| Conference: The Racecourse of Literature - An-Nawāǧī and His Contemporaries
© Institut für Arabistik

The conference is organized by Leibnizpreis-Research-Unit "Arabische Literatur und Rhetorik Elfhundert bis Achtzehnhundert" (ALEA) and
will take place on the 4th and 5th of May at the Institut für Arabistik und Islamwissenschaft (2nd floor), Schlaunstraße 2, 48143 Münster.

Program:
Friday, 4th of May
An-Nawāǧī’s Contemporaries
(with contributions from Adam Talib, Nefeli Papoutsakis, Maurice Pomerantz, Andreas Herdt, Luca Rizzo and Hakan Özkan)

Saturday, 5th of May
The Many Faces of an-Nawāǧī’s Poetry
(with contributions from Raed M.H. Abdelraheem, Thomas Bauer, Geert Jan Van Gelder, Syrinx von Hees, Alev Masarwa
and Samir Mubayd)

Main topic:
Shamsaddīn an-Nawāǧī (ca. 1386–1455), a native of Cairo or an-Nawāǧ, a town north-east of Ṭanṭa, has been famous for his literary anthologies of love poetry (e.g. Marātiʿ al-ġizlān – “The Gazelle‘s Pastures”) and wine poetry (Ḥalbat al-kumayt – “The Racecourse of the Bay”). Apart from his work as an anthologist he was also a renowned poet and academic teacher who taught adab and ḥadīṯ in the madrasahs of Cairo.

This conference aims to shed some light on hitherto understudied writings of an-Nawāǧī but also on those of some of his contemporaries like Ibn Ḥiǧǧa and Ibn Ḥaǧar al-ʿAsqalānī as they all vied with each other on the racecourse of literature of their age.

For further details please click here.

On a little side note: The poetry of an-Nawāǧī did not disappear from history. To the contrary, some of his poems, especially his laudatory poems for the prophet Muḥammad, have been appreciated throughout history even until our days. In the following song the famous Lebanese singer Fadwā ʿUbayd sings verses from a tāʾīya (a poem ending with the consonant tāʾ) by an-Nawāǧī: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSZI2qbmT-g