Download PDF by Reuven Snir, Abdul Kader El Janabi, Roger Allen: Baghdad : the city in verse

By Reuven Snir, Abdul Kader El Janabi, Roger Allen

ISBN-10: 0674726480

ISBN-13: 9780674726482

Baghdad: the town in Verse captures the essence of lifestyles lived in a single of the world's nice enduring metropolises. during this strange anthology, Reuven Snir bargains unique translations of greater than a hundred and seventy Arabic poems--most of them showing for the 1st time in English--which signify a cross-section of genres and kinds from the time of Baghdad's founding within the 8th century to the current day. the range of the fabled urban is mirrored within the Bedouin, Muslim, Christian, Kurdish, and Jewish poets featured right here, together with writers of significant renown and others whose paintings has survived yet whose names are misplaced to history.

Through the prism of those poems, readers glimpse many various Baghdads: the town outfitted on historical Sumerian ruins, the epicenter of Arab tradition and Islam's Golden Age lower than the enlightened rule of Harun al-Rashid, the bombed-out capital of Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, the yank career, and existence in a brand new yet risky Iraq. With poets as our publications, we stopover at bazaars, gardens, wine events, love scenes (worldly and mystical), brothels, prisons, and palaces. Startling contrasts turn out to be the daily cacophony of city lifestyles is juxtaposed with everlasting cycles of the Tigris, and hellish winds, mosquitoes, rain, floods, snow, and earthquakes are observed by means of somber reflections on invasions and different catastrophes.

Documenting the city's 1,250-year historical past, Baghdad: the town in Verse shows why poetry has been aptly known as the general public sign up of the Arabs.

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Extra resources for Baghdad : the city in verse

Example text

21 Baghdad acquired acceptance as the urban center of the Arab world and Islamic empire, to the degree that people regarded all other places outside it as rural:22 “Baghdad is the metropolis of the world,” Abu Ishaq al-Zajjaj (d. 923) said. ”24 The traveler alMaqdisi al-Bashshari (947–90) described Baghdad as having “a nature and elegance peculiar to her, excellent faculties and tenderness; the air is soft; the science is precise; everything is good. Everything nice is there; every wise man comes from there.

Th is par tic u lar “tradition of comparison” has lasted throughout Baghdad’s history. While staying in Tibriz, Radi al- Qazwini (1819– 68) wrote: “My beloved people in al-Zawra’ of Iraq, / we have been apart for too long; when will we meet? // Tibriz is not a refuge for eloquent Arabic speakers. ” And Ahmad Shawqi (1868–1932) urged his readers: “Forget Rome and Athens and all that they contain. / All jewels are only in Baghdad. // At the mention of the Abode of Peace, the Abode of Law, Rome, / hastens to congratulate her.

The development of the city thus coincided with, and was inspired by, the creative imagination of the poets who were associated with what was a great cultural urban center during the golden age of medieval Arabic culture. The glorious image of the city perched on both banks of the Tigris ignited the imagination of subsequent generations of poets to carve it in verse and enshrine it in the mantle of universal myth. Soon after the founding of the city, it became obvious that a specific identity, with distinct characteristics of Baghdad and its residents, was coming into being.

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Baghdad : the city in verse by Reuven Snir, Abdul Kader El Janabi, Roger Allen


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