Gibb Memorial Trust

The book investigates lines of connection and shared literary heritage between the Persianate and Malay-Indonesian worlds over many centuries. Majid Daneshgar provides a critical and comparative study of Persianate-Malay stories, with specific focus on Durr al-Majālis, or Pearl of Gatherings – a classical Islamic text produced by Sayf Zafar (late thirteenth–mid-fourteenth centuries CE), a writer and scholar of Central Asian background, during the Delhi Sultanate. The book illustrates how the Durr al-Majālis contains various legal, theological-philosophical, metaphysical, chivalrous and mystical accounts. In addition, it traces how the book travelled beyond the so-called ‘Balkans-to-Bengal’ borders and was copied, translated and annotated across Eastern Africa, Eastern Turkistan, Mongol-dominated China, Arabic-speaking Egypt and South East Asia. It demonstrates how this Persian collection of stories shaped the idea of Islam, Islamic teachings and stories across the Muslim World, and in the Malay-Indonesian World in particular.

Alongside the individual rules of God’s law (sharīʿa), there has been a vibrant history of more philosophical or theoretical discussions in Islamic thought. Where does God’s law come from? How are God’s rules to be discovered for situations not covered in the revealed sources? Who, within the Muslim community, can make a valid pronouncement on the content of the sharīʿa? The answers to these questions have been debated and discussed by Muslim scholars in the genre of literature called uṣūl al-fiqh, glossed in English language secondary literature as "Islamic legal theory". This volume contains editions and commentaries of hitherto un-edited manuscripts from the various strands of the Shiʿite tradition of Islamic thought (Zaydi, Ismaʿili and Twelver). A careful side-by-side reading of these texts and commentaries will help identify themes peculiar to the Shiʿite "family" of legal theories. The distinctive Shiʿite contribution to the history of uṣūl al-fiqh has not received the attention it deserves in contemporary scholarship; this volume forms part of wider attempt to bring the richness and diversity of Shiʿite uṣūl to the wider field.

Provides an unusual history of an important institution promoting Islamic scholarship in Britain

• Presents authoritative biographies of leading scholars by those working in the same field
• Brings together leading scholars of Middle Eastern history, literature, Islamic mysticism and religious studies to discuss their influential predecessors in these fields
• Draws on the unpublished archives of the Gibb Memorial Trust and first-hand memoirs
• Reveals how the Gibb Memorial Trust was able to promote and support the publication and study of key Middle Eastern sources for over a century

The Gibb Memorial Trust, founded at the start of the 20th century, comprised among its trustees some of the most celebrated and prominent orientalists of their day. Together, they sponsored and supported research on editing and translating Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts on a range of subjects, from history, literature, geography and poetry to Sufism and the Islamic sciences.

This volume covers the development of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies over the last 120 years or so, as seen through the biographies of the leading scholars of the period. It opens with a short history of the Trust, before presenting a series of short biographical and often personal appreciations of these eminent Middle Eastern scholars of the past, written by existing trustees. In providing a history of this important institution, the book shines a light on the history and development of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies in Britain more broadly.

Hikayat Abi l-Qasim al-Baghdadi (The Portrait of Abu l-Qasim al-Baghdadi) is an 11th-century Arabic work by Abu l-Mutahhar Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Azdi which tells the story of a Baghdadi party-crasher crashing a party in Isfahan. It is introduced by its author as a microcosm of Baghdad. This work, written in prose but containing numerous poems, is widely hailed among scholars as a narrative unique in the history of Arabic literature, but The Portrait also reflects a much larger tradition of banquet texts, from “Trimalchio’s Dinner Party” and Plato’s Symposium to the works of Rabelais. It also paints a portrait of a party-crasher who is at once a holy man and a rogue, a figure familiar among scholars of the ancient Cynic tradition or other portrayals of wise fools, tricksters, and saints from literatures around the Mediterranean and beyond. While some early scholars of The Portrait dismissed it as disgusting and obscene, this work, with its wealth of material-cultural, philosophical, spiritual, and literary treasures, is much more than just a “dirty book”. Following an introduction, which offers new insights into the relationship of the work to both its Greek predecessors and to its European descendants, the volume presents a new, improved edition of the Arabic text, together with a richly annotated translation, that aims at being both scholarly and readable, reflecting the often racy style of the Arabic. This makes it not only useful to specialists and students of medieval Arabic literature, but also accessible to a much wider general readership of those interested in comparative literature or “world literature”. There are extensive indexes of names, places, subjects, and rhymes.

