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This essay explores the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century gender debates in the late Ottoman Empire, and the early Republic of Turkey with a focus on Fatma Aliye’s presence in the public space, as the first Ottoman woman philosopher, novelist, and public intellectual. I choose to concentrate on her because of the important stakes of the gender debates of that period, and the ways in which they are echoed in the present can be effectively discussed by reflecting on the ways in which Fatma Aliye is read, presented, and received. In the first part of this paper, I talk about Fatma Aliye’s life and experience of her gender as a woman, and point to her key interests as a writer and philosopher. In the second part, I situate her in the political history of feminism during the Rearrangement Period ( Tanzimat ), the Second Constitutional Era ( II. Meşrutiyet ), and the institution of the modern Republic of Turkey. Lastly, in the third part, I discuss the diverse ways in which she is interpreted in contemporary Turkey. I explore the political impact of the reception of Fatma Aliye as an intellectual figure on the current gender debates in Turkey.

The present article investigates the intellectual and discursive orientation of the culture-critical essay West Infection by the twentieth century Iranian writer Ǧalāl Āl-e Aḥmad (1923–1969). In doing so, it likewise discusses the question of why this particular text was to have so deep and lasting an effect in redirecting the sociocultural modernization debate among Iranian intellectuals from a mainly developmentalist discourse to one about the issues of authenticity and identity. While considering Āl-e Aḥmad’s essay as raising a question of meaning – more specifically the question of human being’s meaning in the face of dehumanization under the spell of technological ‘Westernization’ –, we critically examine, in the course of our study, former interpretive approaches that define Āl-e Aḥmad’s text as reflecting influence on the author of existentialist philosophy. At the same time, we also address scholarly discussions of West Infection that regard it as a manifestation of nativism or leftist anti-capitalism. Rather than trying, in our turn, to pin down what Āl-e Aḥmad has to say to any given ideological or philosophical doctrine, we attempt to understand the use by Āl-e Aḥmad, in his essay, of terms such as ‘authenticity’, ‘alienation’, ‘identity’ and ‘religion’ – some of which are highly evocative of existentialism and of nativism indeed – as constitutive of a discourse that – for all the arguable influence on it of modern ideologies and philosophies – deserves to be treated as a word in its own right in the debate about Iran’s sociocultural situation.

The present article intends to contribute to the research on the kalām (“theology”) in Mauritania. So far, this particular Islamic science has received little attention of Islamic studies outside Mauritania. Around a dozen Mauritanian and non-Mauritanian commentaries on the highly popular didactic poem Iḍāʾat ad-duǧunna of al-Maqqarī – until today part of the education curriculum in the cultural area of the Western Sahara – provide the basis of the present paper which is divided in two parts: Part one presents some characteristic features of Mauritanian literature and the status of ʿilm al-kalām in Mauritania. Part two deals with the Iḍāʾa and its (Mauritanian) commentaries. Some selected key verses of the Iḍāʾa and their interpretation by various commentators are discussed here. Particular attention is paid to autobiographical notes and the elaboration on some special terms (for example tauḥīd, ʿilm, auwal wāǧib ). Further topics addressed include the dialogue between al-Ǧubbāʾī and al-Ašʿarī and the report on Ibn Barraǧān’s prediction of the conquest of Jerusalem from the crusaders by the Muslims in the year 583 H. Since many Mauritanian manuscripts about kalām have not been edited to the present day, even an approximate overview on the Mauritanian kalām literature is still out of sight. However, the investigation of the Mauritanian ʿilm al-kalām as a subbranch of studies on later kalām since the seventeenth century promises to provide highly relevant and intriguing insights.

