In the Shadow of Arabic: The Centrality of Language to Arabic Culture, Studies Presented to Ramzi Baalbaki on the Occasion of Hi

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’ānic studies, adab, folk literature, sufism, and poetry.

Contributors include: Nadia Anghelescu, Georgine Ayoub, Aziz Azmeh, Monique Bernards, Georges Bohas, Gerhard Böwering, Michael Carter, Everhard Ditters, Geert Jan van Gelder, Hassan Hamzé, Peter Heath, Pierre Larcher, Ibrahim Ben Mrad, Bilal Orfali, Wadād al-Qāḍī, Angelika Neuwirth, Karin Ryding, Yasir Suleiman, Kees Versteegh, and David Wilmsen

Bilal Orfali, Ph.D. (2009), Yale University, is Assistant Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the American University of Beirut. He is the author of several articles and books on classical Arabic literature and Islamic mysticism.