1. Franz Rosenthal, “Die arabische Autobiographie,” Studia Arabica 1 (1937): 11–12, 15–19; Saleh al-Ghamdi, “Autobiography in Classical Arabic Literature: An Ignored Genre” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1989), 31–33, concurs. [BACK]

2. Anwar al-Jundī, al-A‘lām al-alf (Cairo: Maṭba‘at al-Risāla, 1957), 1:100. [BACK]

3. M. G. S. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 2:180. [BACK]

4. Philip Hitti, introduction to Kitāb al-i‘tibār (1930; rpt. Baghdad: Maktabat al-Muthannā, 1964), 25; Nikita Elisséeff, Nūr al-Dīn: Un grand prince musulman de Syrie au temps des croisades (Damascus: Institut Français de Damas, 1967), 1:22. [BACK]

5. ‘Alī ‘Abd al-Wāḥid, ed., Muqaddimat Ibn Khaldūn, 2d ed. (Cairo: Lajnat al-Bayān al-‘Arabī, 1965), 1:152; Taha Hussein [Ṭāhā Ḥusayn], ‘Ilm al-ijtimā‘, vol. 8 of al-Majmū‘a al-kāmila li-mu’allafāt Ṭāhā Ḥusayn (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Lubnānī, 1973), 27. [BACK]

6. ‘Izz al-Dīn Ismā‘īl, al-Adab wa-funūnuh, 3d ed. (Cairo: Dār al-Fikr al-‘Arabī, 1965), 235. [BACK]

7. Thomas Philipp, “The Autobiography in Modern Arab Literature and Culture,” Poetics Today 14, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 583. [BACK]

8. Ibn Buluggīn, Mudhakkirāt al-Amīr ‘Abd Allāh ākhir mulūk, banī zīri bi-Gharnāṭa al-musammā bi-kitāb al-tibyān, ed. E. Lévi-Provençal (Cairo: Dār al-Ma‘ārif, 1955), 178; cf. The Tibyān: Memoirs of ‘Abd Allāh b. Buluggīn, Last Zīrid Amīr of Granada, trans. Amin T. Tibi (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1986), 174. [BACK]

9. Ibn Buluggīn, Mudhakkirāt, 179; cf. Tibi, Tibyān, 174. [BACK]

10. Ibn Buluggīn, Mudhakkirāt, 184, 187; cf. Tibi, Tibyān, 178, 180. [BACK]

11. Ibn Buluggīn, Mudhakkirāt, 196–97; cf. Tibi, Tibyān, 187–88. [BACK]

12. Ibn Buluggīn, Mudhakkirāt, 199–200; cf. Tibi, Tibyān, 189–90. [BACK]

13. Devin J. Stewart, “The Humor of the Scholars: The Autobiography of Ni‘mat Allāh al-Jazā’irī (d. 1112/1701),” Iranian Studies 22 (1989): 47–50. [BACK]

14. The reference is to the tradition of having boys who have finished memorizing the Qur’ān recite the Holy Book publicly during Ramadan by leading the congregation in the special evening prayers (tarāwīḥ) of that month. [BACK]

15. “Ibn Ḥajar went on to finish his work Raf‘ al-iṣr but did not complete his own biographical notice. The remainder of his biography is found in al-Suyūṭī's Ḥusn al-muḥāḍara.” Editor's note in Raf‘ al-iṣr ‘an quḍāt miṣr [History of the Judges of Egypt] (Cairo: al-Maṭba‘a al-Amīriyya, 1957), 85–88. [BACK]

16. Sabri K. Kawash, “Ibn Ḥajar al-Asqalānī (1372–1449 A.D.): A Study of the Background, Education, and Career of an ‘Ālim in Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1969), 75–76. [BACK]

18. In addition to al-Bukhārī, the “Six Books” included another Ṣaḥīḥ by Muslim and four books of Sunan by al-Sijistānī, al-Tirmidhī, al-Nasā’ī, and Abū Mājah. [BACK]

19. Dwight F. Reynolds, “Childhood in One Thousand Years of Arabic Autobiography,” Edebiyât: Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 379– 92. [BACK]

20. See Dimitri Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition: Introduction to Reading Avicenna's Philosophical Works (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1988). [BACK]

