From Jahiliyyah to Badiciyyah : Orality, literacy, and the transformations of rhetoric in Arabic poetry

This essay1 offers a speculative exploration of the transformations in the form and function of rhetorical styles and devices at three distinctive points of Arabic literary history. It takes as its starting point the mnemonic imperative governing the use of rhetoric in pre- and early Islamic oral poetry and proposes that in the later literary periods rhetorical devices, now free of their mnemonic obligation, took on further communicative or expressive functions. It then turns to the effect of literacy on the "retooling" of the no longer mnemonically bound rhetorical devices to serve as what I term the "linguistic correlative" of Islamic hegemony as witnessed in the High cAbbasid caliphal panegyrics of the rhetorically complex badic style. Finally, it attempts to interpret what seems to modern sensibilities the rhetorical excess of the post-classical genre of badiciyyah (a poem to the Prophet Muhammad in which each line must exhibit a particular rhetorical device) as a memorial structure typical of the medieval manuscript (as opposed to modern print) tradition.Issue title: Oral Tradition in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

Grappling with the sagas: Embodied knowledge and reconstructing a historical martial art

This thesis aims to show the extent to which the accurate identification and reconstruction of historical martial techniques is possible through the analysis of historical written texts. In doing so I will trace from its origins the process of achieving adequate embodied knowledge, from the acquiring of one’s habitus to the various foundational factors that interact with one another in order to facilitate the creation of specific, accessible embodied knowledge. I further argue that an interdisciplinary expertise is needed to confidently identify such historical martial techniques: in order to maximize one’s insights and the credibility of one’s analysis one must have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the social, cultural, linguistic, and literary foundations within which the texts were written as well as an embodied, corporeal knowledge of the martial art or practice in question. I use as a case study for this research the sagas of Icelanders (Íslendingasögur) and legendary sagas (fornaldarsögur): two of the most celebrated genres of medieval Scandinavian literature. In conjunction with the sagas’ particular historicity regarding the social norms and pastimes of medieval Iceland I argue that wrestling, in its broadest sense, is a primordial mode of combat that is universally found throughout human history and civilization. Due to wrestling’s ubiquitous and primordial nature, I argue that a modern scholar and grappler, with sufficient expertise in regard to both the literary/cultural aspects of the sagas as well as embodied knowledge in grappling, can accurately identify and recreate the wrestling techniques found in these and perhaps other historical texts. In evidencing my argument I critique contemporary claims about the wrestling style(s) found within the sagas and also argue that the frequent lack of relevant embodied knowledge in academia should be addressed as it manifests itself in poor or inaccurate translations of embodied techniques (such as grappling manoeuvres) found within historical texts and an incomplete understanding of both the source culture’s literature and society. Clarifying these issues will not only benefit scholarly understanding of previously misunderstood aspects of the sagas and the cultures they belonged to but will also shed light upon the potential values of integrating embodied knowledge into the toolset or references of the modern academic

Book Review: The Martial Arts Studies Reader

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Remarks by the Recipient of the 2017 MEM Lifetime Achievement Award Given at the Annual Meeting of Middle East Medievalists

I am honored and grateful to be the 2017 recipient of the Middle East Medievalists Lifetime Achievement Award. I will first say a word about the distinguished previous recipients, most of whom I have known for years, not only through their influential and often groundbreaking academic work that has shaped our disciplines—Arabic, Middle East and Islamic studies—as we know them today, but also as friends and colleagues who offered kindness and support over the years