Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I RELIGION AND LAW
- PART II SOCIETIES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
- PART III LITERATURE
- 13 Arabic literature
- 14 Persian literature
- 15 Turkish literature
- 16 Urdu literature
- 17 History writing
- 18 Biographical literature
- 19 Muslim accounts of the dār al-ḥarb
- PART IV LEARNING, ARTS AND CULTURE
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
18 - Biographical literature
from PART III - LITERATURE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2011
Edited by
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Introduction
- PART I RELIGION AND LAW
- PART II SOCIETIES, POLITICS AND ECONOMICS
- PART III LITERATURE
- 13 Arabic literature
- 14 Persian literature
- 15 Turkish literature
- 16 Urdu literature
- 17 History writing
- 18 Biographical literature
- 19 Muslim accounts of the dār al-ḥarb
- PART IV LEARNING, ARTS AND CULTURE
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Terms and definitions
Much of the so-called biographical literature in classical Arabic, Persian and Turkic has little in common with modern biography. Most of the pre-modern examples consist of short entries collected together in so-called biographical dictionaries. To modern readers such entries seem oddly uninformative. An entry on a poet, for example, may contain extensive citations of his or her verses, but practically nothing about his life. An entry on a jurist, similarly, will list his teachers and students, his works and his date of death; but it will not report his reasons for embarking upon the study of the law, or attempt to account for his professional successes and failures by referring to his quirks of personality. Because of these differences, some modern scholars refer to entries in collective works as ‘prosopography’, reserving the term ‘biography’ only for stand-alone works devoted to a single subject. Yet even the biographies proper display little interest in how the subject ‘came to be who he was’. His character is tacitly assumed to be fixed, and the succession of anecdotes merely displays it from different points of view.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The New Cambridge History of Islam , pp. 458 - 473Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
, The ‘Kashf al-maḥjūb’, the oldest Persian treatise on Sufism, trans. , Gibb Memorial Series 17, London, 1936 (repr.).Google Scholar
, Taʾrῑkh ʿajāʾib al-āthār fῑ al-tarājim wa al-akhbār, 3 vols. (Beirut, c. 1970), vol. II, p.Google Scholar
, ‘Biographical dictionaries: Inner structure and cultural significance’, in (ed.), The book in the Islamic world: The written word and communication in the Middle East, Albany, 1995 –122.Google Scholar
, Dhikr al-niswa al-mutaʿabbidāt al-ṣūfῑyat, ed. and trans. , as Early Sufi women, Louisville, 1999.Google Scholar
, Nūr al-qabas al-mukhtaar min al-muqtabas fῑ akhbār al-nuḥāh wa al-udabāʾ wa al-shuʿarāʾ wa al-ʿulamāʾ, ed. , Wiesbaden, 1964.Google Scholar
, Changing traditions: al-Mubarrad’s refutation of Sῑbawayh and the subsequent reception of the Kitāb, Leiden, 1997.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Imposing order: Reading the conventions of representation in al-Suyūṭῑ’s autobiography’, Edebiyât: Special Issue – Arabic Autobiography, n.s. 7, 2 (1997) –44.Google Scholar
, Classical Arabic biography: The heirs of the prophets in the age of al-Maʾmūn, Cambridge, 2000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, ‘Classical Arabic biography’, in and (eds.), Understanding Near Eastern literatures: A spectrum of interdisciplinary approaches, Wiesbaden, 2000 –87.Google Scholar
, ‘Probability, plausibility, and “spiritual communication” in classical Arabic biography’, in (ed.), On fiction and adab in medieval Arabic literature, Wiesbaden, 2005 –83.Google Scholar
, ‘Aḥmad b. al-Ṣalt and his biography of Abū Ḥanῑfa’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 116, 3 (1996) –17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, Zwischen Faktum und Fiktion: Eine Studie zum Umayyedenkalifen Sulaimān b. ʿAbdalmalik und seinem Bild in den Quellen, Wiesbaden, 1987.Google Scholar
, ‘The Wafayāt al-aʿyān of Ibn Khallikān: A new approach’, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 93, 4 (1973) –45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
, From Arab poet to Muslim saint: Ibn al-Fāriḍ, his verse, and his shrine, Columbia, SC, 1994.Google Scholar
, Making the Great book of songs: Compilation and the author’s craft in Abū l-Faraj al-Iṣbahānῑ’s Kitāb al-aghānῑ, London, 2003.Google Scholar
, ‘Frühe Erzählungen zu Maǧūn: Maǧūn als Figur ohne Lebensgeschichte’, in and (eds.), XXIV Deutscher Orientalistentag (1988), Stuttgart, 1990 –61.Google Scholar
, ‘Ṭabaqāt-biography: Law and orthodoxy in classical Islam’, Islamic Studies, 32 (1993) –96.Google Scholar
, ‘Controversy and its effects in the biographical tradition of al-Khaṭῑb al-Baghdādῑ’, Studia Islamica, 46 (1977) –31.Google Scholar
, The biographical tradition in Sufism: The ṭabaqāt genre from al-Sulamῑ to Jāmῑ, Richmond, 2001.Google Scholar
, ‘Zur Entwicklung der ʿilm al-riǧāl-Literatur im 3. Jahrhundert d. H. Qairawāner Miszellaneen IV’, Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 142, 1 (1992) –71.Google Scholar
, et al., Interpreting the self: Autobiography in the Arabic literary tradition, Berkeley, 2001.Google Scholar
, Women in Islamic biographical collections: From Ibn Sa‘d to Who’s who, Boulder, 1994.Google Scholar
, Ifḥām al-yahūd, ed. and trans. as Silencing the Jews in Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research, 32 (1964).
, Jalāl al-Dῑn al-Suyuṭῑ, vol. I: Biography and background; vol. II: al-Taḥadduth bi niʿmat Allāh, Cambridge, 1975.Google Scholar
, ‘Prophet, Calif, und Geschichte: Die Muhammed-Biographie des Ibn Isḥāq’, Oriens, 18–19 (1967) –91.Google Scholar
, Nationalism and the genealogical imagination: Oral history and textual authority in tribal Jordan, Berkeley, 1997.Google Scholar
, Politics, gender, and the Islamic past: The legacy of ʿĀisha bint Abῑ Bakr, New York, 1994.Google Scholar
, ‘History and biography’, in et al., History of Iranian literature, Dordrecht, 1968 –59.Google Scholar
et al. (eds.), Concordance et indices de la tradition musulmane, 8 vols., Leiden, 1933–88.Google Scholar
, ‘Arabic biographical writing’, in , and (eds.), The Cambridge history of Arabic literature, vol. III: Religion, learning, and science in the Abbasid period, Cambridge, 1990 –87.Google Scholar