31215 - Arab Philology 1

Academic Year 2021/2022

  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Bologna
  • Corso: First cycle degree programme (L) in Foreign Languages and Literature (cod. 0979)

Learning outcomes

Students know the fundamental aspects of the Arabic language’s structure, being able to compare them with the linguistic phenomena occurring in the same area (Semitic). They are aware of the Arabic language’s evolution within its cultural and geographical framework diachronically.

Course contents

The course is an introduction to the history of the Arabic language. Focusing on its genesis and evolution as they are witnessed in multiple writing practices, the course invites students to recognize the broadest connections between the Arab-Muslim world's intellectual history and the Arabic linguistic and literary tradition in particular.


The course encourages students to engage in critical discussion of the interplay between modernity and tradition, introducing them to the academic debate on classical Arabic language, the genesis of the Arabic linguistic thought, and its main sources. The course will also equip students with the critical tools to proceed to a due contextualization of texts while also exploring a plethora of approaches employed by past and modern scholars to formulate and transmit knowledge. Specific attention will be paid to studying the various grammar schools and the main theories developed by Arabic grammarians from the II / VIII to the VII / XIII century and their relevance in modern thought and literary studies.


Throughout the course, students will study a series of texts in Arabic (medieval Arabic grammarians / modern texts) that will be distributed and commented on in class by the teacher. These insights will enable them to develop a critical approach to the Arabic sources and the history of the Arabic linguistic tradition.


The required languages are Italian, Arabic, and at least one choice between English and French.

Readings/Bibliography

Amaldi, Daniela, “La poesia yemenita dalla Jāhiliyya al IX secolo: stato degli studi in occidente,” Quaderni di Studi Arabi, 15, 1997, 119-130.

Ansari, Zafar Ishaq, “Islamic Juristic Terminology Before Šāfiʿī: a Semantic Analysis with Special Reference to Kūfa Author(s),” Arabica, 19/3, 1972, 255-300.

Baalbaki, R., The Arabic Lexicographical Tradition from the 2nd/8th to the 12th/18th Century, Brill, Leiden, 2014, sezioni scelte

Bishop, Brian, “A History of the Arabic Language”, Linguistics 450 April 24, 1998 (https://linguistics.byu.edu)

Fassi Fehri, A. Linguistique Arabe: Forme et Interpretation. Tesi di Dottorato. Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines, Rabat, 1982, sezioni scelte

Ferguson, Charles A. "The Arabic Koine" in Structuralist Studies in Arabic Linguistics: Charles A. Fergusonís Papers, 1954-1994. Ed. R. Kirk Belnap and Niloofar Haeri. Leiden: Brill, 1997, 50-68

George E. Mendenhall, “Arabic in Semitic Historical Linguistics,” Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies, 19, 1989, 99-103.

Ghersetti, A., “Quelques notes sur la définition canonique de balāgha”. In Orientalia, no. 87, Leuven University Press, 1998, pp. 57-72.

Gutas, D., Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ʻAbbāsid Society (2nd-4th/8th-10th Centuries), Routledge, London and NY, 1998, sezioni scelte.

Jacobi, Renate, “Ibn al-Muʿtazz: Dair ʿAbdūn. A Structural Analysis,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 6, 1975, 35-56.

Kennedy, Philip F., The Wine Song in Classical Arabic Poetry. Abu Nuwas and the Literary Tradition, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1-18.

Kövecses, Zoltán, Metaphor and Emotion Language, Culture, and Body in Human Feeling, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 20-34.

Mestyan, Adam, “Arabic Lexicography and European Aesthetics: The Origin of Fann.” In Muqarnas 28, 1, 2011, 69-100.

Modarressi, Hossein, “Some Recent Analyses of the Concept of Majāz in Islamic Jurisprudence,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, 106/4, 1986, 787-791.

al-Musawi, Muhsin Jassim, Scheherazade In England. A Study of Nineteenth-Century English Criticism of the Arabian Nights, Washington D.C.: The Three Continents Press, 1978, sezioni scelte.

Owens, J., The Foundations of Grammar: An Introduction to Medieval Arabic Grammatical Theory, Amsterdam/Philadephia, 1988, sezioni scelte

Rabin, Chaim Menachem, “The Beginnings of Classical Arabic,” Studia Islamica, 4, 1955, 19-37.

Rizzitano, Umberto, “I danni dell'imitazione della poesia araba preislamica secondo il critico Aḥmad Amīn Bey,” Oriente Moderno, 1/6, 1946, 42-49.

Salvatore, Armando, “Secularity through a ‘Soft Distinction’ in the Islamic Ecumene? Adab as a Counterpoint to Shari’a” Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 44/3 (169), Special Issue: Islamicate Secularities in Past and Present, 2019, 35-51.

Stetkevych Pinckney, Suzanne, “Solomon and Mythic Kingship in the Arab-Islamic Tradition: Qaṣīdah, Qurʾān and Qiṣaṣ alanbiyāʾ,” Journal of Arabic Literature, 48/1, 2017, 1-37.

Stetkevych Pinckney, Suzanne, “The Ritha' of Ta'abbata Sharran. A Study of Blood-Vengeance in Early Arabic Poetry,” Journal of Semitic Studies, 31, 1986, 28-45.

Talib, Adam; Hammond, Marle; Schippers, Arie, The Rude, the Bad and the Bawdy: Essays in Honour of Professor Geert Jan Van Gelder, Cambridge UK: Gibb Memorial Trust, 2014, 141-159 and 230-253.

Van Gelder, J.G. “Brevity, The Long and The Short of It in Classical Arabic Literary Theory.” Proceedings 9th UEAI Conference. Leiden: Brill, 1981, 78-88.

Versteegh, Kees, Arabic Grammar and Qurʼānic Exegesis in Early Islam, Brill, Leiden, 1993, sezioni scelte

Additional References

Bordieu, P.; Randal Johnson (a cura di). The field of the cultural production, Columbia University Press, NY, 1993.

Burke, Kenneth. 1973. Language as a Symbolic Action. University of California Press, CA, 1973.

Young, M. J. L., Latham, J. D., Serjeant, R. B., Religion, Learning and Science in the ʿAbbasid Period, Cambridge (The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature), 1990, sezioni scelte.

Excerpts (in Arabic)

al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ‛Uthmān; Fawzī ‛Aṭawī (a cura di), al-Bayān wa-l-tabyīn, Beirut: Dār Sa‛ab, 1978

al-Jurjānī, ‛Abd al-Qāhir, F. al-Dāya (a cura di) Dalā’il al-i‛jāz, F. al-Dāya Ed., Damasco, 1947.

Ibn Khaldūn, Walī ad-Dīn, ‛Abd Allāh Muḥammad Darwīsh (a cura di), al-Muqaddima, Damasco, Dār Ya‛rub, 2004

Rifāʽ al-Ṭahṭāwī, al-Tuhfa al-maktabiyya li-taqrīb al-lugha al-ʽarabiyya, (pubbl. 1868).

Adūnīs, al-Thābit wa-l-mutaḥawwil, Dār al-Sāqī, Beirut, 1994.

All texts are available on Virtuale. Throughout the course, students will be informed of possible changes

Teaching methods

Lessons will be held in person

Assessment methods

The course has three graded components: a) attendance and class participation; b) group presentations: students are responsible for leading in-course seminars focused on course topics; c) an end-course oral exam

To take the exam as a non-attending student (also from previous years), please contact the instructor.


Teaching tools

Texts, audio-video sources, additional materials provided by the teacher.

Office hours

See the website of Chiara Fontana