Yatimat al-Dahr Fi Mahasin ‘Ahl al-Asr (THREE VOLUMES).

DESCRIPTION

8 vo. Volume I: [22], 400 pp. / Volume II: 398 pp. + [6] / Volume III: 399 pp. modern hard back binding, original wrappers preserved, small part of wrapper of volume one cut, otherwise set in very good condition. It is exceptional for its scope, bringing together information about poets from the eastern portion of the Arabophone world in the eleventh century, as well as for its influence: the pattern of biographical anthologies that it inaugurated would be productively adopted by anthologists in subsequent centuries. Despite its importance in literary historical terms, al-Tha'alibi's anthology (and its companion, the Tatimma) has received relatively little attention, notwithstanding the work of Everett Rowson and S. A. Bonebakker in the 1980s. The same is true of most premodern Arabic anthologies, including the best-known works in the tradition, such as the Mufaddediyyat, Asma'iyyat, Diwan al-Hamasa, and Kitdb al-Aghani". Adnan Talib in: The Anthologist Art: Abu Mansur al-Tha'alibi and his Yatimat al-Dahr, The Journal of the American Oriental Society.