Purportedly in response to a request by his unnamed beloved one, the late 18th-century Ottoman poet Ḥasan-i Yāver wrote Poetry’s Artistry, a 441-verse mathnawī that offers some hands-on advice for trying one’s hand at poetry. As tashbīh, jinās, kināya, taḍādd, taḍmīn, ilmām, iltifāt, tardīd, ishtibāh, tawriya, īhām, takhmīs, tarkīb-band,…[Read more]

Purportedly in response to a request by his unnamed beloved one, the late 18th-century Ottoman poet Ḥasan-i Yāver wrote Poetry’s Artistry, a 441-verse mathnawī that offers some hands-on advice for trying one’s hand at poetry. As tashbīh, jinās, kināya, taḍādd, taḍmīn, ilmām, iltifāt, tardīd, ishtibāh, tawriya, īhām, takhmīs, tarkīb-band,…[Read more]

Through offering an ethnography of a group of educated, middle-class women who “had been attending weekly Qur’an and classical poetry classes for years” (xii), the volume shows that poetry and prayer are companions in the cultural history of Iran. It attempts to answer the question, “What does this companionship mean for forms of religio…[Read more]

Building on the author’s PhD thesis on “the British cultural and imaginative engagements with Persia in the nineteenth century” (vi), the volume charts “the diversity of perceptions associated with Persia in Victorian literary culture” (2). It focuses on poetry as the medium through which to survey the Victorian conception of Persia. It consists…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is a repository of texts spanning more than a millennium of Jewish history, including thousands of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts now held in collections around the world. Among these are fragments from at least 25 separate Qur’an manuscripts in Arabic script, all of which lack any traces of Hebrew writing. Their…[Read more]

The Cairo Genizah is a repository of texts spanning more than a millennium of Jewish history, including thousands of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts now held in collections around the world. Among these are fragments from at least 25 separate Qur’an manuscripts in Arabic script, all of which lack any traces of Hebrew writing. Their…[Read more]

Drawing on archival research, this article introduces several Russian poems by the Arabic mahjar poet and writer Mikhail Naimy (Mīkhāʿīl Nu’aymah) (1889-1988) for the first time to scholarship. By examining the influence of Russian literature on Naimy’s literary output, we shed light on the role of multilingualism in generating literary identit…[Read more]

This article compares three key texts in Daghestani Islamicate literature by Persian Azeri writer Bākīkhānūf (d. 1847), Lezgi polymath al-Alqadārī (d. 1910), and Qumyq (Turkic) biographer al-Durgilī (d. 1935), with a view to understanding how their authors conceptualized their role as chroniclers of times past. I draw in particular on Italia…[Read more]

In this article, we propose a model that combines digital storytelling with narrative practice to create a facilitated peer-to-peer experiential learning space for collective empowerment. This model was inspired by an educational intervention that utilized participatory digital comic strip making to raise students’ awareness of bullying and its c…[Read more]

This paper provides updated digital images of four Qurʾān fragments from Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum (OIM) that appeared in Nabia Abbott’s Rise of the North Arabic Script, and calls attention to features of their paleography and vocalization which are not apparent from her original black-and-white plates. In doing so, it demonstrates tha…[Read more]

This paper provides updated digital images of four Qurʾān fragments from Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum (OIM) that appeared in Nabia Abbott’s Rise of the North Arabic Script, and calls attention to features of their paleography and vocalization which are not apparent from her original black-and-white plates. In doing so, it demonstrates tha…[Read more]

What a charming smile 😉 * Artwork by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-ND

This is a reflection zine from a course I taught in Spring 2020, ENG 342: “Studies in Popular Culture,” which had a course topic of “Playful Literature and Literary Games.” My goal with this course was to teach students about the ways in which games and literature overlap, particularly through the frame of the zine — DIY print publications that…[Read more]

This is the zine-version of my syllabus from a course I taught in Spring 2020, ENG 342: “Studies in Popular Culture,” which had a course topic of “Playful Literature and Literary Games.” My goal with this course was to teach students about the ways in which games and literature overlap, particularly through the frame of the zine — DIY print…[Read more]

In his 1875 description of the language, Theodor Nöldeke describes Mandaic as among the purest of the Aramaic languages and the furthest from Western Aramaic, particularly with respect to its lexicon. As Mandæans identify their faith with that of John the Baptist and his community of followers, this observation is not without relevance for a…[Read more]

Pakistan’s religious leaders, ulama, have been put under significant strain in relation to how to deal with questions about the political tensions and violence over the past decade flowing from the Taliban’s role in the conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The effects of this fraught environment on religious authority can be seen through the way…[Read more]

This paper discusses the issue of the relationship between theology and religious studies, drawing on certain principles of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutical theory. Leaving aside differences between Gadamer and his critics, it is argued that his rehabilitation of prejudice, authority, and tradition as well as his notions of the fusion of…[Read more]