Shawkat M Toorawa
Biographic Data
| ID | 698073 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shawkat M Toorawa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shawkat M |
| FAMILY NAME | Toorawa |
| SIGNATURE | TOORAWA S M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1945-1154 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 39 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 38 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
ʿArīb Puts al-Wāṯiq in His Place
In this essay, I analyse an anecdote in the Nisāʾ al-ḫulafāʾ of Ibn al-Sāʿī (d. 674/1276) in which ʿArīb (d. 277/890–1) describes an exchange between al-Wāṯiq (d. 232/847), his slave Farīda (fl. 3rd/9th c.), and one of Farīda’s unnamed female servants (fl. 3rd/9th c.). I show how the anecdote’s visuality and spatiality, and the ensuing visualisation in which readers engage, enable ʿArīb, herself once a slave, to contrast the caliph’s power with t…
The Qur’anic Story of Joseph in Five Acts
A Rhyming Translation of Sūrat al-Layl (Q. 92)
Cadenced Rhyming Translations of Sūrat al-Nabaʾ (Q. 78) and Sūrat al-Takwīr (Q. 81)
A Translation of Sūrat al-Kahf (Q. 18) ‘The Cave’
Introduction to Special Issue
Arabic Belles Lettres
Arabic Belles Lettres
Arabic Belles Lettres brings together ten studies that shed light on important questions in the study of Arabic language, literature, literary history, and writerly culture. The volume is divided into three sections. Early Narratives comprises: Joseph Lowry on the Qur'an’s allusive legal language; Abed el-Rahman Tayyara on matrilineal lineages in the context of Badr and Uhud; Ruqayya Khan on the ramifications of public courtship in 'Udhrī romance…
Arabic Belles-Lettres
The Hajj
Every year hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from all over the world converge on Mecca and its precincts to perform the rituals associated with the Hajj and have been doing so since the seventh century. In this volume, scholars from a range of fields - including history, religion, anthropology, and literature - together tell the story of the Hajj and explain its significance as one of the key events in the Muslim religious calendar. By outlining …
Hajj
Rendering the Qur'an into Cadenced, Rhyming English Prose
Translators of the Qur'an often explain the general principles underlying their translation but rarely, if ever, go into the nitty-gritty of the process and discuss aspects such as specific word choice, word placement, rhyme/non-rhyme, assonance/consonance, and so on. Either they do not think about these dimensions of their translation explicitly, or soundscape and soundshape is not as important to them as ‘meaning’. As a translator who believes …
The Modern Literary (After)lives of al-Khiḍr
Prominent examples of major Qur'anic characters in modern world literature include Joseph (and Zulaykha) -like characters in the 1984 Arabic novel, al-Rahīna (The Hostage) by the Yemeni writer Zayd Muṭīʿ Dammāj (d. 2000) and the fictionalised portrayal of the women around the Prophet Muḥammad in Algerian filmmaker and novelist Assia Djebar's 1991 French novel, Loin de Médine (Far from Medina). In this article I focus, rather, on a ‘minor’ Qur'ani…
Guest Editors' Preface
Sūrat al-Ṭāriq (Q. 86) Translated into Cadenced, Rhyming English Prose (in English)
Sūrat al-Raḥmān (Q. 55), Sūrat al-Aʿlā (Q. 87) and Sūrat al-Balad (Q. 90) Translated into Cadenced, Rhyming English Prose
Sūrat Maryam (Q. 19)
Q. 19 (Sūrat Maryam) – an end-rhyming, and, by general consensus, middle to late Meccan sura of 98 (or 99) verses – has been the subject of considerable exegetical and scholarly attention. Besides commentary, naturally, in every tafsīr of the Qur'an, Sura 19 has also benefited from separate, individual treatment. It has been the object of special attention by modern Western scholars, in particular those of comparative religion and of Christianity…
Proximity, Resemblance, Sidebars and Clusters
The Kitāb al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990), one of the most important bio-bibliographical works in Arabic, is an invaluable source for the study of the first four centuries of Arabic writerly culture and of medieval Islamicate history. Ibn al-Nadīm divides his work into 10 parts (and 30 chapters), organised according to different fields of knowledge and scholarship. He also subdivides the notices, entries and titles very deliberately, typi…
Mihyar of Damascus
foran English version despite win ning China's most prestigious liter ary award, the Mao Dun Prize, and having been adapted for the stage, television, and film. A direct reference to a Tang Dynasty poem by Bo Juyi, the title may be seen as an allusion to the tra vails of the putative main character, Wang Qiyao, but it is the subtitle, "A Novel of Shanghai/' thatnames the tale's true center?the city itself. On the surface the novel reads as the st…
Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period . Roger Allen , D. S. Richards
Referencing the Qur'an
A proposal to standardize referencing the Qur?an, and translations of suras 1, 36, 76
Modern Arabic Fiction
‘The Inimitable Rose’, being Qur'anic saj c from Sūrat al-Duhā to Sūrat al-Nās (Q. 93–114) in English Rhyming Prose
Play in the Qur'an
Seeking Refuge from Evil
Chapters 113 and 114 of the Qur'an, al-mucawwidhatān ‘the two suras of taking refuge from evil’, are said to have been revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad in order to counteract a spell laid on him. These consecutive suras are consequently recited in order to dispel any and all forms of evil. In spite of the fact that they are paired in revelation, paired together at the end of the Qur'anic text, paired in ritual recitation, paired in invocation and…
