AL-Mawrid Journal

Western and Eastern historians have not agreed on the exact year of Baghdad’s foundation, nor on the etymology of its name. Since its (re)foundation by Abu Jaʿfar al-Mansur, Baghdad has become a major center of knowledge, scholarship, and travel. Scholars from various regions of the world flocked to it, as did travelers belonging to diverse religious, sectarian, and ethnic backgrounds.
This article sheds light on four journeys to Baghdad undertaken by travelers affiliated with different religions and sects, one of which includes excerpts published here for the first time. The study analyzes the journey of Benjamin of Tudela, the Jewish traveler; Madame Jane Dieulafoy, the Christian traveler; Mitraqi Zadah, the Muslim traveler affiliated with the Hanafi school; and al-Ṣahib ibn ʿAbbad, the Muslim scholar affiliated with the Zaydi Shiʿi school.
One of the distinguishing features of this article is its focus on the Ruznamajah (daily journal) of al-Ṣahib ibn ʿAbbad, which represents the oldest known travel account to Baghdad that has reached us to date. Selected excerpts from this work are published for the first time in the esteemed journal Al-Mawrid.

The study examines al-Fihrist by Ibn al-Nadim, produced in fourth-century AH Baghdad, within a context of profound threats to life, culture, and books. The work articulates a culture of defending books, embodying a clear alignment with life, thought, and intellectual and human diversity. It also advances a judgment on society, adopts a stance toward the conflicts within it, and performs a cultural role that consists in resisting the culture of exclusion and killing expressed and propagated by the actions of numerous social groups of that period

The efforts made in the study were to introduce the historian Al-Khatib Al- Baghdadi in the field of criticism and historical records, which means comparing what was transmitted from narratives and news with the established background in history books, which was done with detail, observation, and the science of civilization,The field of historical correspondence includes the text and the chain of transmission, and it is the field from which Muslim historians started in the field of historical criticism. Al-Khatib Al-Baghdadi is one of the Muslim scholars whose approach was characterized by criticizing the historical narrative, scrutinizing it, and subjecting it to the law of correspondence, which he mastered and applied in history and hadith, His writings were evidence of that. The study was concerned with showing the effort made by the historian Al-Khatib Al-Baghdadi in his book, The History of Baghdad, to reach the correct history by referring to its conformity with what was transmitted from the narrations in the major Islamic sources in terms of time, place and actions, In this way, al-Khatib al-Baghdadi was able to correct many historical narratives and expose the falsehood of some of them. Foremost among these was his exposure of the forgery and lies of the Jews when they presented their document known as the Document of the Jews of Khaybar to the Abbasid Caliph. This research also aims to inform researchers in the field of historical research about learning and applying this concept in the field of historical studies.

The city of Baghdad has occupied a distinguished position in various sources of Arab–Islamic history and heritage, as it served as the center (capital) of the Abbasid Caliphate. Its construction was initiated by the Caliph Abu Jaʿfar al-Mansur in 145 AH / 762 CE and completed in 149 AH / 766 CE. Thereafter, Baghdad became the hub of the Arab–Islamic world until its fall to the Mongols under the leadership of Hulagu in 656 AH / 1258 CE.
In conducting this study, we relied on information drawn from the works of the most eminent Arab and Muslim geographers, characterized by accuracy and authenticity, and distinguished by their significance due to the uniqueness and rarity of the information they provide about the city of Baghdad. This is largely because most of these geographers were contemporaneous eyewitnesses who documented their observations, accounts, and oral reports, and described the city of Baghdad by elucidating its importance, status, and most prominent features—its quarters, markets, houses, and alleyways. Their accounts span from the third century to the first half of the seventh century AH (ninth to thirteenth centuries CE), that is, nearly five centuries of the history and enduring heritage of the city of Baghdad.

This research is a step forward in the investigation of grammatical disputes in the book (Al-Idah fi Ilal Al-Nahw) by Al-Zajjaji (d. 337 AH). My goal is to clarify the origins of the disputed issues in books not specialized in grammatical disputes, testing the credibility of later scholars' transmission of these issues. This is particularly true since some grammarians have been accused of exaggeration and fabrication, particularly those from Kufa. Furthermore, it examines some of the disputed issues mentioned by Al-Zajjaji that are not mentioned in the well- known books on grammatical disputes. The goal is to shed light on the depth of the linguistic philosophy followed by our scholars in interpreting linguistic phenomena and directing them in a manner consistent with the general rules established by each grammatical school.

This study attempts to uncover the intellectual background of the pre-Islamic society through the tools used by pre-Islamic poets in the field of adornment, and to analyze their connotations, whether close or distant, in an effort to reach the ideas of society at that time. Pre-Islamic poetry represents an inexhaustible resource for its students, as it did not leave any aspect that reflects the civilized aspects of pre- Islamic life without revealing it. Pre-Islamic women enjoyed many words related to adornment tools and types of clothing. Hence, this study sought to shed light on the adornment words used by pre-Islamic poets in their poetry, by interrogating some poetic verses of different poets from different times, especially what was mentioned in the poetry of the veteran poet Abda bin al-Tabib of adornment words.

