Al-Maqrīzī's al-Ḫabar 'an al-bašar
Subtitle: Volume V, sections 1-2 : The Arab thieves
By: critical edition, annotated translation and study by Peter Webb
Series: Bibliotheca Maqriziana -- volume 6
Publisher: Brill
Published: 2019
Place of publication: Leiden; Boston
Language: eng; ara
Translated from: ara
Number of pages: 362
ISBN-13: 9789004386945; 9789004386952
Subjects: History; Early works to 1800; Outlaws; Biography; Arabic literature; History and criticism; Outlaws in literature; Tales; Historiography
Other titles: Arab thieves
Work titles: Khabar ʻan al-bashar fī ansāb al-ʻArab wa-nasab Sayyid al-Bashar
Description: "In The Arab Thieves, Peter Webb critically explores the classic tales of pre-Islamic Arabian outlaws in Arabic literature. A group of Arabian camel-rustlers became celebrated figures in Muslim memories of pre-Islam, and much poetry ascribed to them and stories about their escapades grew into an outlaw tradition cited across Arabic literature. The ninth/fifteenth-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi arranged biographies of ten outlaws into a chapter on 'Arab Thieves' in his wide-ranging history of the world before Muhammad. This volume presents the first critical edition of al-Maqrizi's text with a fully annotated English translation, alongside a detailed study that interrogates the outlaw lore to uncover the ways in which Arabic writers constructed outlaw identities and how al-Maqrizi used the tales to communicate his vision of pre-Islam. Via an exhaustive survey of early Arabic sources about the outlaws and comparative readings with outlaw traditions in other world literatures, The Arab Thieves reveals how Arabic literature crafted lurid narratives about criminality and employed them to tell ancient Arab history"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

In English and Arabic.
Table of contents: title: Outlaw literature; title: "Arab thieves" : establishing a category; title: Thieves and Arab history; title: Contemporary outlaws : criminality in al-Maqrizi's own world; title: Al-Maqrizi's manuscript : its conceptual, narrative and physical structure; title: The sources; title: Concluding remarks; title: