Library of Arabic Literature

November 2021 300 pages • 6 x 9 Cloth • $30.00S(£22.99) 9781479806539 In Library of Arabic Literature

Arabic Literature KALĪLAH AND DIMNAH

Fables of Virtue and Vice IBN AL-MUQAFFAʿ Edited by MICHAEL FISHBEIN Translated by MICHAEL FISHBEIN and JAMES E. MONTGOMERY Timeless fables of loyalty and betrayal Like Aesop’s Fables, KalīlahandDimnah is a collection designed not only for moral instruction, but also for the entertainment of readers. The stories, which originated in the Sanskrit Panchatantra and Mahabharata, were adapted and translated into Arabic by Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in the second/ eighth century. The stories are engaging and often funny, from “The Raven Who Tried To Learn To Walk Like a Partridge” to “How the Wolf, the Raven, and the Jackal Destroyed the Camel.” Throughout, Kalīlah and Dimnah offers insight into the moral lessons Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ believed were important for rulers—and readers.

Wide-ranging essays on Moroccan history, Sufism, and religious life Al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī was arguably the most influential and well-known Moroccan intellectual figure of his generation. In 1084/1685, at the age of roughly fifty-four, and after a long and distinguished career, this Amazigh scholar from the Middle Atlas began writing a collection of short essays on a wide variety of subjects including genealogy, theology, Sufism, and history. The Discourses also includes autobiographical anecdotes that offer insight into the history of Morocco. Translated into English for the first time, The Discourses offers readers access to the intellectual landscape of the early modern Muslim world through an author who speaks openly and frankly about his personal life and his relationships with his country’s rulers, scholars, and commoners.

Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d. 139/757) was a Persian translator, author, thinker, and state official who wrote important treatises on rulership in Arabic. Michael Fishbein is Lecturer Emeritus in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures at UCLA. James E. Montgomery is Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall.

October 2021 280 pages • 5.5 x 8.25 Paper • $15.00T(£11.99) 9781479810581 In Library of Arabic Literature

Arabic Literature

THE DISCOURSES

Reflections on History, Sufism, Theology, and Literature—Volume One AL-ḤASAN AL-YŪSĪ Translated by JUSTIN STEARNS Foreword by AYESHA RAMACHANDRAN

Al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī was a major eleventh/seventeenth-century Moroccan scholar. Justin Stearns is Associate Professor in Arab Crossroads Studies at NYU Abu Dhabi. Ayesha Ramachandran is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University.

IMPOSTURES

AL-ḤARĪRĪ Translated by MICHAEL COOPERSON Foreword by ABDELFATTAH KILITO

One of the Wall Street Journal’s Top 10 Books of 2020 Winner, 2020 Sheikh Zayed Book Award Finalist, 2021 PROSE Award in the Literature Category Fifty rogue’s tales translated fifty ways An itinerant con man. A gullible eyewitness narrator. Voices spanning continents and centuries. These elements come together in Impostures, a groundbreaking new translation of a celebrated work of Arabic literature. Impostures follows the roguish Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī in his adventures around the medieval Middle East—we encounter him impersonating a preacher, pretending to be blind, and lying to a judge. In every escapade he shows himself to be a brilliant and persuasive wordsmith, composing poetry, palindromes, and riddles on the spot. Award-winning translator Michael Cooperson transforms Arabic wordplay into English wordplay of his own, using fifty different registers of English, from the distinctive literary styles of authors such as Geoffrey Chaucer, Mark Twain, and Virginia Woolf, to global varieties of English including Cockney rhyming slang, Nigerian English, and Singaporean English. Featuring picaresque adventures and linguistic acrobatics, Impostures brings the spirit of this masterpiece of Arabic literature into English in a dazzling display of translation.

“[An] astounding new adaptation of the Maqāmāt of al-Harīrī… The verbal profusion is ludicrous, joyfully so. Speaking to an interviewer, Mr. Cooperson remarked that the Maqāmāt is 'a book that shows off everything that Arabic can do.' Impostures shows off English in the same flattering light, demonstrating its dynamism, its endurance, its mutability and its glorious, weedy wildness. In this way, a translation that is so brazen in its liberties is faithful to the spirit of the original.”

—Wall Street Journal Al-Ḥarīrī (d. 516/1122) was a poet, scholar, and government official from Basra, Iraq. He is celebrated for his virtuosity in producing rhymed prose narratives, the Maqāmāt. Michael Cooperson is Professor of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures at UCLA. His translations include The Life of Ibn Ḥanbal by Ibn al-Jawzī for the Library of Arabic Literature, and The Author and His Doubles by the eminent Moroccan literary critic Abdelfattah Kilito. Abdelfattah Kilito is the author of several acclaimed studies of Arabic literature, including Arabs and the Art of Storytelling and a study of the maqāmāt genre. He is the recipient of the Great Moroccan Award, the Al Owais Award for Criticism and Literature Studies, and a Prix from the Académie Française.

NEW IN PAPERBACK

September 2021 542 pages • 5.5 x 8.25 1 map Paper • 9781479810567 • $15.00T(£11.99) Cloth • 9781479800841 In Library of Arabic Literature

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