Editorsâ Introduction
In 2013, Thomas Bauer was awarded the prestigious German Leibniz Award, with which he founded and funded ALEA (abbreviation for Arabische Literatur und Rhetorik Elfhundert bis Achtzehnhundert), a research group based at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Münster, with a view to promoting the study of Arabic literature and rhetoric dating from the sixth/twelfth to the twelfth/eighteenth centuriesâan area of Arabic studies notoriously neglected and maligned by earlier scholarship. The idea of producing a Festschrift for Thomasâs sixtieth birthday in September 2021, originated in this group. With it, we wished to express our gratitude to him as well as celebrate his long and outstanding career as a researcher and university teacher that has established him as a leading academic in our field. Thomasâs latest great success gave us additional reason to celebrate and honour him: In December 2019, in collaboration with Syrinx von Hees, Thomas Bauer won a twelve-year research grant from the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to produce an open-access, online critical edition of the complete works of Ibn NubÄta al-Miá¹£rÄ« (686â768/1287â1366), the most acclaimed Arab poet of the Mamluk era. This project employs five senior researchers, two doctoral students and a Digital Humanities expert. It thus secured the positions of all members of the ALEA group for at least twelve years (four of us obtained tenure), which shows Thomasâs care for the staff of the Department he runs.
Thomas Bauer is not only an Arabist but also an Islamicist and has produced several ground-breaking studies in a number of different areas, including classical Arabic lexicography, early Arabic poetry, Abbasid literature, Arabic literature and rhetoric of the Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods, and the cultural history of Islam more generally. It is fair to say that his work has brought the field forward in all these areas by offering a fresh and imaginative thorough reading of the sources that challenges well-established views and opens up new perspectives for future research. Thanks to a series of critical studies produced over the last two decades in particular, he has succeeded in debunking the decline narrative by calling attention to the quality, interest and vitality of the Arabic literature dating from the sixth/twelfth to the twelfth/eighteenth centuries and to its complex and diverse aesthetics. Apart from founding the ALEA group to boost research in this undeservedly neglected area, he also supported and inspired other colleagues, too, to work on this domain. This is why we decided to give the Festschrift the thematic focus âArabic literature and rhetoric from the sixth/twelfth to the twelfth/eighteenth centuries,â although this by no means covers the wide range of topics, on which Thomas Bauer has worked. Thirty-odd years ago, when Ê¿Umar MÅ«sÄ BÄshÄ, an Arab scholar much admired by Thomas and a pioneer in the study of this area, described Ottoman-era Arabic literature as al-adab al-maáºlÅ«m (the wronged literature),1 this characterisation held true for the literature of the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods as well. Meanwhile Thomas Bauerâs work has done much to rehabilitate this literature and do justice to it.
The present volume is a collection of case studies on individual literary authors, texts, themes and rhetorical figures dating from the said period. A number of scholars who either have worked closely with the ALEA group since its foundation or are long-time friends of Thomas have joined us in producing it. Due to pandemic-related restrictions and inconveniences, however, some colleagues who had initially agreed to contribute to the Festschrift have regrettably been obliged to withdraw. Emil T. Homerin, a dear friend of the ALEAâ¯s, who had very much wanted to participate, sadly passed away in December 2020. Others were willing to contribute but felt that the volumeâs thematic focus lay beyond their area of expertise and thus could not participate. We would like to thank them all for their readiness to join us in honouring Thomas and thank especially all contributors for their kind cooperation. We also cordially thank Hinrich Biesterfeld and Sebastian Günther for accepting the volume for publication in the Islamic History and Civilization series of Brill and are grateful to Teddi Dols for her assistance throughout the process of production.
The contributions are preceded by a short academic curriculum vitae and a list of publications of Thomas Bauer and have been arranged very roughly chronologically, but the adab principle of delectable variation has also been observedâall the more so as several articles take a diachronic perspective and cover several centuries.
The work of UsÄma Ibn Munqidh (488â584/1095â1188), a sixth-/twelfth-century Arab intellectual and politician who is primarily known for his memoirs, the KitÄb al-IÊ¿tibÄr (Book of instruction by example), has long attracted attention for the insights it offers into contemporary Muslim attitudes towards the Crusaders. In this connection Ewald Wagner revisits a topic that has for some time been debated between Paul Cobb and Robert Irwin, namely, UsÄmaâs attitude towards jihad. Adducing new evidence from UsÄmaâs poetry, a source untapped by the two scholars, he shows that UsÄma was not unfavourably disposed towards jihad, as Irwin had claimed, thus supporting Cobbâs views on the subject. Wagner also offers additional evidence against Irwinâs contention that UsÄma was a Shiite, another point in which he agrees with Cobb.
