Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Reader in Al-Jahiz: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Master

The Reader in Al-Jahiz: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Master

Hefter, Thomas

Paperback

Series: Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature

Literary CriticismIslam

ISBN10: 1399565087
ISBN13: 9781399565080
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
Published: May 31 2026
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.60 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English

The 9th-century essayist, theologian and encyclopaedist 'Amr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ has long been acknowledged as a master of early Arabic prose writing. Many of his most engaging writings were clearly intended for a broad readership but were presented as presented as letters to individuals. Despite the importance and quantity of these letters, surprisingly little academic notice has been paid to them. Now, Thomas Hefter takes a new approach in interpreting some of al-Jāḥiẓ's 'epistolary monographs'. By focussing on the varying ways in which he wrote to the addressee, Hefter shows how al-Jāḥiẓ shaped his conversations on the page in order to guide (or manipulate) his actual readers and encourage them to engage with his complex materials.

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