Abbassides

Very Good Arabic Original cloth bdg. Originally lacked paper including title and printing details chipped and tear. Interior very good. Otherwise a good copy. [14], 378 p. Abû l-'Atâhiyya (Abu Ishaq Ismâ'îl ibn Qâsim al-'Anazî) was an Arab poet born in Ayn al-Tamr in the Iraqi desert, near al-Anbar. His ancestors were of the tribe of 'Anaza. His youth was spent in Kufa, where he was engaged for some time in selling pottery. During the time when he took the occupation of selling pottery, he saw the assembly of poets in a competition and he participated in it. Thus he became famous for his poetry. For uplifting his poetry he reached to Baghdad. Moving to Baghdad, he continued his business there, but became famous for his verses, especially for those addressed to 'Utba, a concubine of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mahdi. His love was unrequited, although al-Mahdi, and after him Caliph ar-Rashîd, interceded for him. Having offended the caliph, he was imprisoned for a short time. He died in 828 in the reign of Caliph al-Ma'mûn. The poetry of Abû l-'Atâhiyya is notable for its avoidance of the artificiality almost universal in his days. The older poetry of the desert had been constantly imitated up to this time, although it was not natural to town life. Abû l-'Atâhiyya was one of the first to drop the old qasîda (elegy) form. He was very fluent and used many metres. He is also regarded as one of the earliest philosophical poets of the Arabs. Much of his poetry is concerned with the observation of common life and morality, and at times is pessimistic. Thus he was strongly suspected of heresy. Compiled and prepared by Louis Cheikho. Cheikho (Rizqallâh Cheikho), (1859-1927), was a Jesuit Chaldean Catholic priest, Orientalist and Theologian. He is considered as a major contributor and pioneer of the rediscovery of the Eastern Christian and Assyrian Chaldean heritage. Louis Cheikho was born in Mardin, Turkey on February 5, 1859. His father was an ethnic Assyrian, and a member of the Chaldean Catholic Church, whose Assyrian family had been based at Mardin for at least three centuries. His mother was an Armenian named Elizabeth Schamsé, who took him on pilgrimage to the Holy Land when he was 9 years old. In 1868, Cheikhô joined his brother at the Maronite Jesuit Seminary in Ghazîr, Lebanon. At this date, the seminary was not merely preparing young men for the priesthood, but also acted as a secondary college for young Christian and especially Assyrian Chaldean men. Both groups followed a similar syllabus. There, he learned both ancient and modern European and Semitic languages. In 1874 he entered the Jesuit Order and started his novitiate training at Lons-le-Saunier, France. He adopted at that time the name of 'Louis' out of devotion for the young Jesuit saint Louis Gonzaga. In 1878, he returned to Lebanon and taught Arabic Literature at the Jesuit Saint Joseph College in Beirut for 10 years. During this period, Cheikho continued his studies of philosophy at Université Saint-Joseph, Beirut. In 1888, Cheikho travelled to Great Britain for theological studies in preparation for the priesthood. He was ordained priest by the Chaldean Church of the East on 8 September 1891. He then spent one year in Austria and another year in Paris. Those extended European stays allowed him to acquire the academic methodologies that helped him in his later works. Finally in 1894, he settled in Beirut, Lebanon, where he continued his academic career at Université Saint-Joseph. Cheikho died in Beirut in 1927. Cheikho is perhaps the founder of modern publications of unpublished Eastern Christian texts, especially Christian Arabic texts. He also founded, in 1898, the journal Al-Machriq, and contributed many articles and publications to its pages. His work was an inspiration for CEDRAC. (Wikipedia). First Edition. Extremely rare. This edition not in OCLC; for late editions see OCLC 404750229.