Literary anthology is a general category of adab that encompasses a range of compilations which has enjoyed tremendous popularity in Arabic literature, probably like no other literature of the world. This general category is divided into several subcategories such as anthologies concerned with form, encyclopedic anthologies, theme and motif anthologies, anthologies based on comparisons, mono-thematic anthologies (e.g., works that discuss the themes of love, wine, condolences, travel and al-ḥanīn ilā al-awṭān, gray hair, and pairing praise and blame of various things), geographical anthologies, musical anthologies, anthologies concerned with figures of speech, chronological biographical anthologies, and anthologies devoted to the works of one poet.

The aim of this volume is to raise and discuss questions about the different approaches to the study of pre-modern Arabic anthologies from the perspectives of philology, religion, history, geography, and literature. It was our divergent perspectives in our analyses of adab compilations that instigated us to organize a conference on Approaches to the Study of Pre-modern Arabic Anthologies to bring in scholars from multiple disciplines to develop a multi-dimensional conversation around pre-modern Arabic anthologies. One main purpose was to bring out their richness and the many possible angles one can approach such texts. The omissions and inclusions, the forms, and the connotations and silences of the text can be used to discover how experience was formulated and how priorities were arranged. What sort of thinking does a particular anthology want to produce? What possibilities of thinking are excluded? What does it keep from sight?

In addition to learning about specific disciplinary perspectives, the meetings and consequent proceedings were concerned with overarching questions such as: What are the reasons behind the popularity of this type of writing in Arabic literature? More importantly, what are the functions of a literary anthology? Can literary anthologies be studied as original works that possess a structure and an agenda in their own right despite drawing from a fixed repertoire of texts? How does the choice of material reveal the individual interests of the compiler? Can the literary selections in an anthology be used in (re)constructing a lost work or an author’s literary theory? This volume also collects studies that tackle the internal logic and coherence of a work, to wit, the ways in which entries are organized, the elements frequently encountered, and the author’s skills in compiling, arranging, and commenting on the akhbār.

Such exemplary texts not only reflect a dominant ideology, but also contribute towards the dominant discourse by shaping, selecting, and confirming cultural constructs governing intellectual and social life. What is the potential of these sources for historians? What are the particular caveats and concerns when analyzing such compilations?

The first category tackles the questions of “Compilation, Authorship, and Readership.” The first article in this category, by Isabel Toral, deals with a classic in Arabic literature, al-ʿIqd al-farīd by the Andalusī Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940), particularly its birth. The study reconstructs the trajectory and varying impact of the encyclopaedic anthology. It shows how this work, originally composed in a region located at the margins of Arabic culture, first underwent phases of ambivalent evaluation in the Islamic West, until it ended up in the Mashriq in the Ayyubid period. There it experienced great success as an encyclopaedia and eventually became a paramount example of metropolitan Abbasid belles-lettres and one of the most successful anthologies of Arabic literature in history.

Enass Khansa looks at contextualizing knowledge in Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī’s (d. 542/1147–1148) al-Dhakhīra fī maḥāsin ahl al-Jazīra (Treasure/Treasury of the Charms of the People of the Iberian Peninsula). Recent examination of adab and adab anthologies has encouraged the investigation of the epistemological and broader cultural implications of knowledge production, and, thus helped critique the decades-long approach that viewed anthologies as static and descriptive enterprises with nothing new to offer. Despite these changes, an apolitical definition of adab persists in the scholarship, leaving the contextual project of anthologies and the role they assume in stabilizing political programs severely understudied. In the study of the Islamic Maghrib, this definition facilitated a central view of anthologies that assumed the uncritical transfer of eastern classical literature into its new Andalusī/North African milieu. In response to these threads, this study looks at the political transformation of al-Andalus through an examination of Ibn Bassām al-Shantarīnī’s al-Dhakhīra. Khansa argues that, as a leading anthology of its time, al-Dhakhīra showcases how knowledge production responded to the political and cultural transformations al-Andalus/North Africa underwent during the Ṭāʾifa kingdom period. The paper unveils how Ibn Bassām argued for a dynamic view of knowledge, rejected the dominance of the Islamic eastern canon in al-Andalus, and recognized the profound entanglement of knowledge production and the political program of his time. Through the example of al-Dhakhīra, the study calls for recognizing the contextual aspect of anthological works. Lastly, in analyzing these features, the study hopes to provoke two particular questions: first, a challenge to the apolitical understanding of adab anthologies that has eclipsed important aspects of anthological writing; and second, a recognition that anthologies need to be taken seriously by scholars, not as sources, but as independent projects that may inform inquiries into intellectual, political, material, and art histories.