The Roots' by Yusuf Al-Khāl
A Grave … because of New York
A Grave ... because of New York I . Until now, the Earth was depicted as a pear 1 I mean a breast Yet, there is only a technical manoeuvre2 between breast and globe : 3 New York, A four-legged civilization; every part of it is death or a road to death, and in the distance are the moans of the drowned. New York, A woman-the statue of a woman . in one hand she holds a scrap named freedom by documents we call history and in one hand she smothers a c…
When the Words Burn
When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry, 1945-1987, translated and edited by John Mikhail Asfour. 237 pages. Cormorant Books, Dunvegan, Ontario1988. (U.S.) $12.95. - Volume 24 Issue 2
Movement in Mahfuz's Tharthara Fawqan-Nil
An Anthology of the New Arabic Poetry in Egypt
Now You See Me, Now You Don't
Shawkat Mahmood Toorawa, "Now You See Me, Now You Don't": Point of View and the Embedded Narrator in aṭ-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ's, "Dūmat wad ḥāmid", Journal of the American Research Center in Egypt, Vol. 28 (1991), pp. 213-221
Introduction To the History of the Petty Kings By Adonis
When the Words Burn
When the Words Burn: An Anthology of Modern Arabic Poetry 1945-1987, translated and edited by Jon Mikhail Asfour, Dunvegan, Ontario: Cormorant Books, 1988. 237 pages. US $ 12.95" published on 01 Jan 1992 by Brill
Muhammad, Muslims, and Islamophiles in Dante's Commedia
Reorientations
Employing contemporary literary theory, eight members of the Chicago school of Arabic and Persian literature analyze a broad spectrum of poetry, ranging from the pre-Islamic ode of the sixth century to seventeenth-century Persian Safavid Moghul verse
Strange bedfellows’? Mauritian writers and Shakespeare
Wâq al-wâq
Interpreting the Self
Autobiography is a literary genre which Western scholarship has ascribed mostly to Europe and the West. Countering this assessment and presenting many little-known texts, this comprehensive work demonstrates the existence of a flourishing tradition in Arabic autobiography. Interpreting the Self discusses nearly one hundred Arabic autobiographical texts and presents thirteen selections in translation. The authors of these autobiographies represent…
Seeking Refuge from Evil
Chapters 113 and 114 of the Qur'an, al-mucawwidhatān ‘the two suras of taking refuge from evil’, are said to have been revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad in order to counteract a spell laid on him. These consecutive suras are consequently recited in order to dispel any and all forms of evil. In spite of the fact that they are paired in revelation, paired together at the end of the Qur'anic text, paired in ritual recitation, paired in invocation and…
Seeking Refuge from Evil
Chapters 113 and 114 of the Qur'an, al-mu c awwidhatān ‘the two suras of taking refuge from evil’, are said to have been revealed to the Prophet Muḥammad in order to counteract a spell laid on him. These consecutive suras are consequently recited in order to dispel any and all forms of evil. In spite of the fact that they are paired in revelation, paired together at the end of the Qur'anic text, paired in ritual recitation, paired in invocation a…
Play in the Qur'an
Modern Arabic Fiction
‘The Inimitable Rose’, being Qur'anic saj c from Sūrat al-Duhā to Sūrat al-Nās (Q. 93–114) in English Rhyming Prose
Referencing the Qur'an
A proposal to standardize referencing the Qur?an, and translations of suras 1, 36, 76
Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period . Roger Allen , D. S. Richards
Mihyar of Damascus
foran English version despite win ning China's most prestigious liter ary award, the Mao Dun Prize, and having been adapted for the stage, television, and film. A direct reference to a Tang Dynasty poem by Bo Juyi, the title may be seen as an allusion to the tra vails of the putative main character, Wang Qiyao, but it is the subtitle, "A Novel of Shanghai/' thatnames the tale's true center?the city itself. On the surface the novel reads as the st…
Proximity, Resemblance, Sidebars and Clusters
The Kitāb al-Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadīm (d. 380/990), one of the most important bio-bibliographical works in Arabic, is an invaluable source for the study of the first four centuries of Arabic writerly culture and of medieval Islamicate history. Ibn al-Nadīm divides his work into 10 parts (and 30 chapters), organised according to different fields of knowledge and scholarship. He also subdivides the notices, entries and titles very deliberately, typi…
Sūrat al-Raḥmān (Q. 55), Sūrat al-Aʿlā (Q. 87) and Sūrat al-Balad (Q. 90) Translated into Cadenced, Rhyming English Prose
Sūrat Maryam (Q. 19)
Q. 19 (Sūrat Maryam) – an end-rhyming, and, by general consensus, middle to late Meccan sura of 98 (or 99) verses – has been the subject of considerable exegetical and scholarly attention. Besides commentary, naturally, in every tafsīr of the Qur'an, Sura 19 has also benefited from separate, individual treatment. It has been the object of special attention by modern Western scholars, in particular those of comparative religion and of Christianity…
Sūrat al-Ṭāriq (Q. 86) Translated into Cadenced, Rhyming English Prose (in English)
Art (25 works) · Philosophy (22 works) · Historical and Linguistic Studies (17 works) · History (17 works) · Islamic Studies and History (17 works) · Linguistics (16 works) · Literature (16 works) · Families in Therapy and Culture (11 works) · Arabic (10 works) · Archaeology and Historical Studies (10 works)