Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018): 219-224

Th e  c o n f e r e n c e  w a s  o r g a n i z e d over three days by Abdul Rahim Abu-Husayn and Bilal Orfali and 
generously supported by the Jewett Chair 
of Arabic Studies and the Center for Arts 
and Humanities of the American Univer-
sity of Beirut (AUB). The first day of the 
conference was held on the premises of 
the AUB, after which the Bristol Hotel in 
Beirut became the venue for the second 
and third days of the conference.

Nadia Maria El Cheikh (Dean of the 
Faculty of Arts and Sciences, AUB), Bilal 
Orfali (Chair of the Department of Arabic 
and Near Eastern Languages, AUB) and 
Abdul Rahim Abu-Husayn (Director of 
the Center for Arts and Humanities, AUB) 
welcomed participants on the Thursday. 
This conference, which they had hoped to 
organize for many years, should result in 
the publication of the papers presented. 
The different presentations explored the 
overwhelming presence of anthologies 
i n  p r e - m o d e r n  A r a b i c  l i t e r a t u r e ,  a 
phenomenon unique to this literature, 

where you find such works on a variety 
of themes, including love, wine, travel, 
death, music, difficult words, and blaming 
or praising things. What were the reasons 
for the popularity of the genre, and what 
was its function? To what extent can 
they be considered as original works in 
themselves, how the author’s influence 
can be traced in his manner and method 
of compiling? What can be inferred from 
the chosen excerpts over what has been 
left out by an author and most of the time 
lost to us? What do these compilations 
say on the historical and cultural context 
in which they were produced? These 
questions and many others have long been 
raised about this genre, and continue to 
rise for the readers and scholars today.

T h e  c o n f e r e n c e  w a s  c o m p o s e d  o f 
eight panels on the following themes: 
“ E m o t i o n s , ”  “ P l e a s u r e , ”  “ F a i t h  a n d 
E d u c a t i o n , ”  “ T h i s  i s  N o t  a  T a l e , ” 
“Poetry,” “Compilation, Authorship and 
Readership,” and “Geography.” Each panel 
was followed by discussion that allowed 

Conference Report

Approaches to the Study of Pre-Modern Arabic Anthologies 
(Beirut, 10–12 May 2018)

Conference Organizers: 
Abdul Rahim Abu-Husayn and Bilal Orfali

Report by:  
Louise Gallorini



220  •  Louise GaLLorini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

the audience to participate and engage 
with the participants. Ramzi Baalbaki 
(AUB) gave the keynote address on the 
second day, Beatrice Gruendler (Freie 
Universität of Berlin) a guest honorary 
speech on the third day. The conference 
concluded with a dinner.

Thursday May 10th

Panel 1: “Emotions”

Chaired by Julia Bray (University of 
Oxford), the first panel of the conference 
opened with a paper by Lyall Armstrong 
(AUB) on the subject of death and dying, as 
seen through the reconstruction of one of 
the earliest works by a Muslim scholar on 
the topic. Indeed, Dhikr al-mawt by Ibn Abī 
al-Dunyā (d. 281/894-5), an author known 
to have had a special interest in the matter 
of death, and whose work influenced 
later scholars interested in writing on 
the subject. It contains excerpts from the 
Qurʾān and religious literature as well as 
poetry and anecdotes.

Going back to the world of the living, 
K a r e n  M o u k h e i b e r  ( U n i v e r s i t y  o f 
Balamand) presented a paper on al-Imāʾ 
al-Shawāʿir by al-Isfahānī (d. 356/967), an 
anthology of courtesan-poetesses of the 
early Abbasid period. She analyzed the 
vocabulary pertaining to emotions used 
in the text, thus reflecting a male gaze 
on female characters, by using Barbara 
R o s e n w e i n ’ s  c o n c e p t  o f  “ e m o t i o n a l 
c o m m u n i t y . ”  W i t h o u t  b e i n g  a b l e  t o 
discover the reality of emotions felt 
by individuals at the time, her analysis 
allows us nonetheless to explore the 
representation of gendered relations and 
what emotions were highlighted and 
valued (or not) in written testimony of this 
kind.

The panel concluded with a return to 
the idea of dying, this time specifically 
with martyrs of love, with the presentation 
of Vahid Behmardi (Lebanese American 
University) on Maṣāriʿ al-ʿUshshāq by Jaʿfar 
b. Aḥmad al-Sarrāj al-Qāriʾ (d. 500/1107). 
An anthology dealing specifically with 
tales and poetry of poets dying from love, 
it also contains the author’s own poems 
on passionate forms of love. Through 
an analysis of the text, its isnāds and 
organisation, clearer light can be shed 
on the origins of love stories in classical 
Arabic love literature. 

