Al-Mutanabbi was born in Kufa in 915 CE, and packed his 50 years of life with politics, religion and poetry. Al-Mutanabbī’s career saw him travel from Kufa to Baghdad, Syria, Egypt and Iran as he sought patronage at the courts of warlords and potentates or service in the retinue of local elites and bureaucrats, and he also spent time in the deserts of Iraq. He died at the hand of bandits in 965 CE.

Kalilah wa Dimnah is a foundational work in Classical Arabic Literature despite the fact it was originally composed in Sanskrit, making its way through Middle Persian and Syriac to be translated into Arabic in the middle of the 8th century CE. At the heart of the book are the discussions between the two jackals of the title, Kalilah and Dimnah, who tell tales within tales with moral and political lessons, involving animal leaders and their advisors discussing and illustrating the consequences of actions and decisions.

Abu Nuwas was born around 756 CE and died in 815, after a long and colourful career as a poet, travelling around the Muslim world in search of patronage. His work was as varied as his fortunes, and he has left behind poetry on love and hunting, praise and invective, asceticism and - perhaps most famously - wine.

The Qur’an is the foundational text of Islam. It remains a reference point for the Arabic language, still referred to for questions of grammar. It is a source for law, politics, war and peace. It contains guidance on social norms such as gender roles and social behaviour, and knowledge from mathematics and astronomy to biology. It has been an artistic resource inspiring centuries of reciters and calligraphers. This is all on top of its central position in the devotional practice of Islam – believers study the Quran, with many throughout history memorising it in its entirety as a key part of their education. But what is of particular in this podcast, dedicated to Classical Arabic Literature, is the Quran as a literary work.

Al-Andalus of the 12th century was a tumultuous time politically, and a rich time intellectually. One of our major sources for the intellectual currents of the day was Hayy ibn Yaqzan, written by the physician Ibn Tufayl, an allegorical tale which proved enduringly popular through centuries, languages and cultures. It tells the story of a boy growing up in complete solitude on a deserted island, learning through experience about the world, entirely on his own, without guidance or texts, and thereby discovering the laws of nature and spirituality. By means of this frame, Ibn Tufayl introduces a series of philosophical, medical, moral and spiritual themes, many discussed in this episode.

Reading: Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale. Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Lenn E. Goodman https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo25938805.html

The Ikhwan as-Safa, or Brethren of Purity, are shadowy figures in history, probably working in the late 10th or early 11th centuries CE, known only by the impressive 52 letters, known as the rasa’il, which present a curriculum of study designed to provide a comprehensive overview of all known subjects of the day. In the subsequent thousand years of scholarship their approach to knowledge and knowledge acquisition has led to all sorts of debates about what they really thought — some of which we will try to cover in this episode.

Reading: The Case of the Animals versus Man Before the King of the Jinn (Epistle 22), edited and translated by Lenn E. Goodman and Richard McGregor. https://www.iis.ac.uk/publications-listing/the-case-of-the-animals-versus-man-before-the-king-of-the-jinn/

In 750 CE, a new power swept the Muslim world. This was the Abbasid dynasty. Their rule acted as a catalyst for a burst of intellectual activity, now called the translation movement, when most Greek philosophical, scientific and medical texts were translated into Arabic and stimulated a culture full of debate in books and public spaces.

This is the milieu in which the philosopher known as al-Jahiz lived. Al-Jahiz had a curiosity and originality rarely seen in history. Born around 776 CE in Basra (in the very south of current day Iraq), he lived an incredibly long life, dying in 868 CE in Baghdad. In this time he wrote an extraordinary amount of books, spanning politics, theology, literature, studies of countries and people, from misers to singing girls, arguing the merits and demerits of different cultures and ethnicities.

Reading: Al-Jahiz: In Praise of Books, by James Montgomery https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-al-jahiz-in-praise-of-books.html

We’re starting our exploration of the rich heritage of Arabic literature by going right back to the beginning: the poetry of pre-Islamic Arabia. This episode looks at one poet from this time: Imruʾ l-Qays (who probably died in 542 CE), though our conversation touches on his peers and the tradition which edited, collected, and prized his work.

Reading: Fate the Hunter: Early Arabic Hunting Poems, edited and translated by James Montgomery https://nyupress.org/9781479825257/fate-the-hunter/