This is a critical edition and translation of the medieval local history of Balkh, known as Faḍāʾil-i Balkh (“The Merits of Balkh”), which was completed in 610 Hijrī (1214 CE) in Arabic by Shaykh al-Islām Abū Bakr ʿAbd Allāh al-Wāʿiẓ and translated into Persian by ʿAbd Allāh al-Ḥusaynī in 676 Hijri (1278 CE). It is the Persian version which survives today and forms the source text for this book. Balkh is one of the most illustrious cities of the Islamicate East, and yet we know very little about life in the city during the first five centuries of Islam (8th-13th centuries CE). The Faḍāʾil-i Balkh, the oldest surviving local history of Balkh, changes that. The work is the sum of its parts, the first being a collection of accounts about the history of Balkh attributed largely to Muslim religious and legal scholars and their chains of transmission. The second part consists of original descriptions of Balkh’s economic, urban and cultural life. The researcher who wants to know about Balkh’s topography will need to look elsewhere, since in part three, which forms the bulk of the book, we learn about Balkh’s learned Islamic scholars. What makes the account fascinating is the up-close and personal account of each scholar, with intimate details not only of their intellectual ideas and milieu, but also of their personal circumstances, .e.g. their wives, children and servants, how they related to the landscape around them, the city and the region to which they belonged, as well as to the wider Islamicate world of caliphs and sultans. The detailed commentary and introduction to this new publication gives remarkable and fascinating insights into the self-perception of one erudite man of Balkh. He has left us a social history of the medieval Islamicate East, and this new book brings it to life in ways an English-speaking audience has not yet seen.

Mázandarán and Astarábád was first published as volume VII of the new series of the E.J.W. Gibb Memorial Series (1928). Much of the data was retrieved in the course of two expeditions by the author, one in spring of 1908 and the other between November 1909 and January 1910, the latter providing the chronological framework for Rabino’s observations along his itinerary. It is a remarkable work, the product of many years of the careful accumulation of information about a region cut off from the Iranian Plateau by the formidable barrier of the Alburz Mountains and enjoying a complex history commensurate with its peculiar physical geography and inaccessible valleys. The book is a mixture of gazetteer and travelogue, informed by detailed research not only in the historical sources available, but also in the works of previous European and local writers. Notable among its valuable qualities is the substantial selection of Persian inscriptions provided in addition to Rabino’s descriptive text. Here we have a scholarly and sensitive account of two Iranian provinces full of character and variety. This is a classic work that has long been out of print and an essential resource for subsequent work on the Caspian provinces, which all draw on the efforts of H. L. Rabino. Included with this new edition is a large-scale facsimile reproduction of the original accompanying map.

The poetry of pre-Islamic Arabia is a neglected tessera in the mosaic of Late Antiquity. It is the only literary corpus of that time that embodies the voices of the Arabs, and is, thus, a critical complementary resource for understanding the history not only of Arabian poetry, but also of Arabian ethos and ideology. Yet, as such, it remains little exploited for reasons large among which loom the ‘question of authenticity’, belief in the myth of ‘the empty Hijaz’, and indefensible assumptions of a primitivity that precludes self-awareness and abstract thought, let alone anything truly ethical or religious. By adopting a transparent approach that addresses these negative assumptions and more, this study demonstrates what is implicit in its title: that the ethics and poetry of sixth-century Arabia are an inseparable equation. Offering, first, a critical overview of key figures from the last hundred years – from Goldziher to Izutsu – who have substantially exploited this corpus to advance views on early Arabian ethos and religion, and, then, an analytic survey of recent major approaches to interpreting its meanings and forms, the study proceeds to a graded semantic analysis of select poems to build a ‘vocabulary’ that elucidates both the mechanisms of the poetry’s content and structure, and its profoundly psychological character. The poetry emerges as a stylized, common discourse, based in an organicist system of ethics that exploits concepts of gender, health and commerce, to reflect a distinct cosmology: one where the heart and body of the individual man is the micro-universe of a greater macrocosm. Weighed against the revolutionary vision of the Qurʾan, the language and figures of this world-view allow us to observe seminal details of a transformation that recasts a universe governed by chance, where virtue is to ‘gamble’ communal resources to ‘purchase’ life for generations to come, as a quasi-commercial investment of belief and striving, which may ‘purchase’ life in a world hereafter.

