Product Description

Spanning the fifth to sixteenth centuries and societies that range from Afghanistan to Spain, this anthology is a testament to the astonishing grandeur and variety of classical Arabic literature. Here are excerpts from dozens of works–both renowned (The Qur’an, The Thousand and One Nights) and esoteric (Ibn Washshiyya’s “Book of Poisons”; a 10th-century poem in praise of asparagus)–all accompanied by Robert Irwin’s erudite commentaries that illuminate readers on the vanished world in which they were written.

In Night & Horses & the Desert we encounter the dashing Byronic poetry of Imru’ al-Qays and a treatise on bibliomania by Al-Jahiz, possibly the only writer to have been killed by books. There’s a sorcerer’s manual from 11th century Spain and an allegory by the mysterious “Brethren of Purity,” in which animals argue their case against humanity. Encompassing piety and profanity, fables and philosophy, this volume is a thrilling and invaluabe introduction to one of the world’s great bodies of literature.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #637851 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-08
• Released on: 2002-01-08
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780385721554
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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From Library Journal
This ambitious anthology presents a wide range of classical Arabic poetry and prose, covering the fifth to the 16th centuries from Afghanistan to Andalusia, Spain, in a single volume. The task is even more daunting owing to the difficulty of translating verse and prose obscure even to the 20th-century native Arabic speaker. The selections, arranged thematically, include very famous and lesser-known classical texts: representative texts and passages by Ibn Hazm on the etiquette of love, by Jahiz on love of books, by Maqqari on adventures and terrors of the sea, a shadow-play text by Ibn Daniyal, an ecological essay by the philosophical and mystical group Ikhwan al-Safa (Brethern of Purity), and more. Additionally, the obscure and somewhat peculiar selections include Ibn Marzuban on the superiority of dogs to men, Kushajim's poem on asparagus, and Ibn Washsiyya on "the art of poisons." Irwin's (The Middle East in the Middle Ages; The Arabian Nights: A Companion) introduction, commentaries, and notes provide, in addition to general historical background, a clear and concise interpretation of the context, symbolism, and meaning of the pieces selected. He also introduces the literary environments of the royal court (salon, mosque, bookshop, and desert) and provides short biographies of the authors and poets, caliphs, princesses, scribes, and mystics who created this literary legacy. No other single-volume anthology provides such extensive coverage. This rare and outstanding anthology is highly recommended for all literary collections.DAli Houissa, Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The revival of Western interest in Islamic literature owes a great deal to the Sufi poet Jalaleddin Rumi, who has gained wide readership in America and Europe. Rumi wrote in Persian, long regarded as the literary language of Islam--a perspective that Night and Horses and the Desert challenges. Editor Irwin's selection spans writing in Arabic from pre-Islamic nomads' poetry through the Qur'anic revelation to Sufi love poetry and early fiction, and it demonstrates that not all Arabic literature is pious. In his extensive commentary, Irwin stresses the importance of Arabic literature to the Western canon, noting, for instance, the controversial theory that Ibn Shuhayd's visions of the afterlife were a model for Dante's Divine Comedy. Unfortunately, the translations Irwin presents, by a large variety of translators from many different time periods, are wildly uneven in quality. His own translations are the best, and one only wishes he had done more. Still, his sage remarks provide an understanding of Arabic literature and fresh insight into the world that speaks, reads, writes, and worships in Arabic. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?A joy to read.... This book is a journey through 11 centuries of a lost world, with a surprise on almost every page.??Financial Times 

?[A] treasure-house of a book.... Unequaled for scholarship and entertainment.??The Independent (London)

?Outstanding?. No other single-volume anthology provides such extensive coverage.??Library Journal

?Superb. . . . A revelation, an appealing anthology.? ?Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
-- Review

Customer Reviews

A Serious Effort, Worth the Read
In what may be his most ambitious non-fiction work to date, Mr. Irwin has tackled a truly daunting task - an anthology of Arabic literature. I give him four stars. The fourth star is for attempting the effort in the first place.

Theoretically, there is no reason why it should be any more difficult to prepare an anthology of Arabic literature than it would be for, say, Chinese literature; rather the contrary. However, I suspect that preparing an Arabic anthology is much harder. First of all, the traditional themes of Arabic literature - religion, romantic lament, fate, panegyric - on the whole have little appeal for Westerners, especially compared to a literature like the Chinese, which seems so secular and "modern" in theme by comparison. Secondly, most truly great Arabic literature is poetry, which is notoriously difficult to translate, and what's worse, the canons of poetic taste that govern it are almost entirely untranslatable into anything comparable in English.

Despite these handicaps, Irwin has done an admirable job. One notices that there is a great deal of commentary. The selections tend to be short, with a great deal of explanation in between. There is so much commentary, in fact, that the book sometimes seems more a literary history than an anthology. However, this approach is necessary if the reader is to develop any appreciation at all of the material. Quite frankly, Arabic literature is a closed book to most readers, even in translation, and without a large amount of explanatory material the average reader would be lost.

Irwin also resists the impulse, very common in specialists in a given literary area, of putting in a large number of his own translations. He does an excellent job of selecting the translations, in fact - a difficult task in itself, because there is an incredibly large number of bad translations from Arabic; for many translators, the attempt to be faithful to the Arabic models simply results in English doggerel. You will find no examples of this type in the book.

If there is little to be said about the period after roughly 1300, there is a good reason for this: most of the truly great literature produced in the Middle East after that time was written in Farsi, and to a lesser degree in Turkish, both of which are not part of the subject matter for this book. In doing so, Mr. Irwin perhaps handicaps himself, but his intent is obviously to focus on Arabic literature. Outside of specialists, very little Arabic literature is known, whereas a great deal of Persian literature is readily available.

Certainly, it will be a long time before the names of Abu Nuwas or Mutanabbi are houshold words. Before that can happen, however, there must be an appreciation of the literary environment that formed Clasical Arabic literature. Mr. Irwin's book is admirable in its attempt to convey that environment. To the reader sincerely interested in deepening his knowledge of Arabic civilization, it will be rewarding. To the reader whose goal is not that lofty, the book admittedly may be a bit of a chore to get through, but that does not impugn the effort.

To The Max
We more books like this, for every literature and every language on the planet. My only complaint is that most of the translations are not his own, but are taken from various sources such as articles or even histories where the translations may or may not have been a centerpiece. That means that you're getting fragments of authors that may not be meritorious in their own right, but were meant to further the author's point in the original source.

So basically he's pilfered a library-worth of already translated bits and pieces given them all back to you with historical context included, and what this means is that the most famous works and certain highly famous authors (such as Al-Mutenabby or Al-Farazdaq) aren't represented by more than a few lines of their own, while other authors, not as well known, are given pages and pages.