Anthology of Arabic Literature, Culture, and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present.

• Author: Kaye, Alan S.
• Position: Book review

Anthology of Arabic Literature, Culture, and Thought from Pre-Islamic Times to the Present. By BASSAM K. FRANGIEH. Yale Language Series. New Haven: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2005. Pp. xviii + 566.

This book has long been a desideratum since students of Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) have needed a comprehensive reader of Arabic literature (preferably in one volume) from pre-Islamic times to the present. It includes seventy works by seventy different authors. The range of the literature covered is truly amazing: pre-Islamic poetry (Imru' al-Qays), the Koran (Surat Maryam), the writings of the Golden Age of the Arabs (750-1258 A.D.), literature from al-Andalus, and modern Arabic prose and poetry, including Arab-American literature (Jubran Khalil Jubran, Mikha'il Nu'aymah, and Amin al-Rihani). Frangieh states in his introduction that "this is a serious textbook for the serious student of the Arabic language" (p. xv). That it surely is. But he also cautions the advanced student (and I certainly agree with his warning) that "many of the texts in this book are difficult, and some are extremely difficult."

In the past, students generally have had to use anthologies of either CA or MSA, since there are very few readers that cover both domains. Most of the older publications, at any rate, are no longer readily available. For CA prose, there is the splendid Arabische Chrestomathie und Prosaschriften by Rudolf-Ernst Brunnow (1858-1917) and August Fischer (1865-1949) (Leipzig: Verlag Enzyklopadie, 1960; originally published in 1924 and based on an earlier work compiled by Fischer in 1913). This contains excellent selections from the Qur'an and by such authors as Ta'abatta Sharran, al-Tabari, and Sibawayh. Moreover, it contains an excellent glossary with relevant commentary in addition to mere translation into German plus a section of philological and linguistic discussion of difficult passages.

For those who have difficulty with German (always considered the most important tongue for students of Semitic languages), there are two excellent anthologies in English. The older one was authored by Reynold A. Nicholson: Elementary Arabic: Third Reading-Book (volume 4 in the Thornton's Arabic series) (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1911). It contains an excellent glossary but lacks the linguistic detail of Brunnow and Fischer (1960). The selections include texts from the Qur'an, al-Ya'qubi, Ibn Jubair, al-Zamakhshari, inter alios. Not limited to...