Shirvan, today mainly part of Azerbaijan, existed as an autonomous khanate, under Iranian influence, until 1820, when under pressure from Russia, the khan fled to Iran, and Shirvan was immediately annexed along with two neighbouring khanates. Thus the last independent region in the South Caucasus was now incorporated in Russian territory. In order to enumerate the population and especially to ascertain revenues, a survey was ordered to be conducted. The survey, titled The Description of the Shirvan Province, compiled in 1820, was eventually published in 1867. The number of copies printed was very few, and only a handful of copies now exist. The present work is a translation of the original survey. It details the Christian and Muslim population and the revenues collected from each district and village. Bournoutian’s extensive annotations and explanatory notes provide an accurate picture of the demography and economic conditions of a former Iranian province prior to its incorporation into the Russian Empire.

The diverse studies presented in this volume recount the production, understanding and organisation of Muslim literature, both in the Muslim world and Western Europe. First, there are bio-bibliographical studies of Middle Eastern and Muslim literature, in which contributors examine texts and their interrelations in a series of discrete studies, demonstrating how bio-bibliography is reliant on the resources devised and maintained by librarians. Recurrent themes include the vexed question of “authorship”; extant books, tracts or reports are attributed to particular authors, but their content, at times, seems to indicate an alternative author. In the second section, the focus is on the advancement of the study of this literary heritage outside of the Muslim world, primarily in Western Europe. These studies describe the processes and individuals within the development of the western study of the Islamicate world and reflect some of the interests of Paul Auchterlonie, to whom the volume is dedicated.

Al-Hujwīrī came from Ghazna, now in Afghanistan, then the capital of the mighty Ghaznavid Empire. He was a Sufi mystic who travelled widely in the Middle East and Transoxiana. The Kashf al-Maḥjūb was probably written in Lahore, where he is buried, not long before his death in about 1074. One of the oldest Sufi works in Persian, it is a substantial treatise aiming to set forth a complete system of Sufism. This is achieved partly by the discussion of acts and saying of the great figures of the past, partly by discussion of features of doctrine and practice and the examination of the different views adopted by different Sufi schools. It is enlivened by episodes from the author’s own experiences.

Al-Junayd (d. 910) was one of the most significant figures of the formative period of Islamic mystical thought and practice in the third to ninth centuries. This volume contains an account of his life, personality and writings; his doctrine; and both Arabic text and translation of his Rasa’il.

This description of the province of Fars, was written around the beginning of the 12th century A.D. The author cites his qualifications for it "I was well acquainted with the present condition of the people of Fars ... being well versed also in the events of their history and exactly acquainted with the story of their kings and rulers." This is a reprint of the edition of 1952.

Soon after their successful revolution in 750 AD, the Abbāsids supplanted the Umayyad dynasty, built the new city of Baghdad, Iraq which became the capital of the Islamic Empire. The civilization that the Abbāsids helped to create carried forth the torch of knowledge lit by ancient Greece, Rome, Byzantium, and Persia. Adding many of their own unique contributions, the Abbāsid dynasty left an indelible mark on the history of humankind. This current selection of ʿAbbāsid Studies presents a colourful mosaic of new research into classical Arabic texts that sheds light on significant historical, political, cultural and religious aspects of the ʿAbbāsid era and provides insight into how the fundamentals of philology are shaped. Wonderful vistas of ancient dreams open up while ʿAbbāsid armies clatter and collide; images are conjured of murderous caliphs, foreign looking littérateurs and talking objects. We see a lively self portrait of a scholar struggling with the presentation of his own image and a Persian courtier on exploratory missions around the globe obtaining eyewitness testimony of the wonders of the world. We learn of magic pools, all-seeing mirrors, the kidnapping of a lute-playing shepherd; a Baghdadi party-pooper at an Isfahani social gathering monopolising all participants with an amazing speech until the narrator drunkenly passes out on the floor, and much more. ʿAbbāsid Studies IV is the latest contribution to the new series of The Occasional Papers of the School of ʿAbbāsid Studies. The contributors to this book are David Bennett, Amikam Elad, Antonella Ghersetti, Joseph Lowry, Letizia Osti, Ignacio Sanchez, Emily Selove, John Turner, Johan Weststeijn, and Travis Zadeh.