Résumé Le zaǧal oriental a été considéré comme le petit frère du zaǧal des grands maîtres andalous comme Ibn Quzmān, Mudġalīs et d’autres – du moins, c’est ce que nous pouvons déduire en lisant les premières poétiques de cette forme poétique qui ont été écrites sur la rive orientale de la Méditerranée. Safīyaddīn al-Ḥillī (677/1278–749/1348) qui a été le premier à rédiger une telle poétique fonde sa théorie sur les zaǧals modèles d’Andalousie. Dans sa poétique il catalogue et explique les lois et les règles morphologiques, lexicales et syntactiques selon lesquelles un zaǧǧāl aspirant devrait forger ses vers, tout en soulignant qu’Ibn Quzmān ne voulait défendre que l’utilisation excessive de l’ iʿrāb (la flexion désinentielle). Dans une large mesure al-Ḥillī laisse de côté la réalité de la production des zaǧals par les poètes de Syrie, d’Irak et d’Égypte à ce moment-là. Par contre, une poétique postérieure comme le Dafʿ aš-šakk wa-l-mayn fī taḥrīr al-fannayn d’un certain Ǧamāladdīn al-Banawānī (m. 860/1456) ne mentionne de zaǧals andalous et ne tente pas d’en établir des règles. Notre présente contribution a pour but de démontrer d’une part que les poétiques sur le zaǧal se sont émancipées de leurs modèles andalous et les règles de composition que les auteurs tels qu’Ibn Quzmān, pour nommer le plus important, n’ont jamais formulées. D’autre part nous examinons les anthologies de zaǧal et des encyclopédies littéraires écrites en Orient pendant le 7 e /13 e siècle jusqu’au 9 e /15 e siècle pour mesurer l’importance des zaǧals andalous comparée à celle des zaǧals autochtones. Finalement nous avons identifié deux groupes distincts auxquels les zaǧǧālūn orientaux appartiennent et nous essaierons de mieux définir le lieu et la date où des zaǧǧālūn orientaux se sont manifestés pour la première fois.

The present paper presents a hitherto unstudied collection of twenty-six early Arabic poems (sixth to eighth centuries) on date palms. The poems are preserved in the Kitāb al-Fuṣūṣ (“Book of Gemstones”) of Ṣāʿid al-Baġdādī (ca. 335–417/945–1026), an Iraqi philologist and littérateur who made a career as a court poet in Muslim Spain. Despite its importance as a crop, the date palm was a topic very rarely raised in Abbasid poetry. As this unique collection shows, however, poems praising the date palm were more common in earlier times. The poems examined here express the benefits of date palm farming by contrasting the supposed ease and safety of agriculturists to the difficulties and risks faced by camel breeders. The repeated comparison of palm trees with camels conveys the tension between the sedentary and the nomadic lifestyles, as they co-existed in pre-Islamic and early Islamic Arabia.

In this paper, I argue that both concepts of “youth” (arabic “ šabāb ”) and “generation” (arabic “ ğīl ”) are in different ways misleading and problematic when applied in empirical research on Tunisians of lower age. While they are not affirmatively used and partly even rejected by the latter, they also appear inadequate when employed as analytical categories. Instead, as I will suggest, (historical) “age cohort” is an adequate reference category that can be qualitatively described according to the shared perceptions and actions of its respective members. Thereby, the focus on self-concepts and self-narratives appears to be particularly helpful in understanding the contemporary condition of Tunisians of lower age and their social mobilization practices. It reveals, among other findings, that their movements are not primarily directed at political and social change, though conventionally assumed, but rather express a search for greater possibilities of mobility and autonomy beyond both state and societal boundaries.

The topic of this article is the K. al-Makāsib (“A Note on Earnings”), an early theological text, written by al-Muḥāsibī (d. 243/857). While several studies on the first part exist, the second part has been largely ignored. Its subject is the concept of waraʿ (“scrupulousness”). The article contains a full translation and a commentary of the second part of the K. al-Makāsib , based on the only preserved manuscript. At the beginning of the text, waraʿ is defined as “to abstain from anything which displeases God.” This is about more than just the avoidance of what is forbidden and the fulfilment of what is commanded. There exist doubtful things ( shubuhāt ), for which it is unclear whether they fall under the forbidden or not. Piety demands avoidance of them. While religious law relates to human actions only, al-Muḥāsibī insists on the significance of “acting with the heart”. The pious must undertake a soul-searching ( muḥāsaba ) before taking any action. Many concrete examples of scrupulous behavior are mentioned. One topic is how to earn a living. Some recommend earning it by the work of one’s hands, others prefer begging, and yet others prefer to live off rubbish, or even off herbage alone. Asceticism with its different forms of starvation is discussed. A larger topic is the question of cooperation with a potentially immoral government, and, more narrowly, how to proceed when illegal money is received, particularly in the case of inheritance, or what it means “to help” someone else by committing forbidden acts.