Arabic Literature and Rhetoric – Eleven Hundred to Eighteen Hundred (ALEA)
Edited by Thomas Bauer and Syrinx von Hees
The series Arabic Literature and Rhetoric, Eleven Hundred to Eighteen Hundred (ALEA) was founded as part of the Leibniz Prize Research Unit of the same name at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster. The center is dedicated to Arabic literature and rhetoric of the later centuries, which have been largely neglected until now. The reason for this is the dominant notion, originally Western colonialist but quickly adopted by Arab elites, that an early “Golden Age” was followed by a long period of stagnation and decline until the Islamic “Sleeping Beauty” was kissed awake by Western colonial powers in the 19th century.
This concept of decadence is not only inaccurate but has politically manifest consequences in Arab countries to this day. For example, the fixation on a “Golden Age” makes a link to history problematic and fosters ideological distortions of various kinds. Above all, however, these prejudices stand in the way of the reception of entire literary periods in which some of the most fascinating Arabic texts were written.
It is already apparent that the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Syria and Egypt were an unparalleled period of literary flourishing, during which not only the most sophisticated highly literary texts were produced, but also a broad literary life prevailed in which people from artisan classes, such as the master builder Ibrahim al-Miʿmār, also participated.
Nevertheless, numerous key texts of this period have not yet been edited, let alone become the subject of scholarly research. A better knowledge of the literature and rhetoric of this period will significantly change our understanding of Arabic literary history as well as Islamic cultural history.