This book is about an aspect of medieval Arabic culture and literature known in Arabic as mujùn (roughly ‘libertinism, licentiousness, frivolity, indecency, profligacy, shamelessness, impertinence’, etc.), a concept that students of mediaeval Arabic texts may find rather hard to define but which is a recurrent term and a widespread phenomenon in medieval Arabic literature, and probably common in real life. The social implications and the background of mujùn are focused on in an attempt to learn what the popularity of mujùn during a specific period of the medieval Middle East can tell us about the society and the culture that produced such works. It is a study of the society in which such literature flourished, of the values and norms of that society, and of the májin (the man who does or writes mujùn) rather than of mujùn in itself. The author uses many excepts from primary source texts to explore the nature, concepts and content of mujùn, including its vernacular language, religious irreverence and not infrequent indecency of subject matter, within its socio-religious context. It provides a critical inventory of the varied motifs of mujùn in literature so as to define this elusive term by way of an accumulation of concrete examples.

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume VI (originally published 1909) completes Gibb’s History of Ottoman Poetry. In 378 pages, it contains in printed Ottoman script the texts of all the poems translated by Gibb in the previous five volumes, transcribed from originals recovered by Browne from Gibb’s manuscripts and research papers. A photograph of Gibb, taken probably in the late 1890s, forms the frontispiece of this final volume.

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume V (originally published 1907) concludes Gibb’s study of Ottoman poetry. It contains three chapters on the ‘modern school of Ottoman poetry’ drafted by him and edited by Browne. Emerging around 1860, this modern school was a product of the Ottoman tanzimat reform era and was strongly influenced by the ‘inspiring genius’ of western, particularly French, literary models. To Gibb, it signified ‘a great awakening’. Chapter I provides a general introduction to the poets of the period and their literary and political circumstances. Chapter II is devoted to Şinasi Efendi (d. 1871), ‘the master who laid the foundation of the new learning’; chapter III presents Ziya Bey, later Pasha (d. 1880), a prolific writer in both prose and verse and translator of many French literary works into Ottoman. Gibb died before he could begin an intended study of the person he considered the greatest poet of this new school, Namik Kemal (d. 1888). Volume V contains over 100 pages of indices to all five volumes: of persons and places; of books, journals and poems; of ‘technical terms and Oriental words’, and of subjects. The indices were compiled by R. A. Nicholson.

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume II (originally published 1902) covers the period 1450 to 1520, the early ‘classical age’. For Gibb, the reign of Mehmed II (1451-81) was ‘the true starting point of Ottoman poetry’, when more verse was written in the increasingly Persianized literary idiom of the Ottoman court, in contrast to the relatively provincial Turkish style of most poets of the first period. Among the leading poets of this era are Cem Sultan (d. 1495), the brother of Bayezid II (1481-1512) held captive for many years in France and Italy; the judge and courtier Ahmed Pasha (d.c. 1496) and Necati, the son of a slave (d. 1509). Also discussed is the work of Mihri Hatun of Amasya (d. after 1512), one of the few known Ottoman women poets. Gibb provides extended summaries of the stories of Yusuf and Zuleika, and Leyla and Mecnun, both composed by Hamdi (d. 1509), as early Ottoman examples of traditional romances in the mesnevi style of rhymed couplets. Volume II contains two prefaces. The first is an obituary of Gibb by E. G. Browne, followed by a list of the Persian and Turkish manuscripts in Gibb’s library at the time of his death. The second is Gibb’s intended preface, countering criticisms of the first volume with a robust defence of his decision to use an archaic form of English in his translations.

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume IV (originally published 1905) covers Ottoman poets of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a period regarded by Gibb as one of transition between the classical age of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that of the modern school beginning around 1860. Persian influences upon Ottoman verse began to give way to more Turkish styles, the Ottomans having grown weary of being, according to Gibb, ‘the parrots of the Persians’. The two trends nevertheless continued side by side for some time, a contest between the new, more sprightly Romanticism, glowing ‘with a brightness of local colour’, as represented by Nedim (d. 1730), Sheykh Ghalib (d. 1799), and Sunbulzade Vehbi (d. 1809), and the remaining Persianist tradition exemplified by the poetry of the grand vezir Mehmed Raghib Pasha (d. 1763).

