In a sense, this book is a sequel to an article published in 2003 on the topic of what I would call “contrariness” in Classical Arabic Literature, in which I gave special attention to the short anthology on the topic by the great anthologist al-Thaʿālibī. This entertaining and instructive text is here offered in an annotated English translation. I sent a draft of my translation to Professor Bilal Orfali, who is the leading scholar in Thaʿālibiology, wondering if by any chance he was thinking of, or even already engaged in, preparing a new edition of al-Thaʿālibī’s Taḥsīn al-qabīḥ wa-taqbīḥ al-ḥasan. He replied, saying that he was not envisaging an edition in the foreseeable future, and he recommended publishing my translation as a separate book. He also helpfully sent me electronic copies of the two extant manuscripts; until then I had relied mainly on the published editions of the Arabic text. Having found, in the course of my translating and annotating, several minor corrections (mostly thanks to the opportunity given by the internet where many parallel passages can easily be retrieved), I decided to add an improved Arabic text, without, however, cluttering it with textual details, for which Shākir al-ʿĀshūr’s second edition (Stockholm, 2006) should be consulted.
As is argued in section 35 of the anthology, one may have doubts about publishing books and especially on depending on books: true learning should been in one’s head, always readily available, and not be confined to one’s library. Here I fall woefully short of the retentive capabilities of many premodern Arabic scholars who could memorise countless books and poems. But they, too, published and used books, among them al-Thaʿālibī.
There is no point in thanking people, as is argued by Ibn al-Tawʾam, a contemporary of al-Jāḥiẓ, quoted in the last section (§ 69) of the book, for gratitude is never devoid of forms of selfishness. And it is true, so I shall admit that it gives me, selfishly, great pleasure to thank my wife Sheila Ottway for reading and correcting my English, Bilal Orfali for his advice and help, two anonymous readers for their positive reviews and helpful suggestions, the editors of Brill Studies in Middle Eastern Literatures for accepting this book into their series, and Abdurraouf Oueslati and Pieter te Velde of Brill for their support and assistance.