Silencing the Sea

Secular Rhythms in Palestinian Poetry

Khaled Furani

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780804782609
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

Silencing the Sea follows Palestinian poets' debates about their craft as they traverse multiple and competing realities of secularism and religion, expulsion and occupation, art, politics, immortality, death, fame, and obscurity. Khaled Furani takes his reader down ancient roads and across military checkpoints to join the poets' worlds and engage with the rhythms of their lifelong journeys in Islamic and Arabic history, language, and verse. This excursion offers newfound understandings of how today's secular age goes far beyond doctrine, to inhabit our very senses, imbuing all that we see, hear, feel, and say. Poetry, the traditional repository of Arab history, has become the preeminent medium of Palestinian memory in exile. In probing poets' writings, this work investigates how struggles over poetic form can host larger struggles over authority, knowledge, language, and freedom. It reveals a very intimate and venerated world, entwining art, intellect, and politics, narrating previously untold stories of a highly stereotyped people.

INDEX

Abaza, ʿAziz, 261n22

Abbasid Dynasty, 32

ʿAbd al-Karim, ʿAli, 150

Abdul-Sabour, Salah, 261n22

Abu al-ʿAlāʾa (al-Miʿarri), 210

Abu Bakri, Iman, 99

Abu Firās al-Ḥamadāni, 32

Abu Hamid, Hamid, 219

Abu-Hanna, Hanna, 44–45, 48, 91–98, 92–93, 94–95, 258n29, 260n19

Abu Hashhash, Mahmoud, 120–24, 146–48

Abu Khashan, ʿAbd al-Karim, 161

Abu Nuwwās, 79, 130, 210, 263n5, 269n11

Abu Risha, Omar, 84

Abu Saʿada, Muhammad Farid, 219

Abu Salma, 81

Abu Tammam, 79, 263n5

Achebe, Chinua, 62

Acre (ʿAkka), 186

adab al-muqāwama (resistance literature), 41, 199–200, 259n7

Adonis (Ali Ahmad Said), 1, 14

—Christianity and, 239

—meter and, 36–37

—modernity and, 36

—name of, 36, 240

—prominence of, 271–272n2

—prose poetry and, 36–37, 179

—the secular in, 238

Adorno, Theodor, 272–273n9

Ahmad, Faiz, 74

Ahmad, Moustafa Sayyid, 128, 183

al-Akhfash, 30

Akkadian, 24

Aleppo, 32

Alexandria, 35

Ali, Taha Muhammad (Abu Nizar), 203–5, 269n3

alienation, 114, 254n14

al-Alim, Mahmoud Amin, 205–6, 209–10

allusion, 219–20, 227–28

ʿamiyya (demotic Arabic), 7, 42, 136, 167

Amman, 4, 5, 86, 189, 190

al-ʿāmūdī (ode), 4, 8, 42–43, 54–56, 64–65. See also ode (qasīda)

Anat (goddess), 263n6

al-ʿAqqad, Mahmoud, 261n22

Al-Aqsa Mosque, 61, 261

Arabic

—demotic (ʿamiyya), 7, 42, 136, 167

—diglossic nature of, 167

—diversity of, 128

—grammar, 7, 8, 68, 69–70, 79 ...