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume III (originally published 1904) covers both the second part of the ‘classical age’ of Ottoman poetry, from 1520 to the early seventeenth century, and the subsequent ‘late classical age’ to c. 1700. In Gibb’s understanding, this was the era of greatest Persian influence upon Ottoman poetry, and was at its most brilliant in the reign of Süleyman (1520-66). The majority of the most well known Ottoman poets flourished in these two centuries, drawn from all walks of life and many parts of the empire, from the chief jurisconsult Yahya Efendi (d. 1644) and the chief judge Baki (d. 1600), to the Nakshbandi sufi Lami’i Çelebi of Bursa (d. 1531), Fuzuli of Baghdad (d. 1556), the Albanian-born soldier Yahya Bey (d. 1575), the satirist Nef’i from Erzurum (executed c. 1635), and the man of letters from Urfa, Nabi Efendi (d. 1712). In addition, eight of the most popular verse romances written in this period are summarised in an appendix.

Mawlana Jalal al-Din Rumi’s great poem, the Mathnawi is one of the best known and most influential works of Muslim mysticism. Nicholson’s critical edition is based on the oldest known manuscripts, including the earliest, dated 1278 and preserved in the Mevlana Museum at Konya. It remains the standard text and is provided with diacritical marks to assist the student. The prose translation, similarly, is intended to be an exact and faithful guide to the Persian. The three volumes of English translation can either be bought as a set, or individually; together they comprise a complete translation. Volume 6 comprises a translation of Books V and VI.

In the past four decades since the field of late antique studies began to gather real momentum, scholars have debated the place of early Islam within the late antique world, particularly in relation to the issue of where and when ‘Late Antiquity’ ends. Although the Sasanian empire (in what is now modern Iran) became equally powerful as the Byzantine empire, and the two often forged their characters and practices on the basis of their relations with each other, that has rarely translated into equal coverage for the eastern part of the late antique world in studies of the period. Late Antiquity: Eastern Perspectives aims to redress this balance and situate Iran with the broader world of this era. Eight papers serve as case studies for considering narratives and perspectives other than those emanating from Byzantium or, more generally, ‘the West’. They demonstrate the potential of eastern source-material, particularly James Howard-Johnston’s double-length article which produces a detailed reconstruction of the Sasanian army.

The second of three volumes of Nicholson’s translation of Rumi’s great poem on Islamic mysticism.

One of the problems pervading the study of medieval Islamic technology is the lack of surviving technical treatises. Tradition tended to be handed down by example and by word of mouth, and apprenticeships could last for decades. Fortunately, however, occasional treatises do exist. The treatise “On swords and their kinds” was written by the 9th century Muslim philosopher Ya’qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. This work was commissioned by a powerful patron of scholarship, the Abbasid caliph Mu’tasim, and the content of the treatise presumably reflects the ruler’s general interest in his army and its equipment, and his specific interest in the technical aspects of sword production. In this work, Kindi discusses the difference between iron and steel, distinguishes different qualities of sword blade, and different centres of swordsmithing. He refers to the Indian Ocean trade in steel ingots and to the distinctive character of European swords of the period. He includes technical terms used by the makers, and distinguishes swords by their physical features – form, measurements, weight, watered pattern, sculptured details, or inlaid ornaments. This publication includes the text and a translation of Kindi’s treatise, and a detailed commentary on the work. The volume also includes a translation of Friedrich Schwarzlose’s work on swords, which is based on the hundreds of references to swords in early Arabic poetry. Written in German, this extraordinary compendium of information was first published some 120 years ago; this volume makes it available again, and for the first time in English.

Murtada al-Zabidi was a Humanist scholar and a Muslim, whose twelfth-century writings are here examined in the context of their geographical and historical setting. The period when Zabidi was writing saw a shift in the balance of power from the Muslim empires to the Western world, reflected in the stories he told of his travels from India on to Cairo, across vast distances and coming across an extraordinary range of people. The five chapters in this work look at various aspects of Zabidi’s life and times, the first one focusing on his life and career and forms a background to studies of his work. The second looks at Zabidi’s writing and publishing and the third at his notes on his friends, teachers, students and acquaintances. Chapter four assesses his two largest works; his Arabic lexicon and his commentary on Gazzali’s Ihya . Finally, chapter five explores his second major literary achievement, his large commentary on Gazzali’s Ihya ulum al-din .

