In 2013, Thomas Bauer received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, which is awarded annually by the German Research Society (DFG) to a researcher working in Germany in one of many fields. It is the most prestigious award for the advancement of research in Germany and is endowed with up to €2.5 million per prize winner. This sum can be applied by the winner to any research work in the subsequent seven years, according to one's own needs and concepts and without any bureaucratic burden. Thomas Bauer chose to use his prize money to establish the Leibniz Prize Research Center entitled “Arabic literature and rhetoric, 1100–1800” (ALEA) at the University of Münster. The texts emerging from this period have previously been largely neglected by researchers, the reason being the dominant idea, originally from Western and colonial thought (which was then quickly adopted by Arabic elites), that there had once been a “Golden Age” that was subsequently replaced by a long period of stagnation and decline. The latter was said to have lasted until the nineteenth century, when the Western colonial powers “breathed new life” into the Arabian countries. Apparently, the ideas of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) concerning the philosophy of history were powerful and efficacious. According to Hegel, history represents the progress that occurs in the consciousness of freedom, thus in the end the self-realization of freedom. The particular “spirit” of a nation blossoms for a time, yet it should be seen only as one link in a long chain. Once it has fulfilled its historical purpose, it is no longer of any use in the world. That nation then leaves the stage to make way for another nation. For Hegel, Christianity was the source of all free thought and precipitated modern European culture. In this narrative, the only task Islam has is to transfer knowledge from ancient Greece to modern Europe. This served as a bridge over the “dark ages” of Medieval times.
In this sense, the entire post-Seljuk era may be seen as mere imitation, epigonal, devoid of any true value. In Islamic studies, this led to – among other things – literary texts from the time of the Mamluks and the Ottoman Empire being neglected entirely. This changed only after Thomas Bauer, in a series of articles, pointed out that, for example, the literary writing of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Syria and Egypt blossomed without parallel, and that this period gave birth to some of the most complex and sophisticated literary writing, embedded within a broad literary culture (Thomas Bauer, “Mamluk literature: misunderstandings and new approaches”, Mamlūk Studies Review 9/2, 2005, 105–32; Bauer, “Literarische Anthologien der Mamlukenzeit”, in S. Conermann and A. Pistor-Hatam (eds), Die Mamluken. Studien zu ihrer Geschichte und Kultur. Zum Gedenken an Ulrich Haarmann (1942–1999), (Hamburg: EB-Verlag, 2003, Asien und Afrika, Vol. 7), 71–123; Bauer, “In search of ‘post-classical literature’. A review article”, Mamlūk Studies Review 11/2, 2007, 137–67; Bauer, “Mamluk literature as a means of communication”, in Stephan Conermann (ed.), Ubi sumus? Quo vademus? Mamluk Studies – State of the Art (Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2013), 23–56.
This volume presents the contributions to a conference that took place on April 1–2, 2015, at the Leibniz Prize Research Center. The focus lies on one man: the writer and poet Ibn Abī Ḥajala, who was born in the Sufi centre of his grandfather in Tlemcen in 1325. During his early years, he undertook, together with his family, a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Thereafter, he spent the years 1342 to 1350 studying in Damascus before settling down in Cairo. After having first received entrance to the court through Sultan al-Ṣāliḥ Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn Ṣāliḥ (ruled 1351–54), he developed a close relationship with the well-versed Sultan Ḥasan (ruled 1354–61). He earned his stay as a Sufi shaykh in the khānqāh of the Emir Manjak al-Yūsufī (c. 1315–75). Even after Sultan Ḥasan had been murdered, Ibn Abī Ḥajala continued to write for the rulers in Cairo, first for al-Manṣūr Muḥammad (ruled 1361–63), then for al-Ashraf Shaʿbān (ruled 1363–77). Like his patron Manjak al-Yūsufī, he died in 1375.
