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The Kitāb al-Aghānī (the Book of Songs) is one of the most important sources for Arabic literature and history. While its compiler, Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣfahānī (died after 356/967), is generally viewed as a “Zaydī Shīʿī”, no study has engaged in depth with the manifestation of his sectarian perspective in the Aghānī. This thesis addresses the question of whether al-Iṣfahānī’s sectarian perspective can be discerned in the Aghānī via literary analysis based primarily upon redaction criticism. By examining the compiler’s interventions (which took place by means of selecting, repeating, and juxtaposing source material, as well as by his comments and editorial remarks), this thesis argues that al-Iṣfahānī indeed presents past people and events central to the Shīʿī worldview in accordance with his sectarian affiliation. Furthermore, this thesis questions the label “Zaydī” that has been attached to al-Iṣfahānī. Based on textual analyses of the Aghānī, as well as evidence from his Maqātil al-Ṭālibīyīn (“The Ṭālibid Martyrs”) and other evidence for the tenth-century context, this thesis suggests that al-Iṣfahānī’s religious thought can be construed as a “mild” form of Shīʿism ― in the sense that it does not entail belief in a specific lineage of imams and repudiation of most of the Companions including the first three caliphs ― but cannot necessarily be identified with any sect, as set down in the heresiography. It is also suggested that this kind of Shīʿism may have been promoted by al-Iṣfahānī’s patron, the Būyid vizier, Abū Muḥammad al-Muhallabī (291–352/903–963) in the complex sectarian context of mid-tenth century Iraq. This thesis comprises seven chapters. Chapters One and Two introduce the life of the compiler, the wider historical context, the Aghānī, its textual problems, and its overarching structure. These two chapters lead to three conclusions: first, the Aghānī, in all likelihood, was dedicated to Abū Muḥammad al-Muhallabī; second, the view that al-Iṣfahānī was a Zaydī is untenable; third, it is very likely that the Aghānī retains its original form (as designed by al-Iṣfahānī). Chapter Three investigates the sources used by al-Iṣfahānī in the Aghānī with regard to their transmission in order to establish that the published text can indeed be subjected to redaction criticism for the purpose of better understanding the compiler’s agenda (or agendas). Chapters Four and Five present the results of the literary analysis of the Aghānī, which demonstrate the articulation of a Shīʿī past in the Aghānī, as well as highlighting the limits of redaction criticism and al-Iṣfahānī’s other editorial concerns. Building upon Chapter Five, which concludes that the Aghānī reflects al-Iṣfahānī’s sectarian vision, Chapter Six characterizes al-Iṣfahānī’s Shīʿī beliefs by examining his treatment of Ghulāt, Imāmīs, Sunnīs, ʿAlids, and the Companions, including the first three caliphs. Chapter Seven puts the results of the analyses into their historical context, specifically in light of the career of his patron, al-Muhallabī. The Conclusion outlines the key findings of this thesis, with remarks on potential avenues for future research.

Book Summary: This work is the fourth Small Wars Journal anthology focusing on radical Sunni Islamic terrorists and insurgent groups. It covers this professional journals writings for 2016 and is a compliment to the earlier Global Radical Islamist Insurgency anthologies that were produced as Vol. I: 2007-2011 (published in 2015) and Vol. II: 2012-2014 (published in 2016) and Jihadi Terrorism, Insurgency, and the Islamic State spanning 2015 (published in 2017). This anthology, which offers well over 900 pages of focused analysis, follows the same general conceptual breakdown as the earlier works and is divided into two major thematic sectionsone focusing on Al Qaeda and Islamic state activities in 2016 and the other focusing on US-Allied policies and counterinsurgent strategies.

This work is a textual analysis of selected documentary films whose common theme is the inevitable discrepancy between the realities of the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq War from the perspectives of the veterans and soldiers, and the assumed reality that is constructed in the media. It is at this point that the inextricable link between documentary cinema and reality proved fundamental to the developing discourse of the entire study ahead. Since the manner in which the world is both transformed and depicted strongly depends upon the tools available to the director, the technological innovations and the emergence of portable cameras, by granting the documentary filmmaker flexibility, irreversibly solidified this link between non-fictional act of narrating and its approach and proximity to reality. Four works that are picked among a large body of documentary films are Winter Soldier (1972) directed by Winter Collective; Gunner Palace (2004) directed by Petra Epperlein and Michael Tucker; Full Battle Rattle (2008) directed by Tony Gerber and Jesse Moss and finally Standard Operating Procedure (2008) directed by Errol Morris. Even though the films are historically ordered, this study's concern is to be systematic thematically than chronologically. In the course of these analyses, discussions of notions like reality and truth, the relations of the makers of the films, the camera and editing process to the subjects of the films, will naturally emerge, as will issues related to the political and social roles of documentary cinema.