In the context of a long-term ongoing project of his that aims at tracing the changes observed over time in the use of rhetoric in pre-modern Arabic poetry, Ali Hussein analyses the rhetorical fabric (the sum total of rhetorical devices used) of a poem by Ê¿AfÄ«f al-DÄ«n al-TilimsÄnÄ« (d. 690/1291), a Sufi poet of the early Mamluk period, and compares it to the rhetorical fabric of three pre-Mamluk poems. Besides bearing witness to the great variety of figures employed in the poems, the study documents the enhanced importance of certain rhetorical devices in specific periods and genres and brings out some stylistic peculiarities of Sufi poetry.
The son of Ê¿AfÄ«f al-DÄ«n al-TilimsÄnÄ«, Shams al-DÄ«n Muḥammad (661â88/1263â89), nicknamed al-ShÄbb al-áºarÄ«f (the Elegant Youth), was likewise a fine poet, albeit a secular one. Apart from poetry, al-ShÄbb is also known to have composed a collection of maqÄmÄt entitled MaqÄmÄt al-Ê¿ushshÄq (The Loverâs MaqÄmas), some of which have been preserved in manuscript. In their jointly written contribution Bilal Orfali and Maurice Pomerantz offer an editio princeps of a beautiful maqÄma by al-ShÄbb al-áºarÄ«f entitled Faá¹£Äḥat al-mashÅ«q fÄ« malÄḥat al-maÊ¿shÅ«q (The Eloquence of the Lover Concerning the Elegance of the Beloved) and briefly summarise its contents.
The Syrian poet Ibn MuqÄtil (664 or 674â761/1266 or 1276â1359) was one of the most important and influential zajjÄls (composers of zajals, strophic poems in vernacular Arabic) of the early Mamluk period. In a contest organised by the Mamluk Sultan al-Malik al-NÄá¹£ir Muḥammad b. QalÄwÅ«n (r. 693â4/1293â4, 698â708/1299â1309, 709â41/1310â41), himself a zajal dilettante, to decide whether Ibn MuqÄtil or his opponent, the Damascene al-AmshÄá¹Ä« (d. 725/1325), was the best zajjÄl, Ibn MuqÄtil won the day with his zajal beginning qalbÄ« yuḥibb tayyÄh (My heart loves an haughty person), a zajal that several poets subsequently tried to imitate and surpass. Hakan Ãzkan, an expert on the Eastern zajal,2 offers a new edition and a translation of this poem and examines which features of it account for its success.
Ibn NubÄta al-Miá¹£rÄ« (686â768/1287â1366) was, as said earlier, the most acclaimed poet of the Mamluk era. As such he has attracted Thomasâs attention since the early 2000s and figures prominently in at least a dozen of his studies. Ibn NubÄta was also a preeminent prose writer. The official letters he composed during the short period he served in the Chancery at Damascus (743â5/1342â5) and which he collected in three volumes, testify to this preeminence. Andreas Herdt, who has already published two selections of Ibn NubÄtaâs correspondence3 and is currently editing the three volumes, edits here one of Ibn NubÄtaâs official letters concerning the recovery of the reigning Sultan from an illness and translates and analyses the very demanding text introducing the reader to the intricacies of chancery writing and demonstrating its importance for the history of Arabic literature.
As opposed to Ibn NubÄta, a representative of the literary high culture, IbrÄhÄ«m al-MiÊ¿mÄr (âthe builderâ) (d. 749/1348â9) was, as his name indicates, a craftsman poet. His talent was, however, such that elite authors âraided,â as a contemporary put it, the ideas and motifs of his poetry. Thomas Bauer, who first called attention to this master poet in 2002, has recently published al-MiÊ¿mÄrâs DÄ«wÄn (collected poetry) in collaboration with Anke Osigus and Hakan Ãzkan.4 In his contribution, Gregor Schoeler presents, translates and analyses one of al-MiÊ¿mÄrâs zajalsâa most demanding and intriguing poem that al-MiÊ¿mÄr put in the mouth of a young artiste and prostitute, a monologue that she addresses to her mother, who had presumably tried to persuade her to mend her ways.
