Destabilizing knowledge in medieval Arabo-Islamic society : multiplicities and wonder in Isfahani’s Kitab al-Aghani

Abstract

During the cultural and philosophical shift of 10th-century Arabo-Islamic society, Isfahani (d. 967) compiled his renowned, multi-volume anthology the Book of Songs (Kitab al-Aghani). In the Aghani, Isfahani curates four centuries of poetry and lore (akhbar). Among the chapters of the Aghani are those he devotes to 7th-century tragic love (udhri) poets, including Majnun Layla, Qays Lubna, Dhu ‘l-Rumma Mayya, and Kuthayyir Azza. Within these chapters, the way in which Isfahani curates the source material foregrounds contradictions and ambiguities and toys with expectations of narrative linearity and finality. We find no comprehensive, authoritative narratives around the personalities in Isfahani’s text. Instead, the Aghani disrupts the familiar features of popular stories and thwarts attempts to distill them into truisms. Although scholars have long recognized the Aghani as a masterpiece of Arabic literature, they have generally confined it to the reference shelf as a source of facts. Scholarship on the Aghani has largely focused on its quality as a reliable reference and often views the text’s contradictions and ambiguities as byproducts of Isfahani’s supposed commitment to accuracy. This dissertation explores the literary quality of the Aghani in light of the cultural and philosophical transformation in which it was produced. I offer an approach to classical Arabic literature that embraces the postmodern concerns that are consistent with the cosmopolitanism of 10th-century Arabo-Islamic society. I draw upon Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of the “rhizomatic” book and Bakhtin’s theory of “dialogism” to demonstrate that Isfahani treatment of udhri lore calls attention to patterns and to fields of experience to which universal laws cannot apply. This orientation inspires pursuits of knowledge through wonder and produces a kind of knowledge that demands and cultivates a mind capable of thinking in multiplicities and contextualities

Middle Eastern Studies