Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam

by Peter Webb

Overview

Investigating the core questions about Arab identity and history, this book tackles the time-honoured stereotypes that depict Arabs as ancient Arabian Bedouin, and reveals the stories to be a myth: tales told by Muslims to recreate the past to explain the meaning of Islam and its origins.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781474426435
Publisher:	Edinburgh University Press
Publication date:	08/01/2017
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Peter Webb is UniversityLecturer in Arabic literature and culture at Leiden University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Note on the Text
Introduction

Part 1: The Rise of Arab Communities
1. The Rise of Arab Communities
I. Arabs and pre-Islamic Textual Traditions
II. Arabs in Arabia: ethnogenesis, interpretations and problems
III. An Arabness pretence: pre-Islamic 'Arab'-cognates reconsidered

2. Pre-Islamic 'Arabless-ness': Arabian Identities
I. The Arabic Language: a signpost to Arabness?
II. The search for Arabs in pre-Islamic poetry
III. Contextualising the 'Arabless' Poetry: ethnic boundaries in pre-Islamic Arabia
IV. The rise of 'Arab' poetry
V. Transition from 'Ma'add' to 'Arab': case study of Dhu Qar
VI. Pre-Islamic Arabian identity: conclusions

3. Arabness from the Qur'an to an ethnos
I. 'Arab': an ethnonym resurrected?
II. The Qur'an and Arabness
III. Early Islam and the genesis of Arab identity

Part Two: The Changing Faces of Arabness in Early Islam
4. Interpreting Arabs: defining their name and constructing their family
I. 'Arab' defined
II. Arabness and contested lineage
III. Arab genealogy reconsidered: kinship, gender and identity
IV. The creation of 'traditional' Arab genealogy
V. Defining Arabs: conclusions

5. Arabs as a people and Arabness as an idea: 750-900 CE
I. Arabs in the early Abbasid Caliphate (132-193/750-809)
II. Forging an Iraqi 'Arab Past'; III. al-Jahiliyya and imagining pre-Islamic Arabs
IV. Arabs and Arabia: changing relationships in the third/ninth century

6. Philologists, 'Bedouinisation' and the 'Archetypal Arab' after the mid-third/ninth century
I. Philologists and Arabness: changing conceptions of Arabic between the late second/eighth and fourth/tenth centuries
II. The transformation of Arabness into Bedouin-ness
III. Bedouin Arabness and the emergence of a Jahiliyya archetype
IV. Conclusions; Imagining and Reimagining the Arabs

Conclusions
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

'A wide-ranging and ambitious book.' — Al-Usur al-Wusta, Philip Wood, Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations

From the Publisher

A wide-ranging and ambitious book.

Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā - Philip Wood

A paradigm-shifting study…a rich and fascinating work, one that is destined to become a classic in the field.'

Aaron W. Hughesn Journal of Islamic Social Sciences

'A paradigm-shifting study…a rich and fascinating work, one that is destined to become a classic in the field.'

American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences - Aaron W. Hughes