Manuscripts of KalÄ«la wa-Dimna, a famous collection of fables of Indian origin that reached the Arab world via a middle-Persian version thanks to the translation-redaction of Ibn al-MuqaffaÊ¿ (d. ca. 139/757) in the second/eighth century, start proliferating from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards. Ibn al-MuqaffaÊ¿âs exact version is irretrievable because of multifarious alterations and accretions due to the copyist-redactors of the text in later centuries, as the work became increasingly popular and reached wider audiences. Beatrice Gruendler, who directs the Berlin-based project KalÄ«la and DimnaâAnonymClassic, investigates what these later alterations and accretions tell us about the tension between oral and written media by examining closely a story found in Ibn al-MuqaffaÊ¿âs preface, on rote memorisation as opposed to understanding based on thorough reading.
Geert Jan van Gelderâs paper describes and analyses the history of ibdÄÊ¿, a technical term in Ê¿ilm al-badÄ«Ê¿, the science of the various figures of speech and stylistic embellishments collectively known as badÄ«Ê¿, which is a branch of pre-modern Arabic rhetoric. With the lexical meaning âcreating something novel,â the word has often been used as a general term for stylistic excellence. Nevertheless, thanks to Ibn AbÄ« l-Iá¹£baÊ¿ (d. 654/1256), an author on badÄ«Ê¿ who claims to have invented this âfigure,â ibdÄÊ¿ came to mean specifically âaccumulating several rhetorical figures in one line of verse or one prose period.â The term was duly adopted and discussed by later writers on badÄ«Ê¿ and the âfigureâ (by definition an accumulation of several figures) regularly occurs in badÄ«Ê¿iyyÄt (poems illustrating the various badÄ«Ê¿ figures and embellishments usually taking the form of a eulogy on the Prophet) in subsequent centuries.
Ibn AbÄ« Ḥajala (725â76/1325â75), a talented poet and prose writer, who authored several anthologies and maqÄmÄt, is another Mamluk-era littérateur whom we now know better thanks to Thomas Bauer. In 2015, in collaboration with Syrinx von Hees, Thomas organised a congress on Ibn AbÄ« Ḥajala at Münster. This resulted in the publication of a volume comprised of thirteen studies on various aspects of Ibn AbÄ« Ḥajalaâs work.5 In his contribution, Werner Diem edits, translates and analyses all the extant excerpts from Ibn AbÄ« Ḥajalaâs lost epistle al-SajÊ¿ al-jalÄ«l fÄ«-mÄ jarÄ min al-NÄ«l (Splendid rhymed prose on what happened because of/[over]flowed from the Nile), concerning the disastrous flooding of the Nile in 761/1360.
Verena Klemm explores the special manuscript culture that the Syrian IsmaÊ¿ilis, a relatively isolated and secretive Shiite community, practised in their mountainous retreat in Jabal BahrÄʾ, not far from Hama, over the centuries. There, away from the cultural centres of the region, religious experts compiled various texts of interest to the community in composite manuscripts (majmÅ«Ê¿Ät) that were and are even today kept in private collections inaccessible to research. As an example, she presents a few manuscripts containing, among other things, ManÄqib al-mawlÄ RÄshid al-DÄ«n, a collection of hagiographic tales about RÄshid al-DÄ«n SinÄn (d. ca. 589/1193), the leader of the community at the time of Saladin. The tales, which were initially transmitted orally, were written down at the time of Hamaâs efflorescence under al-Malik al-Muʾayyad (r. 710â31/1310â31) and sharply contrast with the literary high culture that thrived at his court.
Pigeons are one of the most important bird species in the cultural history of the Arab peoples and have over the centuries been part of their daily life in various ways. Besides, pigeons and doves are perhaps the most popular bird with Arabic littérateurs and feature prominently in various poetic genres, especially in nature and love poetry and in the elegy, poets often projecting their feelings on them. They therefore also figure prominently in several pre-modern Arabic anthologies. How and in what context are they then presented in literary anthologies of the Mamluk era? How have anthologists selected their material from the plethora of earlier and contemporary texts featuring pigeons and which topoi and motifs were important to them? These are the questions that Anke Osigus addresses in her study.
