Ihsan Abbas

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Ihsan Abbas
Islamic jurisprudence

Ihsan Abbas (December 2, 1920 – July 29, 2003) was a

Palestinian professor at the American University of Beirut,[1] and was considered a premier figure of Arabic and Islamic studies in the East and West during the 20th century.[2] The "author of over one hundred books",[3] during his career, Abbas was renowned as one of the foremost scholars of Arabic language and literature and was a respected literary critic.[4] Upon his death, Abbas was eulogized by University College London historian Lawrence Conrad as a custodian of Arabic heritage and culture, and a figure whose scholarship had dominated the Middle East's intellectual and cultural life for decades.[5]

Life

Abbas was born in the former Palestinian village of

Arabic language.[7]

Abbas was often at the center of intellectual life wherever he was living, and camaraderie with his colleagues was an important part of his life. Abbas was an avid participant in the cafe gatherings of Naguib Mahfouz in Cairo during the 1950s and 1960s.[5] In the midst of the Lebanese Civil War in 1981, perhaps the primary intellectual activity in Beirut which continued despite the conflict was a weekly meeting of intellectuals and academics at Abbas' house.[6]

Abbas died in Amman, Jordan on January 29, 2003, at the age of 82 after a prolonged illness. On December 14, 2005, a day-long seminar was held at Birzeit University in Birzeit in honor of and to discuss Abbas' lifetime achievements and contributions to the fields of Arabic and Islamic studies; attendees included visiting scholars from Hebron University, Bethlehem University and An-Najah National University.[8]

Views

Abbas was a critic of the focus on the

North–South divide, emphasizing improvement of quality of life in the Third World rather than conflict between the north and the south.[9] Abbas was also distinguished as a Palestinian figure who defended contributions to Arabic and Islamic studies by Israeli scholarship, on one occasion reacting angrily to when a student claimed that Israeli academia was unable to master the Arabic language, a claim that Abbas found to be racist.[5]

Abbas, like most other historians of Arab literature, held the view that classical biography and autobiography in the Arabic language tended to reduce the subject to a type rather than an individual.[10] He also echoed the sentiment that in Arabic poetry, the description of the city as a genre and the details of urban life revealed the writer's ideological biases.[11] Abbas was also a defender of Kahlil Gibran's maligned Al-Mawakib, considering it a measuring stick for the literature produced by the Arabic renaissance in the United States.[4]

Work

Abbas was a celebrated man of letters and a prolific writer during his lifetime. He republished

Zahiri school of Islamic jurisprudence. He was responsible for reviving the works of Ibn Hazm, one of the main philosophers of the school and of Islam in general, editing and republishing many of them and even uncovering previously unpublished works on Ibn Hazm's legal theory from various archives; Abbas' 1983 edition of Ibn Hazm's book on legal theory Ihkam is considered a key moment in Arab intellectual history and the modernist revival of Zahirite legal method.[17]

Abbas also participated in a number of collaborative projects during his career. He served, alongside

Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings.[18][19] From 1951 to 1952, Abbas assisted fellow scholar Ahmad Amin and his student Shawqi Daif in editing and republishing an anthology of Egyptian contributions to Arabic poetry during the Middle Ages,[20] which had previously been thought to be minimal or non-existent.[21]

Abbas earned the

King Faisal International Prize from the King Faisal Foundation in 1980.[7] He was also a significant contributor to the cultural magazine Al-Arabi, and was the Arabic translator of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick
.

Edited and republished works

References

  1. ISBN 9780520256682
  2. ^ "Eight scholars from around world to be awarded honorary degrees". The University of Chicago Chronicle, Vol. 13, No. 4, October 14, 1993.
  3. ^ Einboden, J. ""Call me Ismā'īl": The Arabic Moby-Dick of Iḥsān 'Abbās." Leviathan, vol. 12 no. 1, 2010, p. 4
  4. ^
    ISBN 9783447061414
  5. ^ a b c d e Lawrence Conrad, "Ihsan Abbas: Custodian of Arabic Heritage and Culture." Al-Qantara, vol. xxvi, iss. #1, pp. 5–17. 2005.
  6. ^
    ISBN 9789004108301
  7. ^ a b c d Ihsan Abbas Archived 2014-03-13 at the Wayback Machine. Hosted at Visit Palestine; information provided courtesy of AllforPalestine. Copyright © 2013 Alternative Business Solutions ABS. Accessed 4 June 2013.
  8. ^ A Study Day at Birzeit University entitled “Ihsan Abbas in the Eyes of Researchers”[permanent dead link]. Birzeit University 1996–2013. Accessed 4 June 2013.
  9. ISBN 9789042027640
  10. ISBN 9783447040341
  11. ISBN 9781566566643
  12. ISBN 9789004098688
  13. ISBN 9789004047952
  14. ISBN 9780521591850
  15. ISBN 9789004129948
  16. ISBN 9780820497013
  17. ISBN 9789004234246
  18. State University of New York Press
    . Accessed 1 June 2013.
  19. ISBN 9789004045026
  20. ^ A. M. H. Mazyad, Ahmad Amin, page 47. Leiden: Brill Archive, 1963.
  21. ^ A. M. H. Mazyad, Ahmad Amin, pg. 48.
  22. ISBN 9789004095991
  23. ISBN 9780521646963
  24. ISBN 9781848855779
  25. ISBN 9789004117389
  26. ISBN 9789004106949
  27. ISBN 9780253215369
  28. ISBN 9780199945412
  29. ^
    ISBN 9789004113749
  30. ISBN 9780691146737
  31. ISBN 9780313379031
  32. ^ Clifford Edmund Bosworth, p. 347.

External links

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