ARABIC AND NEAR EASTERN LANGUAGES Publication Record Agha, S. 2000. The 'Battle of the Pass': Two consequential
readings. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 63
(3):340355. Agha, Saleh Said. 1999. Review of Muhammad Qasim Zaman's
(1997) Religion and Politics under the Early Abbasids. International
Journal of Middle East Studies. Agha, S. S. 1999. The Arab population in Hurasan during the
Umayyad Period: some demographic computations. Arabica. . 2000. Abu Muslim's conquest of Khurasan - preliminaries
and strategy in a confusing text in Akhbar al-Dawlah al-Abbasiyyah. Journal
of the American Oriental Society 120 (3):333347. Baalbaki, R. 1999. Coalescence as a grammatical tool in
Sibawayhi's Kitab. Arabic Grammar and Linguistics, ed. Y. Suleiman,
86106. Edinburgh: Curzon. . 1999. Fiqh al-'Arabiyya al-Muqaran: Dirasat fi Aswat
al-Arabiyya wa-Sarfiha wa-Nahwiha 'ala Daw'
al-Lugat al-Samiyya (Arabic Comparative Linguistic Studies).
Beirut: Dar al-Ilm lil-Malayin. . 1999. A note on a controversial passage in Sibawayhi's
Kitab. Zeitschrift fόr Arabische Lingustik 37:912. . 1999. Expanding the 'amil ma'nawi: Suhayli's innovative
approach to the theory of regimen. Al-Abhath 47:2358. . 1999. Review of M. Bernards' Changing Traditions :
Al-Mubarrad's Refutation of Sibawayh and the Subsequent Reception of the
Kitab. Journal of the American Oriental Society 119:532533. . 2000. Review of Y. Suleiman's The Arabic Grammatical
Tradition. British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 27
(2):245247. . 2000. The occurrence of insha' instead of khabar : The gradual formulation of a grammatical rule. Linguistique Arabe et Sιmitique 1:193211. Heath, P.
2000. Creativity in the novels of Emile Habiby, with special reference to
Said the Pesoptimist. Tradition, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Arabic
Literature: Essays in Honor of Professor Issa J. Boullata, ed. Kamal
Abdel Malek and Wael Hallaq, 158-72. Brill: Leiden. . 2000.
Knowledge. Cambridge History of Arabic Literature 4: Andalusian Literature,
ed. Maria Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sell, 192-225. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. Abstracts, Conferences, and Proceedings Baalbaki, R. November
2000. Coherency versus pedagogy: The conscious bias of Arab
grammarians. Seminar on Arabic grammatical tradition, Oslo, Norway. Graduate Theses and Projects Ahmar, M. June 2001. Hysteron-proteron in grammar and
rhetorics [in Arabic]. R. Baalbaki. Research Projects Did Qahtabah b. Shabib al-Ta'i hail
from Kufah?
The celebrated Arab General of the revolution that toppled
the Arab Umayyad caliphate, Qahtabah b. Shabib al-Ta'i, is an enigmatic
historical figure. Issues pertaining to his biography are not merely
prosopographical. This is an enquiry into his origins, and an attempt
to correct some misconceptions pertaining thereto. (Article accepted and
forthcoming in Studia Islamica, fasc. 92, pp.187-193). Agha, S. S. Completed or in
progress at AUB Holistic poetic imagery, a partnership
of the senses
This project investigates the following two phenomena
within the parameter of classical Arabic poetry up to the end of the Umayyad
era: (i) partnership of the senses in creating "holistic" poetic
imagery; and (ii) the "cosmology" of the single word (system of
derivation: verb------> verbal nouns) as a dynamic creator of imagery
(verbal nouns thought to be nouns but which are originally not nouns----->
transformed, through poetic power, back to their power-house status, as
incubators and launchers of raw action embedded in their verbal genesis which
embraces all six senses--the five plus the whole). The poetic imagery
is paramountly visual, but essentially deficient, unless the four other
sensual effects are sought and internalized. Only then can the "holistic"
poetic imagery be elucidated and truly celebrated. (Paper being
prepared for a colloquium on "The Gaze" in Paris, September 20-23,
2001). Agha, S. S. Completed or in progress at AUB Insaf (equity) in pre-Islamic Arabic
poetry