Panel 2: “Pleasure”

Chaired by Bilal Orfali (AUB) the second 
panel included two presentations on 
the theme of pleasure. Musical pleasure 
came first, with the presentation of Carl 
Davila (State University of New York) on 
Kunnāsh al-Ḥāʾik, a famous collection of 
song-texts of the Andalusian tradition of 
North Africa, as found in MS#144 at the 
Khizāna Dāwūdiyya in Tetouan, dated from 
1202/1788. His analysis of the manuscript 
spoke to the social context of the Moroccan 
Andalusian musical tradition. 

The second paper dealt with physical 
p l e a s u r e s .  J e r e m y  K u r z y n i e c  ( Y a l e 
U n i v e r s i t y )  d i s c u s s e d  a n  u n e d i t e d 
manuscript in a presentation entitled “The 
Encyclopedia of Pleasure: a Ẓarīf’s Guide 
to the Bedroom Sciences,” a medieval 
example of diversely sourced knowledge 
on the particular subject of sex. From 
poetry to medical sources, from Greek, 
Persian and Indian sources, the anthology 
lists and categorizes what needs to be 
known regarding matters of the bedroom. 
Analyzing the text and situating it in its 
larger cultural milieu, one discovers that 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

 Approaches to the Study of Pre-Modern Arabic Anthologies •  221

the Indian kama-sutra was known and 
circulated, at least in part, in the medieval 
Islamic world. 

Friday May 11th

Panel 3: “Faith and Education”

The second day began with the theme 
of faith and education. Kristen Brustad 
(University of Texas) chaired a panel in 
which sadly two participants were unable 
to attend. Kirill Dmitriev (University of St 
Andrews) opened with a presentation on 
the anthology tradition and its theoretical 
a s p e c t s  t h r o u g h  a n  e x a m p l e  f r o m 
Christian Arabic sources. The combination 
of the popular Arabic anthology genre 
and the medieval Christian literature and 
traditions made it natural that Christian 
authors would engage with this genre. 
The presentation reviewed the different 
categories of Christian Arabic anthologies 
a n d  t h e i r  a u t h o r s ,  a n d  f o c u s e d  o n 
Busṭān al-ruhbān, an anthology compiled 
by Jirmānūs Farḥāt (d. 1732).

The second presentation by Samer 
Traboulsi (University of North Carolina) 
e x p l o r e s  t h e  u s e  o f  a n t h o l o g i e s  a s 
educational tools, specifically in the 
Ṭayyibī Ismāʿīlī tradition in Yemen and the 
teaching of the Ismāʿīlī daʿwa. The paper 
used the Kitāb al-azhār by Ḥasan ibn Nūḥ 
al-Bhārūchī (d. 939/1533) as an example. 
This unpublished and lengthy text exists 
in several manuscripts, hinting at its wide 
circulation among scholars. The analysis 
of its great variety of content provides a 
better picture of the ways in which Ismāʿīlī 
doctrine was taught, where most historians 
have focused on sermons rather than on 
these instruction manuals.

Panel 4: “This is Not a Tale”

Chaired by Enass Khansa (AUB), this 
panel started with Maurice Pomerantz 
(New York University, Abu Dhabi) who 
presented a paper focused on ʿUqalāʾ 
al-majānīn by al-Nīsābūrī (d. 406/1016). 
This is an example of an anthology on the 
theme of the madman; the text mentions 
around a hundred of such characters, from 
the historical to the legendary, in tales 
dealing with piety, foolishness and truth.  
Matthew L. Keegan (American University 
of Sharjah) presented the second paper 
on “commentary as anthology” with the 
example of the Andalusi al-Sharīshī’s 
(d. 619/1222) commentary on al-Ḥarīrī’s 
Maqāmāt. Using the device of commentary, 
the author collected and compiled adab 
excerpts from the Islamic East and West. 
Analyzing the commentary and the ones 
inspiring the author, Keegan showed how 
commentary evolved into an anthologizing 
form of writing in itself.

