Edited Journals by Pamela Klasova
Arabic Poetry in Late Antiquity: The Rāʾiyya of Imruʾ al-Qays, 2023
Arabic poetry was born and flourished before the coming of Islam, during Late Antiquity, a period... more Arabic poetry was born and flourished before the coming of Islam, during Late Antiquity, a period of empires and monotheistic religions on the rise. Yet, early Arab poets have traditionally been seen as having little awareness of the wider world, expressing the values and worldview of a nomadic, tribal society embroiled in local feuds. This article explores the early Arab poets’ relationship with the wider Late Antique world through one of the master poems by Imruʾ al-Qays, the most celebrated pre-Islamic poet. I will argue that this poem, known as rāʾiyya, is fully embedded in Late Antiquity but indifferent to its fundamental aspect—religion—and as such it has the potential to nuance our understanding of Late Antiquity in the Arabian context and beyond.
by Antoine Borrut, Zayde Antrim, Jelle Bruning, Abed el-Rahman Tayyara, Kevin van Bladel, Sébastien Garnier, Theodore S Beers, Pamela Klasova, Daisy Livingston, Christian Mauder, Hannah Barker, Adday Hernández López, Monika Schönléber, Marijn van Putten, Rachel N Schine, and Marie Legendre
by Antoine Borrut, Pamela Klasova, Rachel N Schine, Marie Legendre, Marijn van Putten, Austin O'Malley, Zara Pogossian, Hythem Sidky, Ignacio Sánchez, Coleman Connelly, Robert Haug, and Noah Gardiner
by Antoine Borrut, Robert Hoyland, Michael Cooperson, Philip Wood, Zayde Antrim, Yoones Dehghani Farsani, Pamela Klasova, Brian Ulrich, Sabahat Adil, Theodore S Beers, Christian Mauder, and Javier Albarrán
Dissertation by Pamela Klasova
This dissertation examines the speeches and the literary-historical figure of al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf ... more This dissertation examines the speeches and the literary-historical figure of al-Ḥajjāj b. Yūsuf al-Thaqafī (d. 714), the governor of Iraq under the Umayyad dynasty (661-750), to explore the role that public speech played in the process of building the Islamic empire as its key ideological tool. The first part of the dissertation (Chapters 1-3) establishes that al-Ḥajjāj is an exceptionally opportune case study of Umayyad oratory. It challenges the perceived image of the governor as notoriously brutish tyrant and mere servant of the Umayyads; explains the formation of this image; and provides an alternative account. Al-Ḥajjāj emerges as a semi-autonomous ruler of the Islamic East who made use of a vast array of cultural means to buttress his legitimacy and participated thereby in laying down the ideological principles of the Umayyad empire. Ḥadīths and other sources indicate that among these cultural means, Friday speech played an especially important role for al-Ḥajjāj. The second part (Chapters 4-6) deals with al-Ḥajjāj's speeches and, more generally, with Umayyad oratory, which has remained an unexplored field because of authenticityrelated issues. Chapter 4 discusses the ideology that al-Ḥajjāj's speeches project and draws attention to their performative quality. Appendix I contains translations of nineteen speeches. Chapter 5-through a detailed analysis of ten variants of one celebrated speechdevelops a method in dealing with the authenticity question and highlights oral patterns of transmission based on memorization. The oral transmission of this speech runs against the
Articles by Pamela Klasova
Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry, 2023
Arabic poetry was born and flourished before the coming of Islam, during Late Antiquity, a period... more Arabic poetry was born and flourished before the coming of Islam, during Late Antiquity, a period of empires and monotheistic religions on the rise. Yet, early Arab poets have traditionally been seen as having little awareness of the wider world, expressing the values and worldview of a nomadic, tribal society embroiled in local feuds. This article explores the early Arab poets’ relationship with the wider Late Antique world through one of the master poems by Imruʾ al-Qays, the most celebrated pre-Islamic poet. I will argue that this poem, known as rāʾiyya, is fully embedded in Late Antiquity but indifferent to its fundamental aspect—religion—and as such it has the potential to nuance our understanding of Late Antiquity in the Arabian context and beyond.
