Poet and Hero in the Persian Book of Kings

Olga M. Davidson | 28 December 2018

The History of Beyhaqi: The History of Sultan Mas‘ud of Ghazna, 1030–1041, Volume III

Abu’l-Fażl Beyhaqi, a secretary at the court of a number of Ghaznavid rulers in eastern Iran and Afghanistan in the early Middle Ages, is a most perceptive, as well as intriguing, commentator on the history of the Islamic Near East. The surviving volumes of his massive project, dealing in depth with the years 1030–1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature… Read more

The History of Beyhaqi: The History of Sultan Mas‘ud of Ghazna, 1030–1041, Volume II

Abu’l-Fażl Beyhaqi, a secretary at the court of a number of Ghaznavid rulers in eastern Iran and Afghanistan in the early Middle Ages, is a most perceptive, as well as intriguing, commentator on the history of the Islamic Near East. The surviving volumes of his massive project, dealing in depth with the years 1030-1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature… Read more

The History of Beyhaqi: The History of Sultan Mas‘ud of Ghazna, 1030–1041, Volume I

Abu’l-Fażl Beyhaqi, a secretary at the court of a number of Ghaznavid rulers in eastern Iran and Afghanistan in the early Middle Ages, is a most perceptive, as well as intriguing, commentator on the history of the Islamic Near East. The surviving volumes of his massive project, dealing in depth with the years 1030–1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature… Read more

Heroic Kṛṣṇa

Heroic Krsna is a portrait of a pre-Hindu and pre-classical figure of a superhuman hero who in time became the divinity Krsna, an incarnation of Visnu. This is a picture, drawn from the epic Mahābhārata, of an archaic warrior who excelled as a charioteer; in fact this is the best depiction that we presently possess in any epic corpus of a charioteer type. Krsna is also described in his role of moral instructor,… Read more

On the Wonders of Land and Sea

On the Wonders of Land and Sea: Persianate Travel Writing initiates a comparative study of non-European travel writers in the eastern Islamic or Persianate world from the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries. The essays in this volume discuss travel narratives by male and female Muslim and Parsi/Zoroastrian travelers in the Hijaz, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Europe. Focusing on the literary and linguistic aspects of the travelogues, the essays… Read more

The Last of the Rephaim

The figure of the giant has haunted the literatures of the ancient Mediterranean world, from the Greek Gigantomachy and other Aegean epic literatures to the biblical contexts of the ancient Near East. In this volume, Brian Doak argues that the giants of the Hebrew Bible are a politically, theologically, and historiographically generative group, and through their oversized bodies readers gain insight into central aspects of Israelís symbolic universe. All that… Read more

Ruse and Wit

The essays in Ruse and Wit examine in detail a wide range of texts (from nonsensical prose, to ribald poetry, titillating anecdotes, edifying plays, and journalistic satire) that span the best part of a millennium of humorous and satirical writing in the Islamic world, from classical Arabic to medieval and modern Persian, and Ottoman Turkish (and by extension Modern Greek). While acknowledging significant elements of continuity in the humorous across distinct languages,… Read more