The volume contains 13 very substantial contributions, eight of which(!) stem from the Leibniz Prize Research Center in Münster: those by Thomas Bauer, Syrinx von Hees, Nefeli Papoutsakis, Hakan Özkan, Alev Masarwa, Stephan Tölke, Anke Osigus, and Andreas Herdt. There are four further specialists among the authors: Th. Emil Homerin (Dept. of Religion and Classics, University of Rochester, NY), Beatrice Gründler (Seminar für Semitistik und Arabistik, FU Berlin), Remke Kruk (Professor emeritus of Arabic Language and Culture, Leiden University), and Maurice A. Pomerantz (Assistant Professor of Literature, New York University, Abu Dhabi).
The editors chose to place the articles in chronological order: the contribution by Th. Emil Homerin on Ibn Abī Ḥajala's post-1368 comment on Ibn al-Fāriḍ’s (d. 1235) positions, Ghayth al-ʿāriḍ fī muʿāraḍat Ibn al-Fāriḍ (The Sudden Downpour in Opposition to Ibn al-Fāriḍ) is first in line, and Nefeli Papoutsakis’ well-informed comments on Ibn Abī Ḥajala's letter to his colleagues requesting their sending him material for an anthology round out the volume. The guideline that each contributor should be concerned with only one text bears excellent fruit in this edition: all articles are of outstanding quality, particularly since most texts discussed were previously unedited or even undiscovered. In addition to individual 7-line panegyric poems from his dīwān (Thomas Bauer), the following ten texts are dealt with here: (1) Sukkardān al-Sulṭān (The Sultan's Sugar Box) (Beatrice Gründler); (2) Sulūk al-sanan fī wasf al-sakan (The Right Path in the Description of Dwellings) (Alev Masarwa); (3) Dīwān al-Ṣabāba (Collection on Passionate Love) (Anke Osigus); (4) Unmūdhaj al-qitāl fī naql al-ʿawāl (The Model Combat. On Moving Pawns) (Remke Kruk); (5) al-Maqāma al-Kutubiyya al-Mawsūma bi-ʿawd al-gharīb (The Book-Maqāma which is Characterized by the Return of the Stranger) (Maurice A. Pomerantz); (6) Dafʿ al-niqma bi-l-ṣalātʿalānabī al-raḥma) (Repelling Affliction by Praying for the Prophet of Mercy) (Andreas Herdt); (7) al-Ṭibb al-masnūn fī dafʿ al-ṭāʿūn (The Well-Proved Medicine against the Plague) (Stephan Tölke); (8) Jiwār al-aḫyār fī dār al-qarār (Dwelling near the Best in the Permanent Abode) (Syrinx von Hees); (9) Marthiyat al-Iskandariyya (The Elegy on Alexandria) (Alev Masarwa); (10) Dawr al-zamān fī ṭahn al-julbān (The Turn of Fate in Crushing the Mamluks).
Although research on the Mamluk sultans has experienced an enormous boom over the past ten years, not least because it found a definitive home at the Annemarie Schimmel College in Bonn (www.mamluk.uni-bonn.de) over the past eight years (2011–19), many of the key texts from this field have yet to be edited, let alone become the object of scientific contemplation. The volume reviewed here is truly a pioneering effort and sets new standards for the study of the literature and rhetoric of that era. Our understanding of Arabic literary history, and indeed Islamic cultural history in general, will change only when, as Thomas Bauer puts it, we learn “to appreciate the relativity of our own values, standards, and prejudices, and to locate them in their respective historical and social context”. Further, we must set as our goal “to examine the social, aesthetic, and ideological circumstances of any period of Arabic literature and thus to establish the values and standards that the members of the specific literary communities themselves applied to their own literature” (Bauer, “Mamluk literature”, p. 107). At least the latter objective has been fully met by this volume. Let us hope that the Leibniz Prize Research Center in Münster “Arabic literature and rhetoric, 1100–1800” will continue to issue such studies of this nature in the future.
