R. Kevin Lacey - Böcker

Ṭāhā Ḥusayn: A Bi-Lingual Arabic Reader is an Arabic language reader that focuses on passages from works authored by the renowned Egyptian litterateur and public intellectual Ṭāhā Ḥusayn. A critical introduction discusses Ḥusayn’s writing style and his contributions to the nahḍah or cultural renaissance in Arabic-speaking societies. This reader inspires Arabic learners to improve the ease and accuracy with which they read for comprehension—perhaps the most challenging dimension to achieving proficiency in Arabic—within the framework of celebrated literature and literary and cultural criticism. The Arabic texts are provided with an abundance of short vowel markers, many more than what one would find in the original versions. Extensive vocabulary entries are provided by way of footnotes immediately beneath the passages to which the vocabulary pertains. Part two of the reader consists of new translations as well as re-translations for the Arabic texts. This work is intended primarily for intermediate and advanced non-native learners of Arabic.

Ṭāhā Ḥusayn: A Bi-Lingual Arabic Reader is an Arabic language reader that focuses on passages from works authored by the renowned Egyptian litterateur and public intellectual Ṭāhā Ḥusayn. A critical introduction discusses Ḥusayn’s writing style and his contributions to the nahḍah or cultural renaissance in Arabic-speaking societies. This reader inspires Arabic learners to improve the ease and accuracy with which they read for comprehension—perhaps the most challenging dimension to achieving proficiency in Arabic—within the framework of celebrated literature and literary and cultural criticism. The Arabic texts are provided with an abundance of short vowel markers, many more than what one would find in the original versions. Extensive vocabulary entries are provided by way of footnotes immediately beneath the passages to which the vocabulary pertains. Part two of the reader consists of new translations as well as re-translations for the Arabic texts. This work is intended primarily for intermediate and advanced non-native learners of Arabic.

Writing Tangier discusses an array of topics relating to the literature on Tangier from the seventeenth century to the present. Major questions include: Why has Tangier come to play an important role in contemporary world literary history as a signifier in the literary imagination; what is the nature of the inter-textual output produced through Paul Bowles’ translations of the oral tales of a circle of uneducated storytellers (including Mohammed Mrabet and Larbi Layachi) and the text (For Bread Alone) brought to Bowles by the literate Mohamed Choukri; how do academics, artists, and writers who have been based in the city or who have written about it assess the various socio-economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped its cultural production and the relationship of this production to the celebrated hybrid aspects of its identity; does the success of the literature of Tangier reflect a truly new multicultural cosmopolitanism, or does it stem from the fact that this literature is congenial to Westerners, that it is understood in terms that they themselves define, and that much of it (including productions in Arabic prepared with the expectation of translation) has even been «written to measure» for them?

In this innovative book, Bahman Solati presents a comparative study of Ḥāfeẓ, an internationally renowned poet in the West, particularly in Germany, France, and the Anglophone world for the past 250 years, and his influence on the fifteenth-century classical Persian poet Jāmī.Having played a key role on the stage of world literature and poetry, present available studies in the West suffer from a dearth of good research works on Ḥāfeẓ. This text aims to fill this gap, including coverage of commentaries, critical studies, and compilations of Ḥāfeẓ’s Divān, juxtaposing them with works and poetry of Jāmī to evaluate the influence of Ḥāfeẓ on this fifteenth-century mystic and poet. Comprehensive notes and an extensive bibliography are added bonuses of the book.Devotees of Persian literature and those of Persian-speaking countries (Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan) will find this text of particular interest, as will academics interested in Persian poetry and literature. The usefulness of this research alone for students and scholars alike is of itself enough to make this book worth adding to any library.