Insaf (equity) is a concept. Al-Munsifat and al-Ashaar al-Munsifah are two specific terms apparently indicating an ill-defined poetic genre, based on a fluid concept of Insaf. The genre is pre-Islamic, and it packs potentials too "poetic" to be deemed merely poetic (i.e., too involved with the human condition to be viewed merely as an aesthetic expression). No reliable anthology of a well-defined poetry of Insaf exists yet. Once such an anthology is established and studied (both endeavors attempted here), a fresh and refreshing understanding of the heroics of pre-Islamic Arabia would become, not only possible, but also mandatory. Agha, S. S. Completed or in progress at AUB Qafiyyat Ta'abbata Sharran al-Mufaddaliyyah:
thuna'iyyat al-wasl wa al-sarm - namudhaj fi al-naqd al-tatbiqi This study adopts a method that shuns theory and attempts
to negotiate the poetic text on its own terms. First, the text itself
is established through extensive prospecting for, and multi-dimensional
appraisals of, the rich variety of reading choices with which the oral
traditions left us. The poem is then illuminated as a holistic poetic
creation. Completed or in progress at AUB The revolution that toppled the Umayyad Caliphate The source material on the revolution erroneously called
'Abbasid is infested with interpolations. Modern studies on the subject
may be divided into two schools: 1)the "classical" (best
represented by J. Wellhausen), and 2) the "revisionist" (best represented
by M.A. Shaban et al.). The classical school, though hampered by the
shortcomings of the sources, read closer to an acceptable
"scenario," but it lacked further corroborative materials.
The revisionist school, unchecked and fashionable, took advantage of these
shortcomings, and its scholars availed themselves of a "field-day,"
reading into the sources what exotic scenarios they willed. The
project, though a combination of historical-critical and quantitative
methods, deals with all major aspects of this seminal event of Arab Islamic
history, second in significance only to the advent of Islam itself. Agha, S.
S. Supported by URB Comparative studies in Arabic phonology, morphology,
syntax and Semitics The main findings on the above subject have been published
in a book entitled Fiqh al-cArabiyya al-Muqaran (1999). As a by-product
of the work, a large body of material was amassed on the phonetic and
morphological peculiarities of Arabic within the Semitic continuum.
This project sets out to trace the historical development of these linguistic
peculiarities and determine whether they can be traced to dialectal varieties
of fusha or the Proto-Semitic tendencies that other Semitic languages have
not exploited. Baalbaki, R. Completed or in progress at AUB Ilhaq as a morphological tool in Arabic grammar This paper investigates the methods of the grammarians in
the study of ilhaq (appending of forms and patterns). It argues that
the grammarians, as early as the second/eighth century, applied this method
to a host of examples in order to reduce the number of patterns in the closed
system of morphology. Furthermore, it aims at showing how the
grammarians incorporated the rules of ilhaq within their overall system of
morphological analysis. Baalbaki, R. Completed or in progress at AUB Theoretical coherency versus pedagogical attainability
in the Arabic grammatical tradition The purpose of this project is to show that the Arab
grammarians have been so heavily engaged in the application of their
generally accepted theory which is oriented to the justification of usage
that they were hardly concerned with the pedagogical attainability of their
interpretations. Several grammatical rules are to be analyzed from this
perspective, especially those which involve the restoration of missing
elements (taqdir) since they readily reveal the intervention of the
grammarians in sentence structure in order to defend their postulates, but
arguably at the risk of complexity and farfetchedness. Baalbaki, R. Completed or in progress at AUB Visual influences on Arabic linguistic sciences The adverse effect of tashif (misreading) on the correctness of any transmitted text has violently shaken the faith of the medieval Arab scholars in vision as a vehicle of learning. However, in spite of the fact that the grammarians were particularly aware of the pitfalls of visually based analysis, their methods of morphological study was heavily dependent on written forms. The paper traces the visual influences on traditional Arabic morphology, particularly in vowel elision, vowel mutation, and alternation of consonants. Baalbaki, R. Completed
or in progress at AUB |