The Qur’an is the sacred book of Islam. For Muslims it is the word of God revealed in Arabic by the archangel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad, and thence to mankind. Originally it was delivered orally: traditional sources indicate that Muhammad always recited his message. He was a preacher; he delivered good news; and he warned; thus, the Qur’an is a collection of sermons, exhortations, guidance, warnings and pieces of encouragement. This new translation is unique. The result of decades of study of the text, of the traditional Muslim authorities and of the works of other scholars, special thought has been given to what the text would have meant to its original hearers. The traditional verse structure has been maintained, and where necessary verses have been further divided into sections to indicate where there are natural points for pause, and to emphasize the original oral nature of the text. This is the first translation of the Qur’an to adopt such an approach. The oral nature of the text presents problems for the translator, for recitation frequently gives the text a dimension that does not come across in silent reading. Some previous translators have introduced bridging phrases drawn from past commentators, resulting in interruptions to the flow of the text. Alan Jones’s approach underlines the need for a sympathetic response to the oral and aural structures of the Arabic of the Qur’an. An introductory note to each sura provides some background material on the contents of the sura and its dating, and the notes are kept to a minimum. The translation is preceded by a brief Introduction describing the religion and culture of the Arabian peninsula, and the land and its peoples, in the years before Muhammad’s birth. There is an account of his life: his early years in Mecca, the hijra, the migration to Medina, and his years there. And there is an account of the Qur’an and the transmission of the text.

The first of three volumes of the English translation of Rumi’s great poem on Muslim mysticism.

The Hudud al-‘Alam, written in AD 982 for a Prince of Guzganan (located in the North West of modern Afghanistan), is a geography covering the whole known world and one of the earliest works of Persian prose. It was designed to accompany a map and, though the product of cabinet scholarship rather than original observation, it preserves much material from earlier compositions which are lost and shows originality in its organization. A facsimile edition of the unique MS, which came to light in Bukhara in the late 19th century, was published in Russia in 1930 by Barthold but it was left to Minorsky to make the data widely accessible by his English translation and his extensive commentary, which analyses the work’s position in the early Islamic geographical tradition and identifies and discusses the places mentioned in the light of a wealth of other information. V. Minorsky was a former Professor of Persian in the University of London and his other translations include Tadhkirat al-Muluk, A Manual of Safavid Administration in this series.

The History of Ottoman Poetry, first published in six volumes between 1900 and 1909, was the principal product of E.J.W. Gibb’s devotion to Ottoman Turkish literature. By the time of his early death in 1901 only the first volume had appeared in print. The remainder was almost complete and was seen through the press by Gibb’s friend and literary executor, the Persian scholar E. G. Browne. The History was designed to provide the first extended account in English of Ottoman literature. The first four volumes cover four developmental phases, largely under the influence of Persian literature, from around 1300 to the middle of the nineteenth century. The fifth volume introduces the ‘New School’ of Ottoman poetry produced in Gibb’s own era and inspired by French models. The sixth volume contains in Ottoman printed script the texts of all works quoted in English translation in the previous volumes. No comparable study has appeared in English since Gibb’s magnum opus. His History of Ottoman Poetry has become a classic work which is still widely referred to and valuable for students, scholars and anyone with a general interest in Middle Eastern literature and culture. Volume I (originally published 1900, during Gibb’s lifetime) begins with an introduction on the origin, character and scope of Ottoman poetry, and provides an explanation of its principal verse forms and rhyme schemes. Gibb then discusses poets of the period 1300 to around 1450, considering this a formative era in which poetry was generally more ‘West-Turkish’ in style and strongly influenced by local dialect than Ottoman later became. Foremost among the poets discussed are Sultan Veled (d. 1312), son of the revered mystic Celaleddin Rumi; Yunus Emre (fl. early 1300s), a master of ‘rugged’ mystical verse in the Turkish syllabic metre; and Süleyman Çelebi (d. 1422) author of the Mevlid, a ‘Hymn on the Prophet’s Nativity’ which acquired a central place in Turkish culture through its recital annually during celebrations on the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad. Gibb’s method in all volumes is to supply biographical information on each writer, drawn primarily from Ottoman biographical dictionaries of poets, followed by English translations of some of their more significant poems and synopses of longer texts. For all these elements, a wealth of explanatory footnotes provides extra cultural depth.