The Arabic popular epic thrived especially in Mamluk and later times. Transmitted in a mixed oral and written way, it at first sight seems to have little in common with the literature of the cultural elite. On closer inspection, however, the interaction between the two literary spheres becomes obvious. A good case in point is the role that books play in the epics, which is what Remke Kruk set out to examine. Do the epics contain references to extant literary works, book titles and authors? If so, what is the narrative function of these references? Are any fictional books mentioned, and if so, what is their role in the stories? As Kruk shows, fictional books, usually imparting supernatural knowledge, are a major motif in the epics, even though their role differs from sīra to sīra.
Inspired by Thomasâs interest in and work on Arabic rhetoric and its development over time, Syrinx von Hees investigates the reception of al-Khaá¹Ä«b al-QazwÄ«nÄ«âs (666â739/1268â1338) two famous compendia on rhetoric, the TalkhÄ«á¹£ al-MiftÄḥ and the Īá¸Äḥ fÄ« Ê¿ulÅ«m al-balÄgha, by the later Mamluk littérateur and critic Ibn Ḥijja al-ḤamawÄ« (767â837/1366â1434) in the KhizÄnat al-adab, his commentary on his own badÄ«Ê¿iyya. She looks into Ibn Ḥijjaâs treatment of á¹ibÄq (antithesis) as an example of how he relates to the work of his predecessors and shows that rhetorical theory did not cease to develop after al-QazwÄ«nÄ«, that later authors did not hesitate to challenge al-QazwÄ«nÄ«âs views and that important theoretical issues were discussed freely and productively in badÄ«Ê¿iyyÄt commentaries as well.
Who was Ê¿Abd ar-Raḥīm al-BuraÊ¿Ä« and when did he live? The name may sound familiar to those who are knowledgeable about Arabic religious poetry, especially praise poetry on the prophet Muḥammad. For al-BuraÊ¿Ä«âs beautiful and moving poems are in this day and age commonly sung in religious ceremonies all over the Arab world. But the dates of the Yemenite poet and religious scholar (d. 803/1400â1) had long been uncertain and so were his other details, too. Ines Weinrich has therefore embarked on a thorough inspection of all the available materialânumerous prints and manuscripts of al-BuraÊ¿Ä«âs collected poems and other work and references in the sources and the secondary literatureâand succeeded in dispersing many of the legends and uncertainties surrounding him.
The tale of SÅ«l and ShumÅ«l is one of the most moving love stories in the Thousand and One Nights. It has appositely been described as âthe Arab âOrpheus in the Underworld,ââ¯â as it offers an intriguing insight into an Arabic-Islamic underworld of sorts and singing and poetry recitation are crucial elements of the plot. Claudia Ott, who has recently published a German translation of SÅ«l and ShumÅ«l, discusses the state of the art concerning the tale and draws attention to the unique interfaith (Muslim-Christian) interaction that takes place in it. In addition, she allows us a rare glimpse into her work as a translator and the problems associated with it.
Epigrammatic poetry reached an apogee in the Mamluk period but epigrams remained popular in Ottoman times, too. Very often epigrams ended with a punch line in which a figure of speech was employed, taá¸mÄ«n (quotation of another poetâs verse or hemistich) and iqtibÄs (quotation from the Quran or ḥadÄ«th) being among the commonly used figures. Incorporating Quranic quotations in prose or poetry was a common, albeit controversial practice that enhanced the literariness of a text and enriched and complicated its meaning. Alev Masarwa discusses the use of iqtibÄs in the poetry and especially the epigrams of MÄmayh al-RÅ«mÄ« (d. ca. 987/1579), an acclaimed early-Ottoman Arabic poet of Circassian origin.
IbrÄhÄ«m Ibn al-MullÄ (d. 1032/1623) is a little-known Arabic littérateur, the scion of a scholarly family of Aleppo. Among his surviving works is Ḥalbat al-mufÄá¸ala wa-ḥilyat al-munÄá¸ala (The Racecourse of Competition and the Ornament of Contest), a selection of his correspondence with contemporary littérateurs and religious scholars, family members and Ottoman dignitaries. The bulk of this correspondence consists of riddle exchanges. Nefeli Papoutsakis traces briefly the history of IbrÄhÄ«mâs family, surveys his life and oeuvre and focuses on Ḥalbat al-mufÄá¸ala with a view to assessing its importance as a source for the history of the Arabic literary riddle.
This being a volume written by many hands, contributors were allowed to write in British or American English and, those writing in German, to follow their spelling preferences.