Journal of Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies, 2022
This article presents a case study on the use of early Islamic memory in medieval Syria. It offer... more This article presents a case study on the use of early Islamic memory in medieval Syria. It offers a close reading of a biography of al-Ḥ ajjāj b. Yūsuf al-Thaqafī (d. 714), the infamous tyrant of Islam, from the monumental biographical dictionary by Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 1176) Tārīkh madīnat Dimashq (History of Damascus). I argue that Ibn ʿAsākir carefully structured the biography to lend support to his own theological Ashʿarite positions on the legitimacy of an unjust ruler and the status of a sinner in Islam. This study also highlights the multi-layered meanings of the individual reports in the biography.
Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, 2020
The ḥadīth about the creation of the Intellect has enjoyed a high status in the Shīʿī tradition a... more The ḥadīth about the creation of the Intellect has enjoyed a high status in the Shīʿī tradition and opens one of the four books of the Shīʿī ḥadīth canon, al-Kulaynī’s (d. 329/940) al-Kāfī. It appears also in many Sunnī works and has traveled among other Muslim groups, changing its meaning and form over time and generating several commentaries. Ḥadīths are usually studied in a jurisprudential context, as forming the basis for legal positions; in this article, I study the ḥadīth not as a legal text with a fixed meaning but as a literary text with a meaning that is changeable. First, I revisit previous scholarly views on the provenance of the ḥadīth. I argue that it first circulated in Basran society in the late second/eighth century as a popularized version of the Muʿtazilī tenet of obligation (taklīf) before being written down as a ḥadīth. I then follow its later journey among different groups in the medieval period as it changed forms and meanings and in the early modern period as it became the subject of commentaries by the Shīʿī philosopher Mullā Ṣadrā (d. 1050/1640) and by the Sunnī scholar Murtaḍā al-Zabīdī (d. 1205/1791). The translation of the two commentaries can be found in the Appendix. The ḥadīth’s intersectarian dissemination and fluid nature make it an excellent case study for exploring the literary side of the ḥadīth genre, which served as common discourse for different Islamic sects and intellectual and social groups over the centuries.
Al-'Uṣūr al-Wusṭā: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists, 2019
This article investigates how the secular Arabic poetic tradition interacted with the new religio... more This article investigates how the secular Arabic poetic tradition interacted with the new religious rhetoric of emergent Islam. Concretely, it deals with the verses and legacies of three poets contemporary to Muḥammad who converted to Islam, yet protested its pietistic rhetoric. Abū Khirāsh al-Hudhalī, Abū Miḥjan al-Thaqafī, and Suḥaym, the slave of the Banū al-Ḥasḥās, all lived in the Ḥijāz and witnessed the formation of Muḥammad’s movement up close. The first aim of the article is to listen to their reactions. Because the three poets were not directly involved in the promotion of the new religion, nor were they in an open struggle against it, their testimony is especially valuable for its insight into the reception of the emergent Islamic movement among Arab tribes in the Ḥijāz, beyond Muḥammad’s close community. The second aim is to follow the later reception of the poets and their incorporation into the Arabo-Islamic canon through an examination of the narratives (akhbār) that accompany the verses in Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī’s (d. 356/967) Kitāb al-Aghānī, the underlying assumption being that these akhbār are secondary to the verses. Besides these two main points, an examination of the interplay between the verses and the akhbār also establishes the importance of Mukhaḍram poetry as a historical source and exposes the multilayered nature of the poets’ akhbār.