What motivated the early Islamic conquests? Did the Arabs fight for Allah, or for wealth and dominance? Were the conquerors principally Arabs, or specifically Muslims? Were the Muslim believers motivated by religious zeal to proclaim Islam to the non-Muslims? Consequently, was Islam spread by the sword? This is a question that has crucial implications today.The Stated Motivations for the Early Islamic Expansion (622–641) extensively analyzes the earliest Arabic Muslim sources to answer these and other questions. It relies on over 400 works, including primary sources written by more than 90 medieval Muslim authors, Sunni, Shiite, Sufi, and Mu’tazilite. It explores how medieval Muslim writers represented the early Arab leaders, and how much we can trust their reports. It concludes with an examination of the Qur’ān’s commands regarding fighting and armed jihad, and questions what later commentators suggest about fighting the non-Muslims, specifically how radical Muslim interpretations match or violate Islam’s sacred scripture.This is the first scholarly analysis to focus on the stated motivations for the early Islamic expansion in the first two decades of Islam. It is a valuable resource for courses on Muslim history, introduction to Islam, Islamic origins and texts, classical and modern Islamic thought, Muhammad’s biography, Islamic Caliphates, Muslim-Christian relations, Jews in the Muslim world, Middle Eastern history, and world history. In the age of ISIS, Qaeda, and Boko Haram, this book reflects on how historiographical accounts can inform today’s multi-cultural and multi-religious societies on complex relations, mutual respect, and religious coexistence.

This volume seeks to document the development of the Palestinian short story between 1944 and 1967. This particularly significant phase that carried the seeds, from which the short story grew, was greatly influenced by the last years of the British mandate over Palestine in 1944, the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the subsequent changes that impacted Palestinian society in this country until the Arabs’ defeat in the Six Day War, 1967.Within the fold of this volume, the reader will find two parts: the first is a general account of the development of the genre of short fiction and the different approaches that characterized it along with a discussion of the language and an examination of the content. The second is an anthology of twenty-five stories published between 1944 and 1967 by Al-Ittiḥād, an Israeli Arabic-language daily newspaper.

No previous research has ever explored thoroughly the types and trends of smoking and the different models of tobacco smoking among Palestinian children. This study was designed to identify the factors that increase or mitigate risk associated with smoking among school children and adolescents living within the Palestinian territories. An ecological framework serves as the theoretical framework for the study, incorporating multiple levels of children’s and adolescents’ lives, including individual, family, school, peers, and community dimensions. The study is based on theory that considers the school as a central component of socialization and also on problem behavior theory, suggesting that humans develop clusters of dangerous behaviors that become part of their daily lives. This research study is based on the data set of the Health Behaviors in School-aged Children (HBSC) international survey, and employed a dual focus on individuals and schools. It revealed the high prevalence of tobacco smoking, the risk and protective factors affecting smoking, and showed that Nargilah ranked first among tobacco smoking habits. In an era of narrow agendas of “effectiveness” and “control,” this book suggests a way to incorporate schools as venues and spaces for behavioral transformation, growth, and positive change, and shows how awareness can be created within the families and the relevant agencies. Health promotion and risk prevention initiatives can help control tobacco smoking, the most preventable cause of death and disease in the nation. Those who smoke must quit, and we must work together to prevent children from starting this endangering health behavior.

Examines the thought of Abū al-Alā' al-Maarrī (973–1057 CE) within the broader context of the major trends in Arab Islamic political and intellectual history by the time of his flourishing.Free-thinking poet, grammarian, social critic, and satirist, Abū al-‛Alā' al-Ma‛arrī (973–1057 CE) remains one of the more celebrated and intriguing personalities in the history of Arab Islamic civilization. Although the controversies surrounding his skepticism, cynicism, and anticlericalism have never been completely resolved, his more disquieting writings are commonly available in the Arab world, cited in standard histories of Arabic literature, and the subject of scholarly studies.Al-Ma‛arrī is universally recognized as a giant among the litterateurs of Islam, deservedly famous for the role that he played in the development of Arabic verse as a more serious vehicle of religious-political thought and social criticism. The centrality attributed to al-Ma‛arrī as innovator has been linked to a strain of inquiry that has been particularly paramount to Westerners: To what extent did al-Ma‛arrī and other unconventional thinkers stray from the course of mainstream Islamic thought?In this book, R. Kevin Lacey places al-Ma‛arrī within the broader context of Arab Islamic political and intellectual history up to the mid-eleventh century and identifies the coherencies and incoherencies within his overall thought in an effort to determine the extent to which he deviated from his inherited faith. Al-Ma‛arrī and his like were hardly representative, and their imprint on their co-religionists may be questionable, but they must be taken into consideration in order to do full justice to the intellectual history of Islam.