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Essays in Arabic Literary Biography, 925-1350. Edited by Terri DeYoung and Mary St. Germain. Mîzân: Studien zur Literatur in der islamischen Welt, vol. 17,1. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011. Pp. vii + 371. euro68.
This is the first volume of a three-volume series whose general editor is Roger Allen. For each volume forty authors are selected from a particular period of Arab literary history, organized in a newly devised periodization, namely, 950-1350, 1350-1850, and 1850-1950. (Another volume on an earlier period was published independently-Arabic Literary Culture 500-950, ed. Shawkat Toorawa and Michael Cooperson [Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2005].) This new periodization is said to reflect cultural and intellectual changes in Arab literary history better than the traditional one based on political and dynastic changes. For each volume invited specialized scholars contribute independent literary biographies on the authors selected.
Each essay begins with a list of the selected author's works, followed by a list of editions and then a list of translations, and it ends with references. Arranged alphabetically by the authors' last names, the essays differ in length and, in this volume, may be as short as two and a half pages (e.g., on Rüzbihän Baql!) or as long as twenty-one (e.g., on Ibn al-cArab!). They also differ in approach, in depth and breadth, and, of course, in style; but they are all informative and some, really erudite.
As the two editors...