Book Specifications
col. 169-364 pp.
softcover
2024 | BiOr Volume 81 3/4 ISSN: 0006-1913
The final two volumes of the Oxford History of the Ancient Near East project, both of which appeared in 2023, cover the period from around 1100 to 330 BC. This review aims to show how the two major empires of the period, Assyria and Persia, are presented to the reader and contextualized within broader temporal and geographic parameters, by discussing the volumes as single units and by surveying the individual chapters. Some remarks about the state of the study of ancient Near Eastern history close the review.
Review article on: Céline Debourse, Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 127. Leiden, Boston 2022. xi + 512 pp.
The book Luzūm mā lā yalzam dictated by Aḥmad ibn Sulaymān Abū l-῾Alā᾿ (resident in the walled town of Ma῾arrat al-Nu῾mān) consists of a variegated collection of poems, each one ending on double rhyme or threefold rhyme assembled in metrical forms based on the classical Arab theory. It holds an amazing variety of ideas, sparked off by historical, theological, proverbial and linguistic themes, with allusions mystified by delusional digression, wandering away from the original subject.
The researcher is navigating the complexities of belief versus unbelief. This article explores more extensively the perilous dilemma between orthodox staunch religiosity and its irreverent derision by rationalism. Admittedly, Ibn al-Rāwandī was one of those arch heretics who fascinated al-Ma῾arrī in an enigmatical way, despite the poet’s clearly expressed rejection. Perhaps the far-fetched examples and sometimes inscrutable wording are due to the poet’s secret admiration for the heretic’s argumentation.
In conclusion, one imagines that the poet succeeded in preserving his own soul “alive”. He frequently describes Allah’s predestination overwhelming the human’s free choice, adducing the emigration of the soul from her companion, the body of sinfulness and decay. She wishes to leave her imprisonment: her stay in dense obscurity will change into a glorious sun-lit garden of eternity. However, her deserted body is worried by its lack of embalming material to conserve its ruined remains. Finally, one wonders if al-Ma῾arrī, amidst his rationalist inclinations, also finds solace in the pronouncements of Ja῾far al-Ṣādiq, the sixth Shī῾ite Imām, whose wisdom may offer solutions to believers.
Faraonisch Egypte, Christelijk Egypte, Assyriologie, Hettitologie, Oude Testament, Archeologie, Arabica, Islam, Varia
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