Mostafa Najafi: Mysteries Here and There: ʿAbd al-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī in the 20th Century

ʿAbd l-Qāhir al-Ǧurǧānī (d. 1078) is commonly known among scholars today as the undisputed father of “Arabic literary criticism,” thanks to his two seminal works Dalāʾil l-iʿǧāz (Proofs of the Inimitability) and Asrār l-balāġa (Mysteries of the Eloquence). In my talk tomorrow, I will sketch two main historical turning points in the Ǧurǧānī-studies that paved the way for consolidating this representation during the 20th century at the hand of two scholars: Muḥammad ʿAbduh (d. 1905) from Egypt and Hellmut Ritter (d. 1971) from Germany. Using this perspective, I aspire to show how the historiographies of the two apparently distinct traditions of falsafa and bayān turn out to be inextricably interwoven and determined through various shades of the same historiographical approaches and assumptions.