The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights

The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights PDF Author: Muhsin J. al-Musawi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023151946X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
In this fascinating study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi shows how deeply Islamic heritage and culture is embedded in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (known to many as the Arabian Nights) and how this integration invites readers to make an Islamic milieu. Conservative Islam dismisses The Thousand and One Nights as facile popular literature, and liberal views disregard the rich Islamic context of the text. Approaching the text with a fresh and unbiased eye, al-Musawi reads the tales against Islamic schools of thought and theology and recovers persuasive historical evidence to reveal the cultural and religious struggle over Islam that drives the book's narrative tension and binds its seemingly fragmented stories. Written by a number of authors over a stretch of centuries, The Thousand and One Nights depicts a burgeoning, urban Islamic culture in all its variety and complexity. As al-Musawi demonstrates, the tales document their own places and periods of production, reflecting the Islamic individual's growing exposure to a number of entertainments and temptations and their conflict with the obligations of faith. Aimed at a diverse audience, these stories follow a narrative arc that begins with corruption and ends with redemption, conforming to a paradigm that concurs with the sociological and religious concerns of Islam and the Islamic state. By emphasizing Islam in his analysis of these entertaining and instructional tales, al-Musawi not only illuminates the work's consistent equation between art and life, but he also sheds light on its underlying narrative power. His study offers a brilliant portrait of medieval Islam as well, especially its social, political, and economic institutions and its unique practices of storytelling.

The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights

The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights PDF Author: Muhsin J. al-Musawi
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023151946X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book

Book Description
In this fascinating study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi shows how deeply Islamic heritage and culture is embedded in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (known to many as the Arabian Nights) and how this integration invites readers to make an Islamic milieu. Conservative Islam dismisses The Thousand and One Nights as facile popular literature, and liberal views disregard the rich Islamic context of the text. Approaching the text with a fresh and unbiased eye, al-Musawi reads the tales against Islamic schools of thought and theology and recovers persuasive historical evidence to reveal the cultural and religious struggle over Islam that drives the book's narrative tension and binds its seemingly fragmented stories. Written by a number of authors over a stretch of centuries, The Thousand and One Nights depicts a burgeoning, urban Islamic culture in all its variety and complexity. As al-Musawi demonstrates, the tales document their own places and periods of production, reflecting the Islamic individual's growing exposure to a number of entertainments and temptations and their conflict with the obligations of faith. Aimed at a diverse audience, these stories follow a narrative arc that begins with corruption and ends with redemption, conforming to a paradigm that concurs with the sociological and religious concerns of Islam and the Islamic state. By emphasizing Islam in his analysis of these entertaining and instructional tales, al-Musawi not only illuminates the work's consistent equation between art and life, but he also sheds light on its underlying narrative power. His study offers a brilliant portrait of medieval Islam as well, especially its social, political, and economic institutions and its unique practices of storytelling.

One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights PDF Author: Hanan Al-Shaykh
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408826046
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
The Arab world's greatest folk stories re-imagined by the acclaimed Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh, published to coincide with the world tour of a magnificent musical and theatrical production directed by Tim Supple

The Thousand and One Nights in Arabic Literature and Society

The Thousand and One Nights in Arabic Literature and Society PDF Author: Richard G. Hovannisian
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521573979
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 134

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Book Description
This book successfully defies the view that The Thousand and One Nights is not worthy of serious literary debate.

One Thousand and One Nights

One Thousand and One Nights PDF Author: Hanan al-Shaykh
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408174731
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
One of the world's great folk story-cycles adapted for the stage by leading theatre maker Tim Supple, from the stories written by the seminal Lebanese novelist Hanan al-Shaykh. This unique edition will unlock the ancient tales for a new generation of readers and performers. Written by Arabic writers from tales gathered in India, Persia and across the great Arab Empire, the One Thousand and One Nights are the never-ending stories told by Shahrazad night after night, under sentence of death, to the king Shahrayar who has vowed to marry a virgin every night and kill her in the morning. Shahrazad prolongs her life by keeping the King engrossed in a web of stories that never ends - a fascinating kaleidoscope of life, love and destiny. The tales that unfold are erotic, violent, supernatural and endlessly surprising. The web of tales woven by Shahrazad were exoticised and bowdlerised in the West under the title of the Arabian Nights. This adaptation unearths the true character of One Thousand and One Nights as it is in the oldest Arabic manuscripts. In turns erotic, brutal, witty, poetic and complex, the tales tell of love and marriage, power and punishment, rich and poor, and the endless trials and uncertainties of fate. The great cities and thriving trade routes of the Islamic world provide the setting for these stories that employ supernatural mystery and intense realism to portray the deep and endless drama of human experience.

The Book of the Thousand and One Nights

The Book of the Thousand and One Nights PDF Author: J.C. Mardrus
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134948530
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 544

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Book Description
First published in 1986. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Arabian Nights

The Arabian Nights PDF Author:
Publisher: Modern Library
ISBN: 0307417018
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 914

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Book Description
Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever. This volume reproduces the 1932 Modern Library edition, for which Bennett A. Cerf chose the most famous and representative stories from Sir Richard F. Burton's multivolume translation, and includes Burton's extensive and acclaimed explanatory notes. These tales, including Alaeddin; or, the Wonderful Lamp, Sinbad the Seaman and Sinbad the Landsman, and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, have entered into the popular imagination, demonstrating that Shahrazad's spell remains unbroken.

Arabian Nights and Days

Arabian Nights and Days PDF Author: Naguib Mahfouz
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 1101974710
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz refashions the classic tales of Scheherazade into a novel written in his own imaginative, spellbinding style. Here are genies and flying carpets, Aladdin and Sinbad, Ali Baba, and many other familiar stories from the tradition of The One Thousand and One Nights, made new by the magical pen of the acknowledged dean of Arabic letters, who plumbs their depths for timeless truths.

The Thousand and One Nights'

The Thousand and One Nights' PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description


The Arabian Nights in Historical Context

The Arabian Nights in Historical Context PDF Author: Saree Makdisi
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191564966
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
Alf layla wa layla (known in English as A Thousand and One Nights or The Arabian Nights) changed the world on a scale unrivalled by any other literary text. Inspired by a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript, the appearance of Antoine Galland's twelve-volume Mille et Une Nuits in English translation (1704-1717), closely followed by the Grub Street English edition, drew the text into European circulation. Over the following three hundred years, a widely heterogeneous series of editions, compilations, translations, and variations circled the globe to reveal the absorption of The Arabian Nights into English, Continental, and global literatures, and its transformative return to modern Arabic literature, where it now enjoys a degree of prominence that it had never attained during the classical period. Beginning with a thorough introduction situating The Arabian Nights in its historical and cultural contexts-and offering a fresh examination of the text's multiple locations in the long history of modern Orientalism—this collection of essays by noted scholars from 'East', 'West', and in-between reassesses the influence of the Nights in Enlightenment and Romantic literature, as well as the text's vigorous after-life in the contemporary Arabic novel.

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures

The Arabian Nights in Contemporary World Cultures PDF Author: Muhsin J. al-Musawi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108474853
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
A rich and nuanced study of the Arabian Nights in world cultures, analysing the celebration, appropriation, and translation of the stories over time.