Leg over Leg: Volumes One and Two

Начало книги

1. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. 2. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887—Travel — Middle East. 3. Arabic language — Lexicography. 4. Middle East — Description and travel. I. Davies, Humphrey T. (Humphrey Taman) translator, editor. II. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. Saq ‘ala al-saq. III. Shidyaq, Ahmad Faris, 1804?-1887. Saq ‘ala al-saq. English. IV. Title. V. Title: Turtle in the tree.

PJ7862.H48S213 2015

892.7’8503—dc23 2015021915

New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability.

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For most Anglophone readers, this will be their first introduction to the writing of Fāris al-Shidyāq (later Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, born in 1805 or 1806 and died in 1887), a foundational figure in Arabic literary modernity.1 For, although he is the author of at least four published works of literary prose, ten linguistic studies of Arabic, Turkish, English, and French, over 20,000 lines of poetry, and at least four unpublished manuscripts (not to mention his many translations, journalistic and critical essays, or those works that have been lost), his work has never appeared in English until now. For specialists in Arabic literature and many native readers of Arabic, however, he needs little introduction. As belletrist, poet, travel writer, translator, lexicographer, grammarian, literary historian, essayist, publisher, and newspaper editor, he is known as a pioneer of modern Arabic literature, a reviver of classical forms, the father of Arabic journalism, and no less than a modernizer of the Arabic language itself.

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