Last but not least, we would like to cordially thank Elida Vrajolli, a BA student at the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies of the University of Münster, for assisting us in preparing the list of Thomas Bauerâs publications. The list includes only a few select pieces of Thomasâs numerous articles and interviews that have appeared in newspapers. We also thank Noralyne Maranus and the team of TAT Zetwerk for setting and preparing the volume for the press.
Thomas Bauer: Short Academic Curriculum Vitae
When Thomas Bauer finished school in 1980, he intended to study law and become a judge. Luckily for him and, above all, our field, however, a pure coincidence prevented him from taking that road and completely changed the course of his life. Without a doubt he would have become an excellent judge and may have written numerous outstanding books in the field of law, but Arabic and Islamic studies would have lost one of its most original, enthusiastic and dedicated scholars of the last decades. What was this lucky coincidence? He simply forgot or, one should rather say, subconsciously neglected to enrol in time. Hence, he was forced to change plans.
As he had already shown interest in Arabic during his high school years, the decision what to do next came naturally and he matriculated at the University of Erlangen to read Islamic studies, Semitic philology, and German linguistics. He graduated in 1987 with a Magister thesis on the KitÄb al-NabÄt (Book of Plants) by AbÅ« ḤanÄ«fa al-DÄ«nawarÄ« (d. 282/895), an extraordinary Arabic work that combines lexicography, botany and Arabian folklore. Thomasâs excellent thesis on it, entitled Das Pflanzenbuch des AbÅ« ḤanÄ«fa ad-DÄ«nawÄrÄ«, was published by Harrassowitz in the following year. A book publication at this stage of oneâs career is not a small feat and it portended what was about to come. More importantly, however, this study shows that for Thomasâjust as for AbÅ« ḤanÄ«faâphilology is a holistic endeavourâit is not simply concerned with language and literary texts but also with their referents, the wide world around us, and especially human culture. This explains the thoroughness with which Thomas studied AbÅ« ḤanÄ«faâs book and which is typical of all his other work.
From 1987 to 1990 Thomas pursued his doctoral studies in Erlangen supervised by Wolfdietrich Fischer, the renowned German Arabist and author of the Grammatik des klassischen Arabisch, who had also supervised his Magister thesis and was later to mentor his post-doctoral degree (habilitation), too. Thomasâs doctoral thesis Altarabische Dichtkunst: Eine Untersuchung ihrer Struktur und Entwicklung am Beispiel der Onagerepisode (published by Harrassowitz in 1992) is a deeply researched study of a theme recurrent in early Arabic poetry: the comparison of the poetâs camel to the onager. Again, taking a wider view of this theme and its function and development over time, the study broke with earlier scholarship and offered new insights into the structure, meaning, and Sitz im Leben of the early Arabic ode as a whole.
Having spent a year as a research associate at the University of Heidelberg, in 1991 Thomas returned to Erlangen, took up a position as a research assistant and started working on his habilitation, besides teaching various classes on Arabic and other Semitic languages. His habilitation thesis Liebe und Liebesdichtung in der Abbasidenzeit: Eine literatur- und mentalitätsgeschichtliche Studie des arabischen Ä azal im 9. und 10. Jahrhundert (submitted in 1997, published by Harrassowitz in 1998), is the first thorough study of Abbasid love poetry viewed in the broader context of cultural history and the history of mentalities, and uses approaches from gender studies and sociology.
After a three-year period as an associate professor at the University of Erlangen (1997â2000), Thomas was appointed full professor at the University of Münster in February 2000. There he received a rather peculiar welcome: The rector, in whose presence he was sworn in as the then youngest professor at the university, advised him to be prepared and look for other universities in the state that have a department of Arabic and Islamic studies, as his own department might sooner or later be closed like other small departments of the Faculty of Philology. We do not know how this advice influenced Thomas in his first years in Münster. What we do know, however, is that he did not only keep in existence the department of Arabic and Islamic studies, then manned by himself, a secretary and an Arabic tutor, but also enlarged it exponentially. Thanks to his efforts the department has been endowed with four more professorships (Islamic history, Islamic law, Arabic literature and rhetoric, and Modern Arabic literature), two permanent positions of post-doctoral assistants, a further secretary and a second Arabic tutor, in addition to the ALEAâ¯s and several doctoral and post-doctoral researchers employed on a temporal basis.
