Selected contents of this volume (1999), collected in memory of Naphtali Kinberg: Rachel Milstein, "The Evolution of a Visual Motif: The Temple and the Ka'ba"; Gabriel M. Rosenbaum, "A Certain Laugh: Serious Humor and Creativity in the Adab of Ibn al-Gawzi"; Aryeh Levin, "Sibawayhi's Attitude to the Language of the Quran"; Kees Versteegh, "Loanwords from Arabic and the Merger of d/d"; Toufic Fahd, "Adab: Poesie, Prose, Proverbes"; Richard C. Steiner, "Philology as the Handmaiden of Philosophy in R. Saadia Gaon's Interpretation of Genesis 1:1"; Dominique et Marie-Therese Urvoy, "Un aspect particulier de relation entre adab et falsafa"; Joseph Sadan, "Arabic Tom 'n Jerry Compositions: A Popular Composition on a War between Cats and Mice and a Maqama on Negotiations and Concluding Peace between a Cat and a Mouse"; Ulrich Marzolph, "Adab in Transition: Creative Compilation in Nineteenth-Century Print Tradition"; David Wasserstein, "A West-East Puzzle: On the History of the Proverb 'Speech in Silver, Silence in Golden." Israel Oriental Studies has ceased publication with volume 20.

Winner of the 2021 Southeast Regional Middle East and Islamic Studies Society Book Prize Of the available sources for Islamic history between the seventh and eighth centuries CE, few are of greater importance than al-Baladhuri's Kitab Futuh al-buldan (The Book of the Conquest of Lands). Written in Arabic by a ninth-century Muslim scholar working at the court of the 'Abbasid caliphs, the Futuh's content covers many important matters at the beginning of Islamic history. It informs its audience of the major events of the early Islamic conquests, the settlement of Muslims in the conquered territories and their experiences therein, and the origins and development of the early Islamic state. Questions over the text's construction, purpose, and reception, however, have largely been ignored in current scholarship. This is despite both the text's important historical material and its crucial early date of creation. It has become commonplace for researchers to turn to the Futuh for information on a specific location or topic, but to ignore the grander – and, in many ways, more straightforward – questions over the text's creation and limitations. This book looks to correct these gaps in knowledge by investigating the context, form, construction, content, and early reception history of al-Baladhuri's text.

The Foundations of Arabic Linguistics, IV, contains sixteen studies on grammatical theories from the earliest period of Arabic grammar (end 8th century C.E.) and the evolution of theory by later grammarians.

The notion of adab is at the very heart of the Islamicate cultures. Born in the crucible of the Arabic and Persian civilisations of the Late Antiquity period, nourished by Greek, Syriac and Indian influences, this polysemic notion could cover a variegated range of meanings, ranging from good behaviour, good manners, etiquette, proper knowledge of the rules, to belles-lettres, and finally, literature. This volume addresses the notion of adab through four perspectives, which correspond to the four parts into which it is divided: “Origins”; “Transmissions”; “Metamorphosis” of the “Origins” and finally “Origins” through the lens of modernity.

The majority of these articles dedicated to Michael G. Carter address aspects of Classical Arabic grammar. Ramzi Baalbaki discusses Mu'addib's treatise Daqa-'iq al-Tas.rif. Kees Versteegh considers questions of the government of 'inna in a treatise by the grammarian al-Warraq. Yasir Suleiman considers the fierce extra-linguistic debates which took place in the wake of two recent publications provocatively featuring Sibawayhi's name in the title. Pierre Larcher treats questions of authenticity surrounding a longish quotation from al-Farabi's Kitab al-'alfaz wa-l-huruf. Adrian Gully addresses the relationship between two important treatises on syntax and rhetoric from the eighth and sixth centuries AH respectively. Georges Bohas and Abderrahim Saguer consider the extent to which Arabic roots display a biliteral core which can be assigned a fairly constant semantic value. James Dickins provides an in-depth analysis of the system of verbal diatheses in Central Urban Sudanese Arabic. Werner Diem investigates the euphemistic use of the root lhq in its first and fourth forms to refer to death. Ronak Husni and Janet Watson analyse typical patterns of errors in Arabic essays written by English-speaking learners of Arabic. Finally, in a case study of the medieval translations of Aristotle's Poetics, Lutz Edzard and Adolf Kohnken look at the central status of Arabic for the transmission of Classical knowledge.

In The Subjunctive Mood in Arabic Grammatical Thought Arik Sadan outlines the grammatical theories on the na?b (subjunctive mood) in Classical Arabic. Special attention is given to S?bawayhi and al-Farr??, who represent the Schools of al-Ba?ra and al-K?fa respectively.

The reign of al-Muqtadir (295-320/908-32) is a crucial and controversial epoch in the history of the Abbasid empire. Al-Muqtadir’s regime has traditionally been depicted as one of decline, when the political power of the caliphate and the lustre of its capital began to crumble. This book not only offers a substantial investigation of the idea and reality of decline, but also provides new interpretations of the inner workings of the court and the empire. The authors, four specialists of Abbasid history, explore the formal and informal power relationships that shaped politics at the court, involving bureaucrats, military, harem, courtiers and of course al-Muqtadir himself. A study of the topography of Baghdad completes this vivid picture of the court and its capital.