Arabic Belles Lettres

Arabic Belles Lettres brings together ten studies that shed light on important questions in the study of Arabic language, literature, literary history, and writerly culture. The volume is divided into three sections. Early Narratives comprises: Joseph Lowry on the Quran's allusive legal language; Abed el-Rahman Tayyara on matrilineal lineages in the context of Badr and Uhd; Ruqayya Khan on the ramifications of public courtship in Udhr romances; and Philip Kennedy on firsah (reading for signs and traces) in medieval narrative. Medieval Authors comprises: Shawkat Toorawa on Ubaydallh ibn Amad ibn Ab hir's History of Baghdd; Maurice Pomerantz and Bilal Orfali on Ibn Fris and the origins of the maqmah genre; Everett Rowson on al-Tawd and his predecessors (a reprint of his 1996 ZDMG article); and Ghayde Ghraowi on al-Khafj and his Raynat al-alibb. Modern Egypt comprises: Roger Allen on a cultural controversy in the Cairo newspapers of 1902; and Devin Stewart on preposterous boasting and ingenuity in on modern Egyptian Arabic.