David Larsen in the third article in this category sets off to reconstruct a lost example of the genre of poetry anthologies called kutub al-maʿānī. In these works, scholars collected abyāt al-maʿānī, whose meanings are ambiguous and obscure. Some abyāt al-maʿānī are excerpts from longer compositions by poets who did not aim to cause puzzlement; and for critics (e.g., al-Suyūṭī), these represent the category’s ideal type. Others are composed with intentional puzzlement as their principal aim, and these present a great deal of overlap with the genre of enigmatic verse called aḥājī (sg. uḥjiyya). Abyāt al-maʿānī are, in other words, a post-positive category in which classical and contemporary materials are freely combined, and the work of major poets is thrown together with anonymous puzzle-masters. Despite critics’ efforts to isolate a formal type, the ideal is always exceeded by the category. Larsen’s exploration of the category is carried out through a review of fragments from K. Abyāt al-maʿānī of Abū Naṣr al-Bāhilī (d. 231/846). Abū Naṣr was the amanuensis of al-Aṣmaʿī, whose books he transmitted, and for this reason he is sometimes called Ghulām al-Aṣmaʿī, but it is as ṣāḥib Kitāb al-Maʿānī that he is most often identified. The findings of this article are that a reconstruction of K. Abyāt al-maʿānī is not possible, but that its fragments—strewn across the browsable surface of lexicography and anthology tradition—afford a valuable perspective on kutub al-maʿānī and their heterogeneous contents.

Boutheina Khaldi also looks at the anthologies from the angle of compilation processes and contribution to a corpus of knowledge beyond poetry and prose classifications. She focuses on ʿAlāʾ al-Dīn b. ʿAbdullāh al-Bahāʾī al-Ghuzūlī’s (d. 715/1412) anthology Maṭāliʿ al-budūr fī manāzil al-surūr (The Rising of Full Moons in the Mansions of Pleasure) as a case in point. Maṭāliʿ al-budūr, as the author explains, is not merely a compilation of poetry and prose anecdotes. Al-Ghuzūlī is present in every anecdote, report, narrative, and ruse. His attention to language raises the anthology to belles-lettres without compromising content. The author argues that al-Ghuzūlī is both a compiler and an author’s alternate whose master conceit of a house accommodates him as well as an ensemble of authors, poets, scientists, and their ilk. Like Ṣalāh al-Dīn al-Ṣafadī (d. 764/1363), Ibn Nubāta al-Miṣrī (d. 768/1366), and Ibn Ḥijja al-Ḥamawī (d. 837/1434), al-Ghuzūlī gives his contemporaries some space that ensures their presence alongside the classicists. He converses with his quoted authors across time and space on an equal footing to carve out a niche for himself as a poet and a critic. The author reads al-Ghuzūlī’s anthology not only in view of its place in the record of Mamluk literature, but also as a reconstitution of/departure from an archive deeply rooted in the classical heritage through a re-writing that debunks the “decline” thesis once and for all.

The second category is “Pleasure” and consists of two articles that focus on the organization and function of two unique books. In the first article Jeremy Kurzyniec explores some of the organizational strategies found in Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha (Compendium of Pleasure), a massive, late tenth-century sexological treatise attributed to a certain Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī ibn Naṣr al-Kātib. The book contains large quantities of otherwise unattested Greek, Persian and Indian material, albeit it remains unpublished in its entirety to this day, owing in part no doubt to its great size and, at first glance at least, to its somewhat sprawling, haphazard construction. First glances can be deceiving, however, and closer examination reveals Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha to be anything but haphazard in the way it organizes its unprecedently diverse haul of sources. In this regard, the first part of the article considers the manner in which Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha “unites” and intermixes its sources, focusing especially on the syncretic structure of the chapter entitled “On the Merit of Sex and its Benefits” (Fī faḍl al-nikāḥ wa manāfiʿihi). The second part discusses the way Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha does precisely the opposite and divides its content, showing a strong predilection for listing, categorization and taxonomy, especially in the form of tashjīr diagramming, which both the oldest and youngest manuscripts of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha feature in abundance. Finally, in the third part, the article takes up the larger question of rationale: Why should all of this material be combined in a single work? Who reads it and why? To what genre does it belong? This contribution involves a consideration, albeit tentative and general, of the genre of kutub al-bāh, which confusingly comprises both literary and purely medical texts. It is in this area that the strongest claim for the ingenuity of Jawāmiʿ al-ladhdha can be made.

