Books in the Routledge Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures series

'The Thousand and One Nights' was reborn into an alien environment in 1704, its signs being received in a different way from their original meanings. Works of literature change as people and cultures who read them change.

This book gives an insight into panegyrics (madih), a genre central to understanding medieval Near Eastern Society. It has until now largely escaped scholarly attention.

Evaluates the literary history and landscape of third/ninth century Baghdad by demonstrating and emphasising the significance of the important transition from a predominantly oral-aural culture to an increasingly literate and writerly one.

Relying on literary theory and referring to comparative examples from other literatures, this study places its findings within a framework, defining what is meant by innovation in the Arabic novel, and the particular socio-political context in which it appears.

Examines the complex relationship between the reality of the Palestinian minority in Israel and their literature.

Tackles issues of modernity and tradition in Arabic poetry as manifested in poetic texts and criticism by poets as participants in transformation and change. This text studies the poetic in its complexity, relating to issues of: selfhood, individuality, community, religion, ideology, nation, class, and gender.

A study for the development of English, Persian and Arabic literature and their interrelations with specific reference to modernity, nationalism and social value.

Made up of a number of articles translated in English, this book gives a comprehensive overflow of how the written and the spoken interacted, diverged, and received cultural articulation among the Muslim societies of the first two centuries of the Hijra.

Offers an annotated English translation of the unicum manuscript of the "Hadith Bayad wa Riyad", the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arabic-speaking presence in Spain.

Explores the role of journalism in Egypt in effecting and promoting the development of modern Arabic literature since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century.

Examines the link between cosmopolitanism in Egypt, from the nineteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century, and colonialism. Taking a theoretical, literary and historical approach, this book argues that the notion of the cosmopolitan is inseparable from, and indebted to, its foundation in empire.

Analyzes the attitude towards Muslims, Islam, and Islamic culture as presented in sources written by Jewish authors in the Iberian Peninsula between the tenth and the twelfth centuries. This book explores the shifting ways in which Jewish authors constructed communal identity of Muslims and Islamic culture, and how these views changed overtime.

This is the first systematic literary study of one of the masterpieces of classical Arabic literature, the 4/10th century Kitab al-aghani (The Book of Songs) by Abu I-Faraj al-Isbahani.

With contributors from specialists in different areas of classical Islamic thought, this accessible volume explores the ways in which medieval Muslims, saw, interpreted and represented the world around them in their writings.