Journal article
Paths Crossing in Damascus: Familiarity with Persian among Eleventh/Seventeenth-Century Arabic Literati
Philological encounters, Vol.7(3-4), pp.238-267
01 Nov 2022
Abstract
This article explores the phenomenon of familiarity with Persian among Arabic lite-rati of the early modern period, with a focus on the eleventh/seventeenth century. It has long been recognized, in a general sense, that some scholars from the Ottoman Arab world had knowledge of Persian literature. Only recently have we seen the beginnings of detailed research on this topic. In the current article, the works of four authors are examined with an eye toward their discussion of things Persian or Iranian: Muhammad Amin al-Muhibbi (d. 1m/1699), Shihab al -Din al-Khafaji (d. 1069/1659), Hasan al-Barini (d. 1024/1615), and Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (d. 1143/1731). We find that, although familiarity with Persian was far from unheard-of in Arabic literary cir-cles, the degree of interest varied widely. At one extreme is al-Muhibbi, who goes out of his way to share samples of the work of prominent Persian poets that he has trans-lated into Arabic. Closer to the opposite end of the spectrum is al-Khafaji, of whom it is not obvious whether he could read Persian. The remaining authors fall somewhere in between. One insight that becomes clearer through this study is that Ottoman Damascus was a place in which Persian could be learned. There were enough migrants and visitors from the Persianate realm, and sufficient circulation of texts, that a scholar like al-Barini could attain fluency without traveling.
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Details
- Title
- Paths Crossing in Damascus: Familiarity with Persian among Eleventh/Seventeenth-Century Arabic Literati
- Creators
- Theodore S. Beers - Freie Universität Berlin
- Publication Details
- Philological encounters, Vol.7(3-4), pp.238-267
- Publisher
- Brill
- Number of pages
- 30
- Grant note
- ERC; European Research Council (ERC); European Commission
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- College of Computing and Informatics; Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000892616700002
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85141880313
- Other Identifier
- 991022051412804721