In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture

The collection of articles in this volume is dedicated to Ramzi Baalbaki of the American University of Beirut on the occasion of his 60th birthday. The volume reflects the central themes of Ramzi Baalbaki's scholarly work: history of Arabic grammar, Arabic lexicography, Arabic linguistics, comparative Semitics, Arabic epigraphy, and textual editing of classical texts. It provides intellectual, literary, and social historians, as well as Arabists, philologists, and linguists with an interesting glimpse into the early medieval and modern traditions related to the Arabic language, its grammar, historical development, and demonstrates its centrality to other fields of study such as Qur'anic studies, adab, folk literature, sufism, and poetry.Contributors include: Nadia Anghelescu, Georgine Ayoub, Aziz Azmeh, Monique Bernards, Georges Bohas, Gerhard Bowering, Michael Carter, Everhard Ditters, Geert Jan van Gelder, Hassan Hamze, Peter Heath, Pierre Larcher, Ibrahim Ben Mrad, Bilal Orfali, Wadad al-Qadi, Angelika Neuwirth, Karin Ryding, Yasir Suleiman, Kees Versteegh, and David Wilmsen