In 2002â3 Thomas co-founded and directed (until 2005) the Centrum für Religiöse Studien (Centre for Religious Studies), an umbrella institution aiming at coordinating and strengthening the study of religion and especially comparative religion at the University of Münster. In this context he also co-founded the Zentrum für Islamische Theologie (Centre for Islamic Theology), which is now about to become a Faculty of Islamic Theology and where confessional Islamic theology and religious education are taughtâa fact that shows his commitment to interfaith dialogue and the integration of Muslims in Germany. Apart from serving on several university boards at Münster, incl. those of the Centre for Eastern Mediterranean Studies and of the Excellence Cluster âReligion and Politics in Pre-modern and Modern Cultures,â in 2012 Thomas was elected as the then youngest member (another record!) of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts. In addition, he is sectional editor of the Encyclopaedia of Islam Three for pre-modern Arabic literature and serves in the editorial boards of three scholarly journals.
Through his research agenda in the last twenty-one years at Münster, he inspired, as said, many colleagues to work on Mamluk and Ottoman-era Arabic literature, arguably being the first Arabist to emphatically highlight its value and importance, debunking the concept of the decline of Islamic culture after the fifth/eleventh century and exposing it as a colonialist construct. He also drew special attention to the Arabic rhetorical tradition and its remarkable achievements in the fields of linguistics and stylistics. In more recent years he has researched extensively on ambiguity and ambiguity tolerance in pre-modern Islamic societies as well as generally in the modern world. His two books on these and related issues, Die Kultur der Ambiguität: Eine andere Geschichte des Islams (published by Insel Verlag in 2011; English translation: A culture of ambiguity: An alternative history of Islam, published by Columbia University Press in 2021), and Die Vereindeutigung der Welt: Ãber den Verlust von Mehrdeutigkeit und Vielfalt (on the lack of ambiguity tolerance and the loss of diversity in the modern world; published by Reclam in 2018) have made him widely known not only to the academic but also to the general public. Die Vereindeutigung der Welt won him the Tractatus award of the Austrian philosophical society Philosophicum Lech. Another recent work of his, Warum es kein islamisches Mittelalter gab: Das Erbe der Antike und der Orient (Beck, 2018), on âMiddle Agesâ being a misnomer when applied to Islamic history, won the âWISSEN! Sachbuchpreis,â a renowned German award for non-fiction books of the wbg (Wissen. Bildung. Gesellschaft) in 2019. The three last-named books have been translated into several languages (Arabic, English, Turkish, Swedish, Russian, Greek, Slovene, and Spanish). Like the numerous interviews Thomas has given in newspapers, radio features and TV broadcasts, these works also aim at, and have contributed to, eliminating prejudices against Islam in public opinion.
Thomasâs numerous publications and especially his books for the wider public testify to his remarkable ability to develop new ideas by bringing together his broad general knowledge and his expertise in Arabic and Islamic studies. Thorough philological analysis and sound argumentation that draws on such diverse fields as science and the arts thus lead to novel and intriguing insights of broad historical and anthropological significance.
On behalf of the undersigned friends and colleagues, we warmly congratulate Thomas on his sixtieth birthday and his multifarious achievements and wish him long life and good health. May he always succeed in his endeavours and never cease to inspire us.
Hakan Ãzkan and Nefeli Papoutsakis
Ê¿Umar MÅ«sÄ BÄshÄ, TaʾrÄ«kh al-adab al-Ê¿arabÄ«: al-Ê¿Aá¹£r al-Ê¿UthmÄnÄ«, Damascus 1989, 7.
H. Ãzkan, Geschichte des östlichen zaǧal: Dialektale arabische Strophendichtung aus dem Osten der arabischen Weltâvon den Anfängen bis zum Ende der Mamlukenzeit, Baden-Baden 2020, is the revised version of Hakanâs Habilitationsschrift. Hakan was mentored by Thomas Bauer.
A. Herdt, KitÄb zahr al-manṯūr and Min tarassul Ibn NubÄtah: A critical edition of two prose works by Ibn NubÄtah al-Miá¹£rÄ«, Baden-Baden 2019.
T. Bauer, A. Osigus and H. Ãzkan, Der DÄ«wÄn des IbrÄhÄ«m al-MiÊ¿mÄr (gest. 749/1348â49): Edition und Kommentar, Baden-Baden 2018.
N. Papoutsakis and S. von Hees, (eds.), The sultanâs anthologist: Ibn AbÄ« Ḥaǧalah and his work, Baden-Baden 2017.