In the second article Carl Davila focuses on the social life of one manuscript of the musical anthology of Kunnāsh al-Ḥāʾik. The idea of an anthology implies that the work has been created for a purpose. This article argues that this purpose is fundamentally a social one, and proposes a function-oriented definition of the work. No type of anthology makes this clearer than does a songbook, which presents not just poetry, but a repertoire intended to facilitate performance. The history of pre-modern Arabic-language songbooks is explored, with special reference to the “Andalusian music” traditions of North Africa, and within that, Kunnāsh al-Ḥāʾik. The “social life” of manuscript #144 at the al-Khizāna al-Dāwūdiyya in Tetouan, Morocco, illustrates this well, lying as it does at the intersection of four functional dimensions: mnemonic, performative, literary and symbolic. As social and technological conditions change, so too can the functional “life” of such a document develop into an “afterlife” that reflects these altered circumstances.

The third category of articles falls under “Religion and Education.” Lyall Armstrong directs his attention to Ibn Abī l-Dunyā (d. 281/894), a prolific writer who composed several works on death and dying which constitute an early anthology of death traditions in the Islamic community. The article analyzes a few of these works, primarily his K. al-Mawt and K. al-Qubūr, both of which are no longer extant, as well as his K. al-Muḥtaḍarīn. He examines how Ibn Abī l-Dunyā organized these works, shows that these works became an important source for later Islamic scholars, and explores the themes that these traditions address, such as encouraging the faithful to greater levels of piety, illuminating the nature of one’s existence after death, and admonishing political authorities to rule justly.

Hans-Peter Pökel studies a foundational work from the same period, the famous ʿUyūn al-akhbār of Ibn Qutayba (d. 276/889), a work that has left its mark on many anthologies and encyclopedias in Arabic literature. The work contains ten chapters on different topics that were apparently important to a third/ninth century urban, educated audience in the center of the Abbasid Empire. It is an illustrative example of a highly anthologizing work of adab literature since it presents several sources collected from Arabic and non-Arabic backgrounds, including Hellenistic, Jewish, Christian, Persian and Indian references. Ibn Qutayba’s voice is evident mainly in his introductory remarks in which he emphasizes that religious practice and understanding of scripture were an essential motivation for the production of his book. The author argues that the sources presented by Ibn Qutayba to an interested audience had the potential and the intention to refine the understanding of scripture that served as a guide for belief and practice. The article demonstrates how the Quran was understood and received in a broader intellectual context. Ibn Qutayba’s reflections on religion, which is part but not the only aspect of human life, focuses on a moderate understanding of scripture and offers his audience varieties of understanding that help to avoid exaggerations of literal and intentional readings, something that was of primary importance in his time.

The third paper in this category, which is by Matthew L. Keegan, looks at quranic exegesis, but in an unusual location, a poetry anthology. The essay examines an exegetical poetry anthology by Ibn Nāqiyā (d. 485/1092) entitled al-Jumān fī tashbīhāt al-Qurʾān. The Jumān is organized around the exploration of the poetic intertexts of specific quranic verses. It, therefore, blurs the boundaries between adab anthologizing and quranic exegesis. Ibn Nāqiyā also wrote fictive maqāmas, which indulge in the burlesque and the obscene. This article, therefore, widens its purview to demonstrate that anthologizing is a generically promiscuous activity that is found in narrative prose genres like the maqāma and in books like al-Tawḥīdī’s K. al-Imtāʿ wa-l-muʾānasa, in which al-Tawḥīdī portrays himself as a live-action anthologizer. The article takes Ibn Nāqiyā’s engagement with wine as a case study and includes an appendix with a translation of the Jumān’s discussion of heavenly wine. It is demonstrated that Ibn Nāqiyā uses the strategies of poetic anthologizing in the Jumān to draw intertextual connections between the Quran and the Arabic poetic tradition. How these intertextualities are understood by the readers depends very much on the context that the readers supply and on the meaning they make from the junctures and disjunctures between the various pieces of discourse that have been collaged together. Ibn Nāqiyā exploits this ambivalence of context to the hilt to explore and amplify quranic meaning.

