Please join us for our upcoming seminar on: "Persian Poets and Their Revolutionary Arabic Poetry" by Prof. Ali Hussein (University of Haifa).

Monday, April 19, 2021, from 17:30 to 19:00 (Israel time) via zoom.

To receive the Zoom link, please subscribe by contacting Alon Ben Yehuda on alon.ben-yehuda@mail.huji.ac.il.

ABSTRACT

Arabic poets of Persian origin did not accept the traditional poetic canon of classical Arab society. They used the Arabic language — very skillfully — to express non-traditional Arabic thoughts and norms, and also to establish a new, previously nonexistent poetic genre.

I present here some of the revolutionary innovations of the Persian poets, using the example of Bashshār b. Burd (d. ca. 785 CE). Unquestionably, their innovations broker between the two cultures: Arab on one side and Persian (or at least non-Arab) on the other. A key question is to what degree should these poets, illustrated by Bashshār b. Burd, be considered part of Arab culture and literature.  Should they be identified as Arab poets, or simply Persian poets who wrote in Arabic?

Ali Hussein is an associate professor for classical Arabic poetry at the Department of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Haifa. Over the past few years he has worked on the development of the balaghah of Arabic poetry from its early stages in the 5th century C.E. until later Islamic periods (the 15th century). In his ISF granted research, Hussein is studying the development of humor in this poetry. He has several publications, among them "The Lightning-Scene in Ancient Arabic Poetry: Function, Narration, and Idiosyncrasy in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Poetry. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrasowitz Verlag, 2009. In the series Arabische Studien", and "The Rhetorical Fabric of the Traditional Arabic Qasida in Its Formative Stages: A Comparative Study of the Rhetoric in Two Traditional Poems by Alqama l-Fahl and Bashshar b. Burd. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2015. In the series Abhandlungen fuer die Kunde des Morgenlandes”.