Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī

In this fascinating study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi shows how deeply Islamic heritage and culture is embedded in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (known to many as the Arabian Nights) and how this integration invites readers to make an Islamic milieu. Conservative Islam dismisses The Thousand and One Nights as facile popular literature, and liberal views disregard the rich Islamic context of the text. Approaching the text with a fresh and unbiased eye, al-Musawi reads the tales against Islamic schools of thought and theology and recovers persuasive historical evidence to reveal the cultural and religious struggle over Islam that drives the book's narrative tension and binds its seemingly fragmented stories. Written by a number of authors over a stretch of centuries, The Thousand and One Nights depicts a burgeoning, urban Islamic culture in all its variety and complexity. As al-Musawi demonstrates, the tales document their own places and periods of production, reflecting the Islamic individual's growing exposure to a number of entertainments and temptations and their conflict with the obligations of faith. Aimed at a diverse audience, these stories follow a narrative arc that begins with corruption and ends with redemption, conforming to a paradigm that concurs with the sociological and religious concerns of Islam and the Islamic state. By emphasizing Islam in his analysis of these entertaining and instructional tales, al-Musawi not only illuminates the work's consistent equation between art and life, but he also sheds light on its underlying narrative power. His study offers a brilliant portrait of medieval Islam as well, especially its social, political, and economic institutions and its unique practices of storytelling.

The Islamic Context of the Thousand and One Nights

موسوي، محسن جاسم

رواية

درب الزعفران

ادب الحرب القصصي في العراق : دراسة ومختارات

المرئي والمتخيل

maqāl fī al-nawʻ al-adabī

ʻAṣr al-riwāyah

Muḥsin JÅasim MÅusawÅi

This volume, dedicated to Jaroslav Stetkevych, includes a number of original contributions that signify a rhetorical shift in the social sciences and Arabic studies. The articles and essays deal with Orientalism, classical Arabic tradition, Andalusian poetry, Francophone literature, translation, architecture and poetry, comparative studies, and Sufism. Literary production is studied in its own terms to situate these literary concerns in the mainstream of cultural studies. The outcome is a solid and highly sophisticated scholarship that makes this book one of the most needed among scholars and students of comparative literature, Arabic poetics and politics, Orientalism, Afro-Asian studies, East/West encounters and translation.

Sites of Rhetorical Turn in Contemporary Scholarship

Arabic Literary Thresholds

Arabian nights; sociological aspects; history and criticism.

مجتمع الف ليلة و ليلة

Muḥsin Ǧāsim al- Mūsawī

Muhsin Jassim Ali

Muḥsin J−asim M−usaw−i

A Study of Nineteenth-century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights

Scheherazade in England

Muhsin Jassim Al-Musawi

Muhsin Jasim Musawi

Muḥsin Ǧasim al- Mūsawī

Professor of Arabic Literature Muhsin Al-Musawi

This work covers the postcolonial in Arabic fiction. It discusses and questions a large number of novels show cultural diversity in the Arab world. It highlights engagements with postcolonial issues that relate to identity formation, the modern nation-state, individualism, and nationalism.

Debating Ambivalence

The Postcolonial Arabic Novel

Muhsin Al-Musawi

The book explores some of the most important Arabic and Islamic poetry, prose, and fiction from the twentieth century and discusses what secular intellectuals can do to reconnect with the masses.

Religion in Modern Arabic Literature

Islam on the Street

Muḥsin Jāsim Mūsawī

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