Panel 5: “Poetry”

Chaired by Tayeb El-Hibri (University 
of Massachusetts, Amherst,) the last 
panel of the day, on the topic of poetry, 
began with a presentation by Adam Talib 
(Durham University) on the relationship 
between poetry anthologies and dīwān. 
Talib spoke to what has been recovered 
of poetry thanks to anthologies against 
what has been lost, that is, poetry left 
out of anthologies. This is an important 
question for a type of literature that has 
not been transmitted to us in a direct 
fashion, most of it having been recorded 
through anthologies, with what it implies 
of the reasons for which authors included 
poems or left them out. Talib also argued 
that the making of a poetry dīwān did 



222  •  Louise GaLLorini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

not necessarily precede the making of 
anthologies; it might have been the other 
way around.

David Larsen (New York University) 
p r e s e n t e d  a n  o n - g o i n g  p r o j e c t  o f 
a n t h o l o g y  r e c o n s t r u c t i o n  f r o m  t h e 
fragments found in subsequent works and 
his method for doing it. He dealt with the 
genre of maʿānī texts, that is, the study of 
obscure meanings. Working on the now 
lost Kitāb abyāt al-maʿānī by Abū Naṣr 
al-Bāhilī (231/855), Larsen showed how 
sifting through citations of the work in 
later anthologies allows for an attempt at 
reconstructing the original text. He spoke 
of the challenges he faces in doing so. His 
reconstruction will be published in an 
upcoming edition and translation.

Bilal Orfali (AUB) concluded the panel 
with a presentation on poetry in Sufi 
a n t h o l o g i e s  o r  m a n u a l s .  T h e  p o e m s 
constitute in their own right an anthology 
with its own uses within wider anthologies 
such as works by al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) 
and Abū Naṣr al-Qushayrī (d. 514/1120). 
Poetry is used in this type of work to 
express sentiments otherwise difficult 
to express in prose. It is also used during 
the beatific audition (samāʿ), as well as 
to conclude chapters. These thematic 
chapters compile different sources on a 
particular theme, from the Qurʾān, ḥadīth, 
and other types of literature such as 
poetry. The choice of poetry excerpts is 
particular to an author, even though the 
author does not compose poetry himself. 
The paper concluded with discussion of 
the use of poetry in the Kitāb al-Bayāḍ 
wa-al-sawād of al-Sīrjānī (d. ca. 470/1077).

Keynote Speech

Ramzi Baalbaki (Jewett Chair, AUB) 
d e l i v e r e d  t h e  k e y n o t e  a d d r e s s  o n 
o v e r l o o k e d  a s p e c t s  o f  p r e - m o d e r n 
lexical anthologies. Shedding light on an 
understudied genre, Baalbaki focused on 
Ibn Manẓūr (d. 711/1311) and his famous 
Lisān al-ʿArab, and the process by which 
he combined five different sources in 
his lexicon. Baalbaki demonstrated, for 
the first time, how Ibn Sīda (d. 458/1066) 
i n t e r n a l l y  a r r a n g e d  h i s  l e m m a t a  o n 
semantic grounds and how Ibn Manẓūr 
adopted that system and supplemented Ibn 
Sīda’s material from his four other sources.

Saturday May 12th 

Panel 6 & 7: “Compilation, Authorship, and 
Readership”

The theme of compilation, authorship, 
and readership was explored through a 
double panel, the first one chaired by Adam 
Talib, the second by Maurice Pomerantz. 
Enass Khansa (AUB) presented the first 
paper on different aspects of the anthology 
genre: an anthology presents itself as a 
reference work, a scholarly endeavor, that 
sources material from different fields to 
be presented to a wider readership than 
what some of these excerpts might have 
been previously been exposed to. These 
aspects were presented with an attempt at 
exploring a possible reconstruction of the 
readership of these anthologies, and how 
they inform material research of history 
and culture through examples such as Ibn 
ʿAbd Rabbih’s al-ʿIqd al-farīd in al-Andalus.

The second talk was given by Boutheina 
Khaldi (American University of Sharjah) on 
Maṭālaʿ al-budūr fī manāzil al-Surūr, ʿAlāʾ 
al-Dīn ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bahāʾī al-Ghuzūlī’s 
 



Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

 Approaches to the Study of Pre-Modern Arabic Anthologies •  223

(d. 815/1412) anthology of the Mamluk 
period. Khaldi highlighted the process 
by which the anthologist organized his 
compilation; his presence throughout the 
text; and in this particular case, how the 
process follows or differs from classical 
times, challenging the thesis of decline in 
literature after the Abbasid age.

P r e s e n t e d  b y  R a n a  S i b l i n i  ( D o h a 
Institute for Graduate Studies), the third 
paper focused on a particular example, 
al-Manāzil wa-al-diyār by Usāma ibn 
Munqidh (d. 584/1188). On the theme of 
the homeland, it includes many excerpts 
otherwise lost. One of the particularities of 
this work is its personal character. Siblini 
showed how the author, grieving for his 
hometown, included poetry of his own, 
and interfered with other’s verse, and 
how this relates to the author’s views on 
rhetoric and general experience.

