The Excellence of the Arabs (Library of Arabic Literature, 39)
Language: English
Published by NYU Press, 2017
- Hardcover
- Used

Seller: Midtown Scholar Bookstore, Harrisburg, PA, U.S.A.Midtown Scholar Bookstore
AbeBooks seller since June 7, 2002
Condition: Used - Good
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Torn/worn dj. Good hardcover with some shelfwear; may have previous owner's name inside. Standard-sized.
Seller Inventory # mon0000357743
- Title
- The Excellence of the Arabs (Library of Arabic Literature, 39)
- Author
- Qutaybah, Ibn
- Publisher
- NYU Press
- Publication year
- 2017
- Condition
- Good
- Dust jacket
- Dust Jacket Included
- Binding
- hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 1479809578
- ISBN 13
- 9781479809578
The Excellence of the Arabs is a spirited defense of Arab identity―its merits, values, and origins―at a time of political unrest and fragmentation, written by one of the most important scholars of the early Abbasid era.
In the cosmopolitan milieu of Baghdad, the social prestige attached to claims of being Arab had begun to decline. Although his own family originally hailed from Merv in the east, Ibn Qutaybah locks horns with those members of his society who belittled Arabness and vaunted the glories of Persian heritage and culture. Instead, he upholds the status of Arabs and their heritage in the face of criticism and uncertainty.
The Excellence of the Arabs is in two parts. In the first, Arab Preeminence, which takes the form of an extended argument for Arab privilege, Ibn Qutaybah accuses his opponents of blasphemous envy. In the second, The Excellence of Arab Learning, he describes the fields of knowledge in which he believed pre-Islamic Arabians excelled, including knowledge of the stars, divination, horse husbandry, and poetry. And by incorporating extensive excerpts from the poetic heritage―“the archive of the Arabs”―Ibn Qutaybah aims to demonstrate that poetry is itself sufficient corroboration of Arab superiority.
Eloquent and forceful, The Excellence of the Arabs addresses a central question at a time of great social flux at the dawn of classical Muslim civilization: what did it mean to be Arab?
A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Sarah Bowen Savant is Professor at The Aga Khan University, London, and the author of The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran.
Peter Webb is a University Lecturer in Arabic Literature and Culture at Leiden University. He is the author of Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam as well as editor and translator of The Excellence of the Arabs (with James Montgomery and Sarah Savant) for the Library of Arabic Literature.
James E. Montgomery is Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity Hall. His three most recent books of hunting poetry are A Demon Spirit, In Deadly Embrace, and Fate the Hunter. In 2024 he was elected Fellow of the British Academy.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
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