Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis
The book investigates lines of connection and shared literary heritage between the Persianate and Malay-Indonesian worlds over many centuries. Majid Daneshgar provides a critical and comparative study of Persianate-Malay stories, with specific focus on Durr al-Majālis, or Pearl of Gatherings – a classical Islamic text produced by Sayf Zafar (late thirteenth–mid-fourteenth centuries CE), a writer and scholar of Central Asian background, during the Delhi Sultanate.

The book illustrates how the Durr al-Majālis contains various legal, theological-philosophical, metaphysical, chivalrous and mystical accounts. In addition, it traces how the book travelled beyond the so-called ‘Balkans-to-Bengal’ borders and was copied, translated and annotated across Eastern Africa, Eastern Turkistan, Mongol-dominated China, Arabic-speaking Egypt and South East Asia. It demonstrates how this Persian collection of stories shaped the idea of Islam, Islamic teachings and stories across the Muslim World, and in the Malay-Indonesian World in particular.

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Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis
The book investigates lines of connection and shared literary heritage between the Persianate and Malay-Indonesian worlds over many centuries. Majid Daneshgar provides a critical and comparative study of Persianate-Malay stories, with specific focus on Durr al-Majālis, or Pearl of Gatherings – a classical Islamic text produced by Sayf Zafar (late thirteenth–mid-fourteenth centuries CE), a writer and scholar of Central Asian background, during the Delhi Sultanate.

The book illustrates how the Durr al-Majālis contains various legal, theological-philosophical, metaphysical, chivalrous and mystical accounts. In addition, it traces how the book travelled beyond the so-called ‘Balkans-to-Bengal’ borders and was copied, translated and annotated across Eastern Africa, Eastern Turkistan, Mongol-dominated China, Arabic-speaking Egypt and South East Asia. It demonstrates how this Persian collection of stories shaped the idea of Islam, Islamic teachings and stories across the Muslim World, and in the Malay-Indonesian World in particular.

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Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis

Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis

by Majid Daneshgar
Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis

Persianate Prose and the Making of Malay Muslim Literature: Text, Translation and Commentary of the Durr al-Majalis

by Majid Daneshgar

Hardcover

$165.00 
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Overview

The book investigates lines of connection and shared literary heritage between the Persianate and Malay-Indonesian worlds over many centuries. Majid Daneshgar provides a critical and comparative study of Persianate-Malay stories, with specific focus on Durr al-Majālis, or Pearl of Gatherings – a classical Islamic text produced by Sayf Zafar (late thirteenth–mid-fourteenth centuries CE), a writer and scholar of Central Asian background, during the Delhi Sultanate.

The book illustrates how the Durr al-Majālis contains various legal, theological-philosophical, metaphysical, chivalrous and mystical accounts. In addition, it traces how the book travelled beyond the so-called ‘Balkans-to-Bengal’ borders and was copied, translated and annotated across Eastern Africa, Eastern Turkistan, Mongol-dominated China, Arabic-speaking Egypt and South East Asia. It demonstrates how this Persian collection of stories shaped the idea of Islam, Islamic teachings and stories across the Muslim World, and in the Malay-Indonesian World in particular.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781399537575
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Publication date: 04/30/2025
Series: Gibb Memorial Trust
Pages: 664
Product dimensions: 6.69(w) x 9.61(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Majid Daneshgar is Associate Professor of Area Studies, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University, Japan. He is the former Munby Fellow in global bibliography at Cambridge UniversityLibrary in association with St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and George Grey Scholar at Auckland Libraries, New Zealand. He has frequently published on Islamic studies, orientalism, Persianate-Malay literature and manuscript studies. His main monographs are Studying the Qur’an in the Muslim Academy (Oxford UniversityPress, 2020), Tantawi Jawhari and the Qur’an (Routledge, 2018; Arabic translation 2023), and several co-edited volumes such as Malay-Indonesian Islamic Studies (Brill, 2023), Islam and Science in the Future (Zygon, 2020), Deconstructing Islamic Studies (Ilex-Harvard UniversityPress, 2020), Islamic Studies Today (Brill, 2017) and The Qur’an in the Malay-Indonesian World (Routledge, 2016). He was also awarded the Marie Curie Fellowship of the European Union, the Best Publication Prize 2022 (FRIAS), and nominated for the Most Inclusive Teacher Award at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2015.

Table of Contents

1. From the Persianate to the Malay-Indonesian World: An Introduction

2. The Identity of the Text: Author and Origin of Durr al-Majālis

3. Transregional Circulation of Durr al-Majālis: In the Persianate World and the Arabic Zone

4. Thematic Coverage of Durr al-Majālis: Islamic Sciences and Culture

5. Persianate-Malay Islamic Stories: Comparative Analysis of Durr al-Majālis

6. The English Translation and Persian Edition of Durr al-Majālis

Appendix: Manuscripts and Printed Volumes: Selected Materials

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