Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

Report on the historical details of a number of neglected storytellers in Iran and South Asia from the 16th to 17th centuries CE, including Zain al-‘Ābidīn Takaltū Khān, ‘Ināyat Allāh Darbār Khān, Fusūnī Yazdī, Mīr Muḥammad Hāshim, Iskandar Qiṣṣah-khẉān, Ḥājī Qiṣṣah-khẉān Hamadānī, Niẓām Shīrāzī, Mīr Qiṣṣah, Muḥammad…[Read more]

Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

Describes the storytelling techniques of the 17th-century storyteller (qissah-khwan) ‘Abd al-Nabi Fakhr al-Zamani Qazwini in South Asia and discusses the truth/falsehood binary in the context of the qissah/dastan genre.

Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib’s 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

Translation of Mīrzā Asad Allāh Ḳhān Ġhālib’s 1866 Urdu preface to the dāstān Bostān-i Ḳhayāl.

ویتمن ایرانی: فراتر از پذیرش ادبی ــ که به پذیرش والت ویتمن، شاعر نامدار آمریکایی، در یک دورۀ تقریباً صد ساله در ایران معاصر می‌پردازد ــ دارای نُه فصل، مقدمه، مؤخره و ضمیمه است. کتابِ حاضر تحقیقی بینارشته‌ای است: از سویی ادبیات تطبیقی (پذیرش ادبی، تأثیرپژوهی و تصویرشناسی) و نقد ادبی (تاریخ‌گرایی نو)، و از سوی دیگر مطالعات ترجمه (ترجمه و ای…[Read more]

This chapter examines how twentieth century Iranian readers situated Jane Eyre within the classical genre of romance literature (adabiyāt-i ʿāshiqāna), originating from the tradition of love narratives in verse (ʿishq-nāma) pioneered by the twelfth century Persian poet Nizami Ganjevi. While romance is only one among several of the original Jane…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

The term “alchemy,” born out of early modern professional polemics among chemists, is problematic as a historical category. The present article shifts away from asking what pre-modern alchemy “really” was, to asking how medieval scholars writing in Greek and Arabic thought about the practice of treating and combining naturally occurring substan…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is famous as a source of manuscripts for the study of the medieval Mediterranean world, especially Jewish communities during the High Middle Ages. However, among the hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern manuscript fragments in Genizah collections are more than 12,000 moveable-type printed items, most of which come from Europe.…[Read more]

This paper compares psychostasia and/or kerostasia concepts from Indo-European, Semitic and adjacent cultures, and relates them to Cognitive Metaphor Theory. In the context of metaphysical weighing, the religions of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome all associated lightness with goodness and/or a favourable outcome; Hinduism does likewise. The…[Read more]

Line breaks are arguably the defining feature of poetry, in the absence of which a text becomes prose. Consequently, the translation of line breaks is a decisive issue for every poetry translator. Classical and modern literary theorists have argued that the potential for enjambment, which we understand as the effect that makes line breaks possible…[Read more]

On a number of pilgrimage objects from Late Antiquity, St Thecla, a highly revered saint, also known as Thecla the Protomartyr, is shown accompanied by St Menas, whose tomb in Egypt was the pilgrimage centre associated with healing miracles. The saintly couple appear in ad bestias compositions or in a simplified variant as two saints with a cross.…[Read more]

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when a new style of Persian poetry was developing in the Persianate world, several erudite literary critics appeared in India, whose meticulous critiques of Persian poetry was unprecedented in the long history of Persian literature. A close study of the works produced by these critics reveals their vast…[Read more]