This study emerges from reflections surrounding Ibn Wahb al-Katib’s work Al- Burhan fī Wujuh al-Bayan, a text whose attribution remained ambiguous, as it was once considered a forgery attributed to Qudamah ibn Ja‘far. Scholarly investigation, however, has confirmed the authenticity of the book and established its correct authorship, affirming that its author was a learned, juristic, and theological figure. He composed it in opposition to al-Jahiz’s Al-Bayan wa al-Tabyin, while simultaneously revealing the nature of the ideological struggle that rendered this work one of the “suppressed texts,” deliberately excluded due to mechanisms of cultural domination. Whereas al-Jahiz represents Abbasid culture as a voice of the ‘isolated’ intellectual reconciled with authority, he formulated a discourse grounded in clarity and explicitness, aligning with the requirements of the “rhetoric of the state,” which emphasizes direct persuasion and subordination of speech to contextual necessity. For al-Jahiz, expression becomes a means of uncovering meanings and conveying them to the audience, relying on clarity of signification and correctness of indication. This extends even to non-linguistic media such as script, knots, and gestures, yet does not alter disclosure as the primary function of expression. Here, rhetoric intersects with authority in its symbolic dimension, as clarity functions both as an instrument
of domination and a tool for shaping opinion.
Ibn Wahb al-Katib, in contrast, presents a different vision, aligned with political and intellectual opposition. His discourse employs taqiyya (prudential concealment) as a framework for expression, and indication as a refuge for meaning. He conceptualizes expression on a dual basis of the intellect: one innate, the other acquired through craft, and divides rhetoric into multiple strata: expression of things in their essence, inner expression, verbal expression, and written expression. This classification manifests philosophical and epistemological dimensions in perceiving the latent meaning inherent in things themselves.
Thus, al-Jahiz embodies the rhetoric of clarity that harmonizes with the culture of authority and its political discourse, whereas Ibn Wahb al-Katib embodies the rhetoric of gesture and indication, relying on subtlety and interpretation, seeking alternative epistemic horizons beyond state authority and its cultural discourse. In other words, artistic creativity becomes inseparable from the cultural and ideological struggle between the discourses of authority and opposition, articulated through expression and clarity on the one hand, and through gesture and indication on the other.

This study seeks to approach the Andalusian narrative from the perspective of the New Historicism methodology, established by Stephen Greenblatt in the 1980s. Greenblatt describes it as a theoretical framework that allows for reading literary and intellectual texts in their dialectical relationship with the cultural, political, and social structures that surrounded them. Andalusian discourse, with its multiple levels of poetry, prose, historical, and jurisprudential writing, did not form in a vacuum; rather, it was the product of a complex interaction between historical contexts on the one hand, and the cultural imagination on the other. The research hypothesis is that the Andalusian narrative represents a fertile field for deconstructing the relationship between the systematic self-awareness of texts and the cultural negotiation and exchange that characterized the multi-religious and multi-cultural Andalusian society. Through an analysis of historical and literary narratives, it becomes clear that the Andalusian text was not merely a reflection of historical facts, but rather an effective tool in shaping the idea of self-formation, both at the collective level (Islamic-Christian-Jewish identity) and at the individual level (the voice of the author and poet). The study also focuses on the concepts of the marvelous and the echo as aesthetic and symbolic tools that played a pivotal role in shaping the image of Andalusia within the texts. The marvelous (the exotic and the surprising) took on a semantic dimension that reflected the uniqueness of the Andalusian experience in imagining itself and presenting it to others, while the echo embodied the function of cultural memory, which re-evoked the past and circulated it in the present. From this perspective, the study seeks to highlight how new historicism can reread these narratives as spaces of ongoing tension between authority and discourse, between text and context, and between the past and the imaginary.
The study is divided into a number of sections, the first of which addresses the theoretical structure of new historicism and its tools for reading Andalusian texts. The second section examines the dynamics of negotiation and cultural exchange within Andalusia, and how this dialectic was reflected in literary and historical narratives. The third section addresses the concept of the formation of the individual and collective self through poetic and jurisprudential texts. The fourth section analyzes the strange and the echo as two intertwined forms of memory and cultural imagination. Thus, this research seeks to offer a new reading of Andalusian narratives, not as a closed history or self-sufficient texts, but rather as an open semantic field where power, knowledge, identity, and imagination intersect. This is consistent with the vision of new historicism in revealing the network of relationships that make texts both cultural and political products.

Literary studies have become increasingly interested in the travelling text in response to the multiple issues raised by its open-ended nature. It has been the subject of a number of approaches that have undoubtedly enriched travelling studies and emphasised the vitality of the travelling text.
This scholarly contribution starts from the diversity that characterises the approach to the travelling text during the last two decades in Morocco (gender, morphological, cultural, deliberative, postcolonial, ethnographic...), which provides a better understanding of it at the levels of its formulation, morphology and ideological cargo. In order to approach these studies, we analyse three Moroccan approaches to the travelling text: The Discourse of the Journey: Memory and the Mechanisms of Signifier Production by Said Djebar (2017), Representations of the Orient in German Travel Narratives: A Comparative Analytical Study by Zouhair Soukah (2020) and Journey Books between Ethnographic Identity and Literary Sensitivity by Mohamed Shaddad El-Harrak (2023), starting from what epistemology allows as a dimensional work to characterise studies and research, in order to judge their value, to determine whether they can claim to approach the ideal of a certain knowledge and be authentically justified, and in other words to indicate the value and limits of these works.

Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd Allah al-Numayri al-Thaqafi was one of the lesser-known poets of the Umayyad period. He was born, raised, and died in al-Ṭaʾif (d. 90 AH) and was renowned for his refined love poetry. His verse was known and transmitted by reliable early transmitters and later attracted the attention of modern scholars whose efforts led them to collect his poetry from various sources. To the best of my knowledge, his poetry has been compiled on three occasions by three different researchers, each subsequent compiler supplementing the work of his predecessor. Nevertheless, more than fifty-five verses were overlooked, which were uniquely recorded by Ibn ʿAsakir (d. 571 AH) in his History.
I therefore resolved to supplement what had been omitted, while also noting observations and criticisms regarding the existing collections. I devoted considerable effort to tracing the sources of the poems, ط--ضب their texts, correcting erroneous attributions, and explaining lexical items and meanings where clarification was needed, drawing on linguistic works and dictionaries. I also sought to rectify defects in wording and meter, to standardize proper names, and to carry out other tasks inherent to the craft of textual criticism—endeavors that demand substantial time and effort. Praise be to God, Lord of all worlds.

This study examines the narrative discourse of Kalila wa Dimna, with a particular focus on the chapter of the Lion and the Ox, as a form of narrative discourse based on three main strategies: exemplum, humor, and symbolism. After addressing the longstanding and renewed critical issues associated with this work and outlining the relationship between classical Arabic literature and the concept of narrative strategy, the study analyzes the ways in which storytelling manipulates the reader through these strategies by shifting perception from the pleasurable surface of the narrative to the underlying human meaning concealed behind animal masks.
The study draws on concepts from enunciation theory and pragmatics in order to trace the modes of enunciation of animal characters in their dialogues and debates. It also examines the multiplicity of the book’s authorship, Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ’s relationship to these authors on the one hand, and his relationship to the reader on the other, as well as the intended benefit of this complex mediation.
The study concludes that the discourse of narrative strategies, with its dual-layered meaning, is both engaging and innovative. It transcends the classical Arabic rhetoric of brevity and establishes a form of readerly boldness in approaching taboo issues- foremost among them political matters—while forging a strong link between reading pleasure and the humanistic wisdom the text seeks to convey.

The book “The Lost History” by Abu Muhammad alFarghani (d. 362 AH), which is an appendix to al-Tabari’s history, is one of the most important books that were appended to al-Tabari’s history. These appendices derived their importance from the importance of al-Tabari’s book and its scientific status. Therefore, attention was directed towards following his example, writing appendices to it, and supplementing its years. Among them is the appendix to al-Tabari’s history, by al-Tabari himself, who was the first to append to his book, and he had an appendix to the appendix, and none of that has reached us. Among them is what his companion Abu Muhammad al-Farghani (d. 362 AH) appended, and its texts are scattered throughout the pages of books, and they are many, and it is the subject of our research.

The study seeks to examine two foundational texts in Arabic Maqamat through a comparative analysis using several shared techniques and themes. These include the difference in plot between Al-Badi' and Al-Hariri, the variation in openings and conclusions and other forms of diversity. The difference in the length of the Maqamat and the form of each text, And the contrast between the two texts at the level of irony. Additionally, it explores the relationships of similarity and difference in the characters between the protagonists and the narrators. The research aims to place each text in its proper artistic context in relation to the other text.

The concept of Qurʾanic grammar is grounded in the specificity of the sacred corpus, aiming to provide a descriptive account of its syntactic structure and to interpret the relationships among its internal units. This approach supports the idea of establishing Qurʾanic linguistics, which is reinforced through the adoption of the closed-corpus methodology. Through this method, the Qurʾan is examined as a self-sufficient linguistic entity, from which its individual and structural elements are extracted, along with the nature of its deployment of linguistic frameworks to achieve its intended purposes across its texts and modes of usage.
This is accomplished by conducting internal comparisons among the parts of the Qurʾanic text—confined within its canonical boundaries—without recourse to data external to its corpus. Such external data would inevitably function as presuppositions that predetermine the results. Therefore, the principle of closure that characterizes the adopted methodology is a necessary condition for ensuring the distinctiveness of this linguistic approach. Accordingly, Qurʾanic grammar represents the grammatical component that provides the explanatory adequacy for all manifestations of Arabic syntactic usage within the Holy Qurʾan.
The study arrives at a set of foundational considerations upon which this Qurʾanic approach is built, foremost among them that grammar in the Qurʾan bears a semantic, textual, and transtextual character. These dimensions cannot be separated within the analytical framework of Qurʾanic structures, given the integrative documentary nature of the corpus. Semantic analysis further encompasses morphological form, which is inseparable from the Qurʾanic meaning of the lexical item employed, within the framework of a particular and general contextual vision referred to here as the corpus context.