Muhsin Al-Musawi
Biographic Data
| ID | 579749 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Muhsin Al-Musawi |
| GIVEN NAMES | Muhsin |
| FAMILY NAME | Al-Musawi |
| SIGNATURE | AL-MUSAWI M |
| AFFILIATIONS | 1Columbia University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 10 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 2 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Imaginative Geographies in the Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters
This contribution prepares for a lengthy study of imaginative geography, and its metanarrative as an empowering narrative strategy. The classical and medieval Arab-Islamic geographer was not necessarily a geographer per se. Philologists often use their knowledge of space to construct a wide ranging inquiry that happened to serve generations of geographers. A close reading in a number of explanatory commentaries and marginalia helps to perceive th…
A Missing Link in a Thousand and One Nights Scholarship
This article argues that scholarship has been missing the pre-Scheherazade dynamic scenes that set the stage for further action and narrative. These preludinal sites function as the stepping stone for action, a series of encounters that initiate and perpetuate instability and disequilibrium. It draws attention to the unnamed queens as prototypes for Scheherazade, the abducted bride, the three ladies of Baghdad, and many other women in unfolding v…
In remembrance of human glory
Yusuf al-Ani’s commitment to have artistic expression play a leading role in the effort to raise popular consciousness through artists’ accurate portrayals of the social and political condition of Iraq and the wider Arab world are examined in the context of his remembrances of contributors he witnessed over the length of his career. In this collection al-Ani investigated a wide array of voices through a memorialization of Iraqi and other Arab int…
Postcolonial Theory in the Arab World
I take the belated and confused response to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as due not only to the pretentious “verbosity” of the first translation, but also to objective circumstances of a political and ideological nature. Frantz Fanon, for instance, made a significant belated presence in the 1960s through translation and ultimate appeal to the rising critique of the national elite thereafter. Gramsci was already known among the Left. Not so is…
The Republic of Letters
This reading rewrites the nahḍah , as the other appellation for Arab modernity, and interrogates it through a postcolonial critique. The nahḍah is usually addressed in terms of the encounter with Europe, the indebtedness to and engagement with the Enlightenment discourse at the turn of the last century. I dispute more commonplace negativist readings of the past by nahḍah scholars and direct attention instead to other competing trends that enhance…
Editor’s Preface
Beyond the Modernity Complex
The purpose of this paper is to study Abd al-Hakīm Qāsim’s Ayyām al-insān al-sabah (1969; The Seven Days of Man) and its sequel al-Mahdī (1977) as post-Nahdah self-narratives that leave behind the complex encounter with the West and bypass thereby the modernity binary of a backward tradition versus the offers of a European civilization. The schizophrenic narratives of encounter have confined Arabic narrative and limited its potential to engage in…
Abbasid Popular Narrative
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Scheherazade's Nonverbal Narratives
Although a great deal of research and criticism has been done on The Thousand and One Nights, very little is done on its nonverbal narrative components. While speech and, later, writing make up the communication system between the audience and the story teller, there is much that is left for the reader to imagine in terms of non-speech acts, icons, mysterious inscription, specific dishes, paintings, and talismanic means that operate as narrative …
The "Mansion" and the "Rubbish Mounds
The purpose of this reading is to assess specific tales in The Thousand and One Nights in the context of the Arabic narrative tradition. While the first sections argue the marginalization of such tales in mainstream criticism, the rest concentrates on the fluctuations in taste for narrative, the reasons behind the expressed fears of the guardians of religion and morality, and the suspicions that were behind the opposition to this kind of narrativ…
The Republic of Letters
This reading rewrites the nahḍah , as the other appellation for Arab modernity, and interrogates it through a postcolonial critique. The nahḍah is usually addressed in terms of the encounter with Europe, the indebtedness to and engagement with the Enlightenment discourse at the turn of the last century. I dispute more commonplace negativist readings of the past by nahḍah scholars and direct attention instead to other competing trends that enhance…
The "Mansion" and the "Rubbish Mounds
The purpose of this reading is to assess specific tales in The Thousand and One Nights in the context of the Arabic narrative tradition. While the first sections argue the marginalization of such tales in mainstream criticism, the rest concentrates on the fluctuations in taste for narrative, the reasons behind the expressed fears of the guardians of religion and morality, and the suspicions that were behind the opposition to this kind of narrativ…
Scheherazade's Nonverbal Narratives
Although a great deal of research and criticism has been done on The Thousand and One Nights, very little is done on its nonverbal narrative components. While speech and, later, writing make up the communication system between the audience and the story teller, there is much that is left for the reader to imagine in terms of non-speech acts, icons, mysterious inscription, specific dishes, paintings, and talismanic means that operate as narrative …
Abbasid Popular Narrative
Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in the Humanities, Social Sciences, International Law, and Biology. With offices in the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the USA and Asia, Brill today publishes more than 360 journals and 2,000 new books and reference works each year as well as a large number of databases and primary source research collections
Editor’s Preface
Beyond the Modernity Complex
The purpose of this paper is to study Abd al-Hakīm Qāsim’s Ayyām al-insān al-sabah (1969; The Seven Days of Man) and its sequel al-Mahdī (1977) as post-Nahdah self-narratives that leave behind the complex encounter with the West and bypass thereby the modernity binary of a backward tradition versus the offers of a European civilization. The schizophrenic narratives of encounter have confined Arabic narrative and limited its potential to engage in…
The Republic of Letters
This reading rewrites the nahḍah , as the other appellation for Arab modernity, and interrogates it through a postcolonial critique. The nahḍah is usually addressed in terms of the encounter with Europe, the indebtedness to and engagement with the Enlightenment discourse at the turn of the last century. I dispute more commonplace negativist readings of the past by nahḍah scholars and direct attention instead to other competing trends that enhance…
Postcolonial Theory in the Arab World
I take the belated and confused response to Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) as due not only to the pretentious “verbosity” of the first translation, but also to objective circumstances of a political and ideological nature. Frantz Fanon, for instance, made a significant belated presence in the 1960s through translation and ultimate appeal to the rising critique of the national elite thereafter. Gramsci was already known among the Left. Not so is…
In remembrance of human glory
Yusuf al-Ani’s commitment to have artistic expression play a leading role in the effort to raise popular consciousness through artists’ accurate portrayals of the social and political condition of Iraq and the wider Arab world are examined in the context of his remembrances of contributors he witnessed over the length of his career. In this collection al-Ani investigated a wide array of voices through a memorialization of Iraqi and other Arab int…
Imaginative Geographies in the Medieval Islamic Republic of Letters
This contribution prepares for a lengthy study of imaginative geography, and its metanarrative as an empowering narrative strategy. The classical and medieval Arab-Islamic geographer was not necessarily a geographer per se. Philologists often use their knowledge of space to construct a wide ranging inquiry that happened to serve generations of geographers. A close reading in a number of explanatory commentaries and marginalia helps to perceive th…
A Missing Link in a Thousand and One Nights Scholarship
This article argues that scholarship has been missing the pre-Scheherazade dynamic scenes that set the stage for further action and narrative. These preludinal sites function as the stepping stone for action, a series of encounters that initiate and perpetuate instability and disequilibrium. It draws attention to the unnamed queens as prototypes for Scheherazade, the abducted bride, the three ladies of Baghdad, and many other women in unfolding v…
History (10 works) · Art (8 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Narrative (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Archaeology (5 works) · Islamic Studies and History (5 works)