Astrology is a science which has had an uncertain status throughout its history, from its beginnings in Greco-Roman Antiquity to the medieval Islamic world and Christian Europe which led to frequent debates about its validity and what kind of a place it should have, if any, in various cultures. Written in the second century A.D., Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos is not the earliest surviving text on astrology. However, the complex defense given in the Tetrabiblos will be treated as an important starting point because it changed the way astrology would be justified in Christian and Muslim works and the influence Ptolemy’s presentation had on later works represents a continuation of the method introduced in the Tetrabiblos. Abū Ma‘shar’s Kitāb al-Madkhal al-kabīr ilā ‘ilm akām al-nujūm, written in the ninth century, was the most thorough surviving defense from the Islamic world. Roger Bacon’s Opus maius, although not focused solely on advocating astrology, nevertheless, does contain a significant defense which has definite links to the works of both Abū Ma‘shar and Ptolemy. As such, he demonstrates another stage in the development of astrology. These three works together reveal the threads of a trend of a rationalized astrology separated from its mythical origins which began with Ptolemy and survived through both medieval Islam and medieval Europe. In the two examples of defending astrology I have used, Abū Ma‘shar and Roger Bacon, Ptolemy’s influence can be seen to have persisted from the second century through to the thirteenth, and the nature of the differences in their defenses illustrates the continuation and evolution of the tradition of defending astrology.

Texte remanié de: Th. / Bibliogr. p. 215-240. Index.

The first part of this thesis, divided into two chapters, deals with the early background of European Romanticism; the reasons behind its appearance and problems of definition. There follows a discussion on the question of the originality of Arabic Romanticism, with ,a brief review of the roots and main literary groups of this movement in Arabic poetry. Part two examines the influence of English poetry and thought on three Arab Romantic poets: Nāzik Sādiq al-Malā'ika, Abū al-Qāsim al-Shābbī and Abd aI-Rahmān Shukrī. This is discussed parallel with the channels of this influence. The main focus of this research is however, to show the ways in which al-Malā'ika, al-Shābbī and Shukrī perceived and reflected nature and death in their poetry. Their attitudes towards certain phenomena in nature such as the countryside, night, the sea, childhood and moral and social lessons of nature are compared with certain attitudes of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and Shelley. Themes such as life and death, fear of death, fatalism, immortality and death as a welcome experience are also the concern of this thesis, with a comparison of these themes in the poetry of the Arab and English Romantic poets. However, owing to the popularity of Keats and Shelley with the three Arab Romantic poets, this thesis concentrates on their poetry. This research has selected only certain phenomena and themes from nature--and death because of the dominance of these subjects in the poetry of al-Malā'ika, al-Shābbī and Shukrī. The translations of Arabic poetry in this thesis are intended to convey the general sense of the source texts, rather than to give a precise rendering of these texts into English.

This thesis challenges previous historiography and suggests an alternative explanation for the first appearance in writing of the ḥadīth relating the collection and codification of the Qur’ān. Rather than equating this “sudden” appearance with fabrication, I argue that the ḥadīth were already in oral circulation, and put in writing in Abū ʿUbayd’s Faḍā’il al-Qur’ān in order to serve the religio-political goals of the Abbasid Caliph al-Ma’mūn (r. 197/813-218/833). I argue that Abū ʿUbayd’s inclusion of the collection and codification accounts, which emphasize caliphal authority over the written Qur’ān, were intended to support al-Ma’mūn’s campaign to control religious authority as exemplified in the Miḥna. / text

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This thesis is a critical assessment of the role of photography in representing suffering and death. Drawing on the images of torture from the Abu Ghraib prison, I argue that the ways in which things become visible structure our affective and ethical dispositions, with crucial implications for our ability to attend to the suffering of others. In the first chapter, I examine the political importance of photography in its capacity to differentially represent vulnerable lives. In the second chapter, I illustrate the ways in which the prison photographs made visible the violent exploitation of Iraqi civilians, contrary to the official narrative of liberation offered by the Bush Administration. Finally, in the third chapter, following Judith Butler, I implicate the viewers of images of suffering in order to illustrate their roles in perpetuating norms of visibility, as an opening to the consideration of lives which remain unseen. I conclude that photographs open an important reflective space for considering the differential distribution of vulnerability.