“Geography” is the subject of the last category of articles. Jerusalem occupies an important place in Muslim religious history. Their veneration of the city has been showcased in several literary genres, especially in the compilations called the Faḍāʾil (religious merits) of Jerusalem. This article by Suleiman A. Mourad examines these Faḍāʾil books as religious/historical anthologies. The argument it makes is that studying them as anthologies gives us a deeper understanding of their nature and function, as well as of the agency (agenda, interest, taste, etc.) of their authors. It allows us to see how the authors wove together carefully selected material from the Bible, the Quran and ḥadīth, futūḥ and historical accounts, and eschatological narratives, in order to create images and perceptions of Jerusalem that have lasted for centuries. It also helps us realize another function of this literature, namely as historical/religious “commentary” on Jerusalem, and not as passive reporting of traditions and legends. Moreover, we can better identify the differences between them as reflective of historical periods that shaped the intellectual and religious tastes of the authors and dictated their choice of material to portray Jerusalem in their own respective anthologies of the city.

Ideological dimensions of geographical anthologies is the subject of the second article in this category. Nathaniel A. Miller focuses on the case of ʿUmāra al-Yamanī (d. 569/1174) in the Kharīdat al-qaṣr. Between 384/994 and 573/1178, a series of three geographically organized poetry anthologies was published: the Yatīmat al-dahr by Abū Manṣūr al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038), Dumyat al-qaṣr by ʿAlī ibn al-Ḥasan al-Bākharzī (d. 476/1075), and the Kharīdat al-qaṣr of ʿImād al-Dīn al-Iṣfahānī (d. 597/1201). Hilary Kilpatrick, Shawkat Toorawa, and Bilal Orfali have all argued that medieval Arabic anthologists, far from being slavish compilers, engaged constructively and creatively with their material. Over the period between al-Thaʿālibī and ʿImād al-Dīn, the structure of the geographical anthology, which reflects origins in a literary debate on the relative merits of Iraqi versus Levantine poets, becomes progressively more expressive of a certain ideal of Sunni hegemony. This is most particularly the case in the Kharīdat al-qaṣr since for personal and political reasons ʿImād al-Dīn focuses much more extensively than his predecessors on Baghdad and the Abbasid caliphate. Within the Kharīda, an emblematic case is ʿImād al-Dīn’s biographical notice and selected poems of ʿUmāra al-Yamanī. ʿUmāra, a court poet to the late Fatimid caliphs and their viziers, was executed under Saladin about two and a half years after the dissolution of the Fatimid caliphate for conspiring to restore it with the aid of the Franks. At the same time, ʿImād al-Dīn drew extensively on ʿUmāra’s writings and book collection in order to fill out the Yemen section of his geographically organized anthology. In particular, ʿImād al-Dīn drew on ʿUmāra’s memoir, one of several examples of this new genre from the period. His depiction of ʿUmāra represents a complex mixture of aesthetic appreciation, political distortion, and literary appropriation. The act of anthologizing allowed ʿImād al-Dīn to re-sequence the poetry of ʿUmāra’s memoir, subordinating that personal narrative to the larger one of Saladin’s ascendance and the restoration of Sunnism in Egypt.

A number of adab anthologies that are studied in this volume, such as al-ʿIqd al-farīd and ʿUyūn al-akhbār, persist in their contemporary relevance. They continue to be published and sold to the mainstream reading public. Therefore, it is legitimate to ask how far these anthologies persist in forming and promoting certain ideologies, literary tastes, and attitudes towards language, governmant, and authority. Different generations of historians bring different questions and interests to the same, well-known texts. Asking different questions of a familiar body of material is one of the ways in which “the dialogue between modern scholars and their medieval documents is repeatedly reframed.”¹ This volume brings a fresh perspective on these ever relevant adab anthologies.