The Excellence of the Arabs

Ibn Qutaybah

sept. 2019 · Library of Arabic Literature Livre 51 · NYU Press

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A spirited defense of Arab identity from a time of political unrest

In ninth-century Abbasid Baghdad, the social prestige attached to claims of Arab identity had begun to decline. In The Excellence of the Arabs, the celebrated litterateur Ibn Qutaybah locks horns with those members of his society who belittled Arabness and vaunted the glories of Persian heritage and culture. Instead, he upholds the status of Arabs and their heritage in the face of criticism and uncertainty.

The Excellence of the Arabs is in two parts. In the first, Arab Preeminence, which takes the form of an extended argument for Arab privilege, Ibn Qutaybah accuses his opponents of blasphemous envy. In the second, The Excellence of Arab Learning, he describes the fields of knowledge in which he believed pre-Islamic Arabians excelled, including knowledge of the stars, divination, horse husbandry, and poetry. By incorporating extensive excerpts from the poetic heritage—“the archive of the Arabs”—Ibn Qutaybah aims to demonstrate that poetry is itself sufficient evidence of Arab superiority.

Eloquent and forceful, The Excellence of the Arabs addresses a central question at a time of great social flux, at the dawn of classical Muslim civilization: What does it mean to be Arab?

An English-only edition.

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Ibn Qutaybah (d. 276/889) was a renowned judge and writer known for many influential works on a wide range of subjects, including Qur'anic exegesis, poetry and poetics, and statecraft.

Sarah Bowen Savant is Professor at The Aga Khan University, London, and the author of The New Muslims of Post-Conquest Iran.

Peter Webb is University Lecturer in Arabic Literature and Culture at the University of Leiden. He is the author of Imagining the Arabs: Arab Identity and the Rise of Islam and an editor-translator of The Excellence of the Arabs.

Jack Weatherford is the former DeWitt Wallace Professor of Anthropology at Macalester College. He is best known for his book Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World.