Stories of Piety and Prayer
Deliverance Follows Adversity
al-Muḥassin ibn ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī author Julia Bray editor
Format:Hardback
Publisher:New York University Press
Published:7th May '19
Should be back in stock very soon
Uplifting tales from one of the most influential Arabic books of the Middle Ages
One of the most popular and influential Arabic books of the Middle Ages, Deliverance Follows Adversity is an anthology of stories and anecdotes designed to console and encourage the afflicted. Regarded as a pattern-book of Arabic storytelling, this collection shows how God’s providence works through His creatures to rescue them from tribulations ranging from religious persecution and medical emergencies to political skullduggery and romantic woes.
A resident of Basra and Baghdad, al-Tanukhi (327–84/939–94) draws from earlier Arabic classics as well as from oral stories relayed by the author’s tenth-century Iraqi contemporaries, who comprised a wide circle of writers, intellectuals, judges, government officials, and family members. This edition and translation includes the first three chapters of the work, which deal with Qur'anic stories and prayers that bring about deliverance, as well as general instances of the workings of providence. The volume incorporates material from manuscripts not used in the standard Arabic edition, and is the first translation into English. The complete translation, spanning four volumes, will be the first integral translation into any European language.
A bilingual Arabic-English edition.
This exemplary edition is made all the more appetizing through the fluidity of Bray’s translation… This eminently readable and scholarly volume permits English readers to explore Muslim outlooks on life via remarkable stories—witty, terrifying, edifying and sometimes surreal—in which the limits of our human control over what God/Fate has in store for us are made very clear. * Times Literary Supplement *
The translation is dazzling... There are delights here for the specialist no less than for the reader with no Arabic. Al-Tanūkhī has found his translator. One cannot read this book without a sense of exhilaration and gratitude. * Al-ʿUṣūr al-Wusṭā *
With this volume of stories in translation, the Library of Arabic Literature, a project supported by the New York University Abu Dhabi Institute, adds a major achievement to its treasures of translated and edited Arabic texts... Bray combines meticulous scholarly method with original approaches to translation. * Speculum *
ISBN: 9781479855964
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 680g
320 pages