Papers by Pamela Klasova
O n the last day of each year's Holberg Seminar, we Holbergians would gather at the home of Micha... more O n the last day of each year's Holberg Seminar, we Holbergians would gather at the home of Michael Cook and his wife Kim for a delicious and delightful dinner. The final meeting was held over four days in the summer of 2018, and there was a feeling of nostalgia in the air as we picked over our coffee, wine, and dessert at that closing dinner. Rather spontaneously, each member of the group shared their own reflections and heartfelt thanks to Michael, to Kim, and to the professors and graduate students who made up the Holberg Seminar. For many of us, these meetings were the highlight of the academic year: an opportunity to gather with a wide range of excellent scholars who would read our work and respond to it thoughtfully. But the Holberg Seminar's long duration meant that it was also a time when we could be ourselves, without the facades and performances of knowledge that we all sometimes fall back on in academic settings. That level of comfort did not come spontaneously. Many of us faced the first meeting of the Holberg Seminar with both excitement and trepidation. We were to be surrounded by well-established scholars and brilliant graduate students from an array of different fields. But after four years of exhausting and exhilarating meetings, what had once seemed intimidating was now a room full of familiar faces and supportive colleagues who could find our mistakes with kindness, broaden our knowledge of adjacent fields, and deepen our understanding of our own texts. This kind of supportive community is precious in academic life. And it takes time. Each summer, we met for four days, from the early morning to the late evening. Soon enough, everyone had little choice but to lose the academic personas they assumed and be themselves. Michael designed the seminar so that we devoted at least three hours to each submitted thesis chapter or article draft. The format
The ḥadīth about the creation of the Intellect has enjoyed a high status in the Shīʿī tradition a... more The ḥadīth about the creation of the Intellect has enjoyed a high status in the Shīʿī tradition and opens one of the four books of the Shīʿī ḥadīth canon, al-Kulaynī’s (d. 329/940) al-Kāfī. It appears also in many Sunnī works and has traveled among other Muslim groups, changing its meaning and form over time and generating several commentaries. Ḥadīths are usually studied in a jurisprudential context, as forming the basis for legal positions; in this article, I study the ḥadīth not as a legal text with a fixed meaning but as a literary text with a meaning that is changeable. First, I revisit previous scholarly views on the provenance of the ḥadīth. I argue that it first circulated in Basran society in the late second/eighth century as a popularized version of the Muʿtazilī tenet ofobligation (taklīf) before being written down as a ḥadīth. I then follow its later journey among different groups in the medieval period as it changed forms and meanings and in the early modern period as i...
Book Reviews by Pamela Klasova
Book Review E arly Islamic history is a history made of speeches. Muslim sources are peppered wit... more Book Review E arly Islamic history is a history made of speeches. Muslim sources are peppered with countless orations, next to other types of direct speech like poetry recitations or simple dialogues, and most early Islamic caliphs, generals, governors, rebels, and other salient figures have famous orations ascribed to them. Medieval Islamic scholars have preserved these speeches in writing and cherished them as models for eloquent speech alongside the Qurʾan and Arabic poetry. Oratory was so crucial to medieval Arab identity that the famous polymath al-Jāḥiẓ stated that only the Arabs and Persians have oratory, and only the Arabs have the
Books by Pamela Klasova
Routledge, 2023
Comprised of contributions from leading international scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Arabic ... more Comprised of contributions from leading international scholars, The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry incorporates political, cultural, and theoretical paradigms that help place poetic projects in their socio-political contexts as well as illuminate connections across the continuum of the Arabic tradition. This volume grounds itself in the present moment and, from it, examines the transformations of the fifteen-century Arabic poetic tradition through readings, re-readings, translations, reformulations, and co-optations. Furthermore, this collection aims to deconstruct the artificial modern/pre-modern divide and to present the Arabic poetic practice as live and urgent, shaped by the experiences and challenges of the twenty-first century and at the same time in constant conversation with its long tradition. The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry actively seeks to destabilize binaries such as that of East-West in contributions that shed light on the interactions of the Arabic tradition with other Middle Eastern traditions, such as Persian, Turkish, and Hebrew, and on South-South ideological and poetic networks of solidarity that have informed poetic currents across the modern Middle East. This volume will be ideal for scholars and students of Arabic, Middle Eastern, and comparative literature, as well as non-specialists interested in poetry and in the present moment of the study of Arabic poetry.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Arabic-Poetry/Fakhreddine-Stetkevych/p/book/9780367562359
Translations by Pamela Klasova
Slova psaná do písku, 2024
Translation of an excerpt from Sinan Antoon's novel Ya Maryam (2012) into Czech. Part of an antho... more Translation of an excerpt from Sinan Antoon's novel Ya Maryam (2012) into Czech. Part of an anthology of modern Arab novel in honor of František Ondráš "Slova psaná do písku" (Words written in the sand, Argo 2024).
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Edited Journals by Pamela Klasova
Dissertation by Pamela Klasova
Articles by Pamela Klasova
Papers by Pamela Klasova
Book Reviews by Pamela Klasova
Books by Pamela Klasova
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Arabic-Poetry/Fakhreddine-Stetkevych/p/book/9780367562359
Translations by Pamela Klasova
https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Handbook-of-Arabic-Poetry/Fakhreddine-Stetkevych/p/book/9780367562359