Ilex Series

This volume explores the context of theological speculations and political aspirations through the medium of dreams to present fascinating insights into the social history of the pre-modern Islamic world in all its cultural diversity. Wider cultural exchanges are discussed through concrete examples such as the Arabic version of the Aristotelian treatise De divinatione per somnum, and some of the current scholarly assumptions about dreams are challenged by personal reports that express individual personalities, self-awareness, and spiritual development.

This book is a study of heroic femininity as it appears in the epic Mahabharata, and focuses particularly on the roles of wife, daughter-in-law, and mother, on how these women speak, and on the kinship groups and varying marital systems that surround them.

This volume presents several articles and other writings of Sorour S. Soroudi (1938–2002), who taught in the Department of Iranian Studies at the Hebrew University for three decades. Soroudi’s research was concentrated in modern Persian poetry, particularly that of the constitutional era; the study of Judeo-Persian literature and folk culture; and the history and culture of Iranian Jewry, which she situated in the larger context of Iranian history. Included in this book is a previously unpublished piece and an article that appears in English for the first time.

Within a growing scholarly literature devoted to the topics of biography and autobiography, especially in the Arabic literary tradition, the essays in this volume explore the forms and meanings of these genres with particular reference to Persian writings, as well as to writings in Arabic and Turkish that were also composed in Persianate societies.

JAYA is a study of how the four poets of the Indian epic Mahābhārata fuse their separate performances of the poem into a single and seamless work of art. The subtle poetics of preliteracy and literacy which are compounded in one performance are demonstrated and made distinct in both a literary and a conceptual light.

This is the first complete translation, with detailed commentary, of the surviving volumes of Beyhaqi’s massive project. The historian’s writings, dealing with the years 1030–1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature of the time, both in Arabic and Persian.

This is the first complete translation, with detailed commentary, of the surviving volumes of Beyhaqi’s massive project. The historian’s writings, dealing with the years 1030–1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature of the time, both in Arabic and Persian.

This is the first complete translation, with detailed commentary, of the surviving volumes of Beyhaqi’s massive project. The historian’s writings, dealing with the years 1030–1041, combine astute criticism and wry humor with an unobtrusive display of mastery of the learned literature of the time, both in Arabic and Persian.

Doak explores how the giants of the Hebrew Bible—which represent a connection to primeval chaos—offer insight into central aspects of Israel’s symbolic universe. By placing biblical traditions within a broader Mediterranean context regarding giants and the end of the heroic age, Doak sheds new light on monotheism and monarchy in ancient Israel.

These essays examine a millennium of humorous and satirical writing in the Islamic world. Humor in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish narrative emerges here as a culturally modulated phenomenon that demands examination with reference to its historical framework and that, in turn, communicates as much about its producers as it does about its audience.

Heroic Krsna depicts a pre-Hindu superhuman hero who became the divinity Krsna. Drawn from the epic Mahābhārata, Kevin McGrath’s account of the warrior-charioteer and his friendship with Arjuna explores cultural continuities from the Bronze Age Vedic world and illustrates the pre-divine life of one of the most popular Indian deities of today.

On the Wonders of Land and Sea is a comparative study of travel writers in the eastern Islamic world from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Situating texts in their socio-historical contexts, the essays study works by male and female Muslim and Parsi/Zoroastrian travelers in the Hijaz, Iraq, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, India, and Europe.

Olga M. Davidson’s major reassessment of the classical Persian epic the Shāhnāma argues that its poet is actually a character in the work who coexists with the heroes and kings celebrated in the poem. Documenting the text’s oral performance tradition, Davidson shows that the heroic style of the Shāhnāma stems from ancient Indo-European traditions.

Olga M. Davidson applies comparative literary approaches to classical Persian traditions of composing and performing poetry and song. She focuses on the eleventh-century CE epic Shāhnāma and its relationship to other genres embedded in it, including forms of verbal art originally composed without the aid of writing, such as women’s laments.

The Shāhnāma or Book of Kings glorifies the spectacular achievements of Iranian civilization from its mythologized beginnings to the time of the Arab Conquest. Ferdowsi’s Shāhnāma: Millennial Perspectives takes a fresh look at the reception of Ferdowsi’s poetry, especially in the twelfth through fifteenth centuries.