1st Edition
Bedouin and ‘Abbāsid Cultural Identities The Arabic Majnūn Laylā Story
Introduction
1. Song Culture, Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs) and the Love Story of Majnun Layla
2. On the term ‘U¿hri and its Symbolic Universe for Understanding Majnun Layla
3. The Night in the Ghayl—Love, Meaning, and Language
4. Umayyad and ‘Abbasid Constructs of Masculinities in the Love Story of Majnun Layla
5. A Lost ‘Bedouin Arcadia’—The Tree Man and the Umayyad Tax Man
6. Majnun as the Knight-Errant: Language and the Significance of Errancy (Huyam)
7. ‘Abbasid Culturally Primitivist Readings of Layla as Object and Subject
8. ‘Abbasid Readings of the ‘U¿hri Romances: Female Unchastity & the Love Triangle
Conclusion
Glossary
Bibliography
Biography
Ruqayya Yasmine Khan is an associate professor and the M. Malas Chair of Islamic Studies in Claremont Graduate University’s Religion Department. Khan’s research interests include Arabic literature (early and modern), Qur’anic studies, gender/women’s studies and Islam and the digital age. Her more recent scholarly interests include late antiquity and Islam, origins of Islam and cultures of Umayyad Damascus and Abbasid Baghdad. Khan is the author of the book Self and Secrecy in Early Islam (2008), which maps the relationships between the concepts of secrecy and identity in early Islamic cultures. She is also the editor of Muhammad in the Digital Age (2015).
