(original web document: http://www.haverford.edu/relg/sells/rel262.html)

Islamic Literature and Civilization

This course begins with pre-Islamic Arabic poetry and the Qur'an the wellsprings of Arabic literature and much of subsequent literature in the Islamic world. The discussion of the Qur'an will focus upon its character as a text, the performative nature of its textuality as embodied in calligraphy and traditions of recitation; its non-linear or anti-linear character; and literary approaches to the Islamic notion that there is something about it that is "inimitable." Special attention will be paid to the relationship of the Qur'an to Islamic theology, Islamic philosophy, Arabo-Islamic music, and other forms of Islamic culture. In the area of Islamic philosophy, we will read the influential philosophical novel of Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan.

We then follow the poetic tradition, especially love lyric, through manifestations in later Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Urdu traditions, exploring poems that are considered secular, those that are considered religious or mystical, and most often, those that inhabit an ambiguous space between secular and religious.Arabesque, a term for artistic patterns in the Arabic and Islamic world, will be examined from both literary and architectural points of view, with a discussion of the issue of iconoclasm (the rejection of images in art and literature), non-linear aesthetics, and various interpretations of the role of arabesque aesthetics in Islamic cultures.The final section of the course is dedicated to modern writings in prose and poetry from the world of Islam, with works by Lila Abu Lughod, Mahshid Amirshahi, Tayeb Saleh, and Naguib Mahfuz, with a focus on those works that explore the tension between the tradition world of local Islam and modern colonial and post-colonial cultures.

The class will be primarily a discussion class, based upon the readings and the questions and issued posed by the students on those readings at the beginning of each session. Occasionally short background lectures will be given to fill in the historical and cultural context of areas that are seen in need of clarification.

Requirements: 2 short papers, class presentations, consistent attendance and participation, midterm, final paper. No extensions are given except for serious illness or family emergency on request from the dean. Late work will be penalized.

Required Readings:

• Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments
• Frances Pritchett, Nets of Awareness (selected passages will be read)
• Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, Lenn Goodman Translation (selected passages will be read)
• Tayeb Saleh, Season of Migration to the North
• Tayeb Saleh, The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories
• Michael Sells, Early Islamic Mysticism (EIM) (selected sections will be read intensively)
• Michael Sells, Approaching the Qur'an (Qur'anic Translations and Commentary, bound manuscript)
• Reading Packet: Islamic Lyrical Poetry