As one of the participants was unable to 
attend, the second panel had only a single 
presentation. Isabel Toral-Niehoff (Freie 
Universität of Berlin) spoke on the theme 
of authorship and readership. Her talk 
focused her talk on al-ʿIqd al-farīd by Ibn 
ʿAbd Rabbih (d. 328/940) and the author’s 
organizational principle. It was related, in 
a complex way, to the organization of the 
ʿUyūn al-akhbār by Ibn Qutayba (276/889). 
The paper placed the work in its historical 
c o n t e x t  b e f o r e  f o l l o w i n g  i t s  g r a d u a l 
reading through time, from being read as 
a literary anthology to being read as an 
encyclopedia.

Panel 8: “Geography”

Chaired by Vahid Behmardi, the final 
panel of the conference explored the 
geographical dimensions of anthologies.  
The first paper, by Nathaniel A. Miller 

(University of Cambridge), explored the 
geographical and ideological dimensions 
of the evolution of anthologies. Miller 
used the example of the works by ʿImād 
al-Dīn al-Isfahānī (d. 597/1201), and his 
predecessors, al-Thaʿālibī (d. 429/1038) 
and al-Bākharzī (d. 467/1075). He explored 
the shift in literary social practices; the 
Sunni revival coupled with the transfer 
of an Iranian institution such as the 
anthology on Syrian lands; and the decline 
of court patronage in the Mamluk period, 
which influenced both the content and 
readership of the anthology genre.

Ghayde Ghraowi (New York University) 
presented a paper on Rayḥānat al-alibbā 
by Shihāb al-Dīn al-Khafājī (d. 1069/1658), 
a literary anthology compiling works of 
the author’s contemporaries as well as 
his own, in a particular political context. 
The author’s rejection from imperial 
patronage is one of the main reasons for 
the anthology’s existence; the presentation 
explored why al-Khafājī chose this means 
to respond to the Ottoman elite, and 
the historical information contained 
in the text. The work situated itself in 
continuation with an established literary 
tradition while being a support for political 
stances.

The final paper, by Suleiman A. Mourad 
( S m i t h  C o l l e g e / N a n t e s ’  I n s t i t u t e  f o r 
Advanced Studies), dealt with a subgenre 
of religious and historical anthologies, the 
compilation of the fadāʾil of Jerusalem, 
showing the importance of the city in 
Islam. Reviewing authors from al-Ramlī 
(d. 300/912) to authors contemporary to 
the Crusades, the presentation focused 
o n  a n  u n d e r s t u d i e d  a s p e c t  o f  t h e s e 
anthologies, that is, the agency of their 
authors in selecting and presenting their 
 



224  •  Louise GaLLorini

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā 26 (2018)

compilations, each anthology shaping a 
specific legacy for its readers.
 
Honorary Guest Speech

Beatrice Gruendler (Freie Universität 
o f  B e r l i n ) ,  i n  h e r  h o n o r a r y  g u e s t 
speech, spoke on her on-going project 
on Kalīla wa-Dimna by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ  
(d. 139/756), which should be the object 
of an upcoming critical edition. She 
presented it as an anthology, that is, a 
compilation of edifying and educative 
tales, with its sources in Indian wisdom, an 
example of the transfer of Indian material 
t o  A r a b i c  l i t e r a r y  w o r k s .  B e f o r e  i t s 
medieval translations into Syriac, Greek, 
Persian, Hebrew, Castillan and Latin, not 
much is known of Kalīla wa-Dimna’s early 
textual history. Gruendler used several 

charts to map the numerous translations, 
across time and geography; the different 
known sources of the work; and studies 
done on the subject. She also spoke to the 
difficulties in reconstructing the original 
sources used by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ; her 
critical edition will involve juxtaposing 
and comparing versions of the different 
existing manuscripts. This will allow for 
documenting the history of the text and an 
analysis of the context of its development. 
S o ,  f o r  e x a m p l , e  f r o m  a n  i n d i r e c t 
transmission of the Buddhist tale “King 
Shādram and the Wise Bilād,” found both 
in the Kalīla wa-Dimna and in a treatise 
on wisdom sayings by Ibn Miskawayh (d. 
421/1030), she will consider differences in 
translations and the manner in which the 
Arab translators adapted Indian sources to 
fit the Arabic corpus and readers’ demands.