Fattening Up in Fourteenth-Century Cairo

Over the past several decades, the problem of obesity has attracted overwhelming attention in the popular and scholarly press. Partially in reaction to the medical conceptualisation of healthy body weight as a biological universal, scholars have directed increasing attention to the historical and cultural specificity of the social meanings of fat. This article focuses on an account by the Mamluk-era scholar Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ (d. 737/1336) of contemporary Egyptian women’s systematic cultivation of ample bodies, which has until now received little scholarly attention. Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ’s discussion places the issue of intentional over-eating within several different interpretive frames, including religious law, erotic ideals and medicine.Au cours des dernières décennies, l’obésité est devenue un problème. D’ailleurs, elle a suscité un immense intérêt dans la presse populaire et savante. En partie en réaction à la représentation médicale qui fait d’un poids corporel sain un universel biologique, certains spécialistes ont accordé une attention grandissante aux spécificités historiques et culturelles des significations sociales de l’embonpoint. Cet article s’intéresse aux remarques du savant Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ (m. 737/1336) sur la volonté des femmes égyptiennes de son temps de rendre leur corps plus large. Ces remarques n’ont jusqu’à présent pas attiré l’attention des spécialistes. Ibn al-Ḥāǧǧ replace la suralimentation volontaire à l’intérieur de plusieurs cadres interprétatifs, qui relèvent de la loi religieuse, des idéaux érotiques, ou de la médecine

'Arabic Emotions From the Quran to the Popular Epic', Special issue of Cultural History Journal 8:2

Arabic, like Latin, was a language of empire, and, like Latin, when empire retreated, Arabic remained. The language of the Quran became that of Islamic law, at the same time developing into a language of courtly life, poetry and letters, and, eventually, of popular culture. These are the areas covered by the five pieces in this special issue, the first ever collection of articles on emotion and the history of emotion in Arabo-Islamic culture. Previous publications on Arabic emotions are scattered, and none engage with the historicity of emotion or with methodological and theoretical issues specific to the Arabic sources. The driving idea behind this special issue is that it will function as a practical introduction to a selection of major text genres and culture-specific notions and problems for those working in cultural studies and the history of emotions across fields. The five articles cover four areas: scripture (Karen Bauer), legal scholarship (Marion Katz Holmes), adab or high culture (Julia Bray and Karen Moukheiber), and popular literature (Helen Blatherwick). They all concentrate on texts, rather than documentary sources, reflecting the fact that Arabic documentary sources for lived experience have not, until very recently, been much noticed or received sophisticated scholarly attention