Introduction: Source Studies with a Reconstruction of Abu Turab's K. al-[l.sup.[subset]]tiqab and Diwan of Abu n-Nagm: Materials for tile Study of Ragaz Poetry, 1.

• Author: Montgomery, James E.
• Position: Brief Reviews of Books

Lexical Ibdal, Part 1: Introduction: Source Studies with a Reconstruction of Abu Turab's K. al-[l.sup.[subset]]tiqab. By JAAKKO HAMEEN-ANTTILA. Studia Orientalia, vol. 71. Helsinki: THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1993. Pp. 196 + 47 (Arabic text); Diwan of Abu n-Nagm: Materials for tile Study of Ragaz Poetry, 1. By JAAKKO HAMEEN-ANTTILA. Studia Orientalia, vol. 72. Helsinki: THE FINNISH ORIENTAL SOCIETY, 1993. Pp. 147 + 105 (Arabic text); "Und der Kalif lachte, bis er auf den Ruckenfiel": Ein Beitrag zur Phraseologie und Stilkunde des klassischen Arabisch, vols. 1 and 2. By KATHRIN MULLER. Beitrage zur Lexikographie des Klassischen Arabisch, no. 10. Munich: BAYERISCHEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN (PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTORISCHE KLASSE), 1993. Pp. 360; Der Beduine und die Regenwolke: Ein Beitrag zu Erforschung der altarabischen Anekdote. By KATHRIN MULLER. Beitrage zur Lexikographie des Klassischen Arabisch, no. 12. Munich: BAYERISCEEN AKADEMIE DER WISSENSCHAFTEN (PHILOSOPHISCH-HISTROISCHE KLASSE), 1994. Pp. 272.

Three of the four volumes under review here deal with aspects of the articulation and conceptualization of the relationship between nomadism and sedentariness, between the Bedu and the oppidans, in the early Islamic Middle Ages. It is difficult to over-estimate the centrality of this relationship to the intellectual and social life of the period. The [Arab.sup.[subset]], the desert nomads, were in so many ways an ideal to be respected, emulated, and admired. Indeed, during the early [Abbasid.sup.[subset]] period, for example, the reception of Greek (and Iranian and Indian) wisdom during the translation movement was balanced and complemented by the reception and interpretation of the pre-Islamic Bedouin Arab past. This idealism is nowhere more manifest than in the injunction to aspiring poets to live among the Bedu in the desert. The fourth volume under review treats an anecdotal aspect of the genre of writing which it is customary in the West to refer to as adab (belles-lettres). Both authors, Hamee n-Anttila and Muller, offer fine examples of the philological approach that characterizes the tradition of European scholarship. The works that they have produced are gems of meticulous and thorough scholarship, species of the "finetooth comb" approach, as it were.

In the tenth century, Abu l-Tayyib defined ibdal (consonantal exchange) as follows: "by ibdal we do not mean that the Bedouins have changed one letter with another on purpose. What...