21. E. M. Sartain, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 1:137. [BACK]

22. Franz Rosenthal, “Ibn Ḥadjar al-‘Asḳalānī,” EI²3:776–78. [BACK]

23. Ibid., 776; see Ibn Ḥajar al-‘Asqalānī, Uns al-hujar fī abyāt Ibn Ḥajar (Beirut: Dār al-Rayyān li-l-Turāth, 1988); and Kawash, “Ibn Ḥajar.” [BACK]

24. Kristen Brustad, “Imposing Order: Reading the Conventions of Representation in al-Suyūṭī's Autobiography,” Edebiyât: Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 327–44. [BACK]

25. Ibid., 332. [BACK]

26. Ibid. [BACK]

27. Autobiographers who were orphaned of one or both parents in early childhood include Ibn Ḥajar, al-Suyūṭī, Zarrūq, Ibn Dayba‘, al-Yūsī, Ibn ‘Ajība, Babakr Badrī, and ‘Alī al-‘Amilī, whose father left when he was six years old and died when he was sixteen. [BACK]

28. See, for example, the 181 titles cited by Toufic Fahd, “Inventaire de la littérature onirocritique arabe,” in La divination arabe (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1966; rpt. Paris: Sindbad, 1987), 330–63; also, Gustav von Grunebaum and R. Callois, eds., The Dream and Human Societies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966); and John C. Lamoreaux, “Dream Interpretation in the Early Medieval Near East” (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1999). [BACK]

29. Cited in M. J. L. Young, “Arabic Biographical Literature,” in Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period, ed. M. J. L. Young, J. D. Latham, and R. B. Serjeant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 174. Al-Khallāl's original work apparently listed 7,500 practitioners of the craft; a summary of it including 600 dream interpreters was consulted by the scholar al-Dīnawarī around the year 1000. See Lamoreaux, “Dream Interpretation,” 29–31. [BACK]

30. See, for example, Qur’ān 37:101–5 (Abraham's dream); 12:4–7 (Joseph's dream); 12:36–37 (prisoners' dreams interpreted by Joseph); 12:43–49 (Pharaoh's dream); 48:27 (the vision of Muhammad). [BACK]

31. Fahd, La divination arabe, 256–68. [BACK]

32. M. A. M. Khan, “A Unique Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams by Ibn Sina,” in Avicenna Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: Iran Society, 1956), 255–307. [BACK]

33. Ibn Khaldūn, The Muqaddimah, trans. F. Rosenthal (New York: Pantheon, 1958), 3:103. [BACK]

34. Steven M. Oberhelman, The Oneirocriticon of Achmet: A Medieval Greek and Arabic Treatise on the Interpretation of Dreams (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1991). [BACK]

35. Ibn Abī Dunyā, Morality in the Guise of Dreams: Ibn Abī al-Dunya, a Critical Edition of Kitāb al-manām, ed. Leah Kinberg (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 81. Shi‘ite sources claim the same status for the Imāms (man ra’ānā fa-qad ra’ānā fa-inna al-shayṭāna lā yatamaththalu binā), ‘Alī al-‘Āmilī, al-Durr al-manthūr, 2 vols., ed. Aḥmad al-Ḥusaynī (Qom: Maktabat al-Mar‘ashī al-Najafī, 1978), 2:197. [BACK]

36. See Jonathan G. Katz, Dreams, Sufism, and Sainthood: The Visionary Career of Muhammad al-Zawāwī (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996); Ignaz Goldziher, “The Appearance of the Prophet in Dreams,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1912): 503–6. [BACK]

37. An English collation of several medieval Arabic works into a single dream dictionary is available in Yehia Gouda, trans., Dreams and Their Meanings in the Old Arab Tradition (New York: Vantage Press, 1991). [BACK]

38. See the autobiography of al-Simnānī (translated in this volume) for an example of the hātif. [BACK]

39. See Leah Kinberg's series of articles on this topic: “The Legitimization of Madhāhib through Dreams,” Arabica 32 (1985): 47–79; “The Standardization of Qur’ān Readings: The Testimonial Value of Dreams,” The Arabist: Budapest Studies in Arabic 3–4 (1991): 223–38; and “Literal Dreams and Prophetic Ḥadīth in Classical Islam—A Comparison of Two Ways of Legitimization,” Der Islam 70 (1993): 279– 300. [BACK]

40. The text poses a number of problems and may not even have been written by Ḥunayn himself. See Michael Cooperson, “The Purported Autobiography of Ḥunayn ibn Isḥāq,” Edebiyât: Special Issue—Arabic Autobiography, N.S. 7, no. 2 (1997): 235–49. [BACK]

41. Samaw’al al-Maghribī, Ifḥām al-yahūd, Silencing the Jews, ed. and trans. Moshe Perlmann (New York: American Academy for Jewish Research, 1964), 87–88. [BACK]

42. Galen of Pergamon reports that he was trained in medicine and philosophy as a result of powerful dreams dreamed by his father. Arthur J. Brock, Greek Medecine, being extracts illustrative of medical writers from Hippocrates to Galen (London: Dent and Sons, 1929), 180. [BACK]

43. In reading western treatments of modern Arabic literature, one might assume that the novel has long been the most prestigious form of literary expression in Arabic. This is a view promulgated primarily in western scholarly discussion and certainly did not hold true in the Arab world itself, with the possible exception of Egypt, until very recently. Indeed, many of the objections voiced about the awarding of the 1989 Nobel Prize for literature to the Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz were raised precisely because the prize was being given for a form (which many view as adopted from the West) that has played a far less significant role in Arab culture and society than poetry. [BACK]

44. A fascinating modern echo of this is found in the words of a Jordanian Bedouin versed in tribal histories: al-guṣṣa illī mā ‘indhā gaṣīda kidhib (A story without a poem is a lie!), quoted in Andrew Shryock, “History and Historiography among the Belqa Tribes of Jordan” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1993), 295. [BACK]

45. This aspect of poetry is analyzed in a modern context in Lila Abu-Lughod, Veiled Sentiments: Honor and Poetry in a Bedouin Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); however, it has been a general characteristic of Arabic poetic discourse since the pre-Islamic period. [BACK]

46. ‘Umāra was also the author of a fascinating history of Yemen about which his translator has written: “‘Omārah has preserved for us an exceedingly curious picture of Arab life and manners, such, I may perhaps venture to say, as is only excelled in Arabic literature by the tales of the Thousand and One Nights.” Henry Cassels Kay, Yaman: Its Early Medieval History (London: E. Arnold, 1892), x–xi. [BACK]

47. Quoted in Jawad Ahmad ‘Alwash, Umara al-Yamani the Poet (Baghdad: al-Ma‘ārif Press, 1971), 120, drawn from Aḥmad al-Maqrīzī, al-Khiṭaṭ (Cairo: B. al-Suluk, 1914), 2:392. [BACK]

48. ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, Kharīdat al-qaṣr (Damascus: al-Maṭba‘a al-Hishāmiyya, 1964), 104. [BACK]

49. An Arab-Syrian Gentleman and Warrior in the Period of the Crusades: Memoirs of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh, trans. Philip K. Hitti (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), 190–91. [BACK]

50. Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq, al-Sāq ‘alā al-sāq fī mā huwa al-Faryāq (Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1855), 614. [BACK]

51. ‘Imād al-Dīn al-Kātib al-Iṣfahānī, quoted in al-Fatḥ al-Bundarī, Sanā al-barq al-shāmī, ed. Ramazan Şeşen (Beirut: Dār al-Kitāb al-Jadīd, 1971), 114. [BACK]

52. Marilyn J. Miller, The Poetics of Nikki Bungaku: A Comparison of the Traditions, Conventions, and Structure of Heian Japan's Literary Diaries with Western Autobiographical Writings (New York: Garland, 1985). [BACK]

53. Dwight F. Reynolds, “Prosimetrum in 19th- and 20th-Century Arabic Literature,” in Prosimetrum: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Narrative in Prose and Verse, ed. Joseph Harris and Karl Reichl (Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1998), 277–94. [BACK]

54. See, for example, the novels of Salīm al-Bustānī (d. 1884). For a treatment of the life and work of al-Bustānī, see Constantin Georgescu, “A Forgotten Pioneer of the Lebanese `Nahḍah': Salīm al-Bustānī” (Ph.D. diss., New York University, 1978). [BACK]

55. One modern echo of the use of poetry in Arabic autobiography can be found in Bint al-Shāṭi’ [‘Ā’isha ‘Abd al-Raḥmān], ‘Alā jisr bayna al-ḥayāh wa-l-mawt (Cairo: al-Hay’a al-‘Āmma al-Miṣriyya li-l-Kitāb, 1967), which both opens and closes with selections from the author's poetry. [BACK]