Bedouin and ‘Abb?sid Cultural Identities

<p>This literary-historical book draws out and sheds light upon the mechanisms of the ideological work that the Arabic <i>Majn?n Layl? </i>story performed for ‘Abb?sid urbanite imperial audiences in the wake of the disappearance of the Bedouin cosmos. </p><p>The study focuses upon the processes of primitivizing Majn?n in the romance of <i>Majn?n Layl?</i> as part of the paradigm shift that occurred in the ‘Abb?sid empire after the Greco-Arabian intellectual revolution. Moreover this book demonstrates how gender and sexuality are employed in the processes of primitivizing Majn?n. As markers of strangeness and foreignness in the ‘Abb?sid interrogations of the multiple categories of ethnicity culture identity religion and language present in their cosmopolitan milieus. Such cultural work is performed through the ideological uses of alterity given its mechanisms of distancing (e.g. temporal and spatial) and nearness (e.g. affective). Lastly the <i>Majn?n Layl? </i>love story demonstrates in its text and reception that a Greco-Arabian and Greco-Persian subculture thrived in the centers of ‘Abb?sid Baghdad that molded and shaped the ways in which this love story was compiled received and performed.</p><p>Offering a corrective to the prevailing views expressed in Western scholarly writings on the Greco-Arabian encounter this book is a major contribution to scholars and students interested in Islamic studies Arabic and comparative literature Middle East and gender studies.</p>