to research on Persian literature in translation, and brings together cutting-edge theoretical and practical research. The book is divided into the following three parts: (I) Translation of Classical Persian Literature, (II) Translation of Modern Persian Literature, and (III) Persian Literary Translation in Practice. The chapters of the book are authored by internationally renowned scholars in the field, and the volume is an essential reference for scholars and their advanced students as well as for those researching in related areas and for independent translators of Persian literature.




Reflecting Mirrors, East and West: Transcultural Comparisons of Advice Literature for Rulers (8th - 13th century)


Book Description

In Reflecting Mirrors, East and West Enrico Boccaccini investigates the transcultural phenomenon of advice literature for rulers, commonly referred to as Mirrors for Princes, by bringing together, for the first time, texts from multiple literary traditions.




Kalila and Dimna


Book Description

"This masterful translation of one of the most popular books of world literature makes available to an English readership the animal tales known collectively as Kalila and Dimna. Named after the two jackals of Pancatantra fame, this collection of stories is based on a 12th-century Persian translation of an 8th-century original Arabic rendition by Ibn al-Muqaffa‘. Set within a frame narrative of counsels given to the Raja of India by his Brahmin minister, the engaging tales about cats and mice, storks and crabs, tortoises and geese, owls and crows, and princes and ascetics, function as cautionary illustrations of human predicaments and all-too-human vices and virtues. Far from being a collection of children’s fables, Kalila and Dimna is a Machiavellian mirror for princes containing advice on how to preserve oneself from one’s enemies and get ahead at court and in life. The dialogues that constitute the bulk of the narrative harbor a dramatic immediacy, exerting a powerful effect even on a modern-day reader." —Maria Subtelny, University of Toronto




Les périples de Kalila et Dimna: Quand les fables voyagent dans la littérature et les arts du monde islamique


Book Description

This book marks a major contribution to the study of Arabic illustrated manuscripts of Kalīla wa-Dimna and its Persian and Ottoman versions. The studies gathered in this volume showcase a wide diversity of approaches crossing textual investigation, codicological and iconographic study, and laboratory analysis. Ce livre constitue une contribution majeure à l'étude des manuscrits arabes illustrés de Kalīla wa-Dimna et de ses versions persane et ottomane. Les articles rassemblés dans ce volume montrent une grande diversité d'approches, croisant investigation textuelle, étude codicologique et iconographique et analyses physico-chimiques.




The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation


Book Description

Translation-related activities from and into Arabic have significantly increased in the last few years, in both scope and scale. The launch of a number of national translation projects, policies and awards in a number of Arab countries, together with the increasing translation from Arabic in a wide range of subject areas outside the Arab World – especially in the aftermath of the Arab Spring – have complicated and diversified the dynamics of the translation industry involving Arabic. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Translation seeks to explicate Arabic translation practice, pedagogy and scholarship, with the aim of producing a state-of-the-art reference book that maps out these areas and meets the pedagogical and research needs of advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as active researchers.




Islam, Civility and Political Culture


Book Description

This book provides a comprehensive and interdisciplinary exploration of civility and political culture in the Muslim world. The contributions consider the changing interface between religion and politics throughout Islamic history, and into the present. Extending beyond saturated approaches of ‘political’ and/or ‘militant’ Islam, this collection captures the complex sociopolitical character of Islam, and identifies tensions between the political-secular and the sacred-religious in contemporary Muslim life. The alternative conceptual framework to traditional analyses of secularisation and civility presented across this volume will be of interest to students and scholars across Islamic studies, religious studies, sociology and political science, civilisation studies, and cultural studies.




From the Khan's Oven


Book Description

Spanning the history of Islamic Central Asia from medieval to modern times, this volume features groundbreaking studies of the region’s religious life and culture by leading scholars in the field.




Shahnama Studies III


Book Description

Shahnama Studies III focuses on the hugely successful afterlife of the Shahnama or Book of Kings, completed by the poet Firdausi around 1010 AD. This long epic grew out to be an icon of Persian culture and served as a source of inspiration for art and literature, leaving its traces in manifold ways. The contributors to this volume each treat an aspect of the rich legacy of the Shahnama and offer new insights in Shahnama manuscript studies, the illustration of the Shahnama, the phenomenon of later epics, and the Shahnama in later texts and contexts.




Libyan Novel


Book Description

Analysing prominent novelists such as Ibrahim al-Kuni and Hisham Matar, alongside lesser-known and emerging voices, this book introduces the themes and genres of the Libyan novel during the al-Qadhafi era. Exploring latent political protest and environmental lament in the writing of novelists in exile and in the Jamahiriyya, Charis Olszok focuses on the prominence of encounters between humans, animals and the land, the poetics of vulnerability that emerge from them, and the vision of humans as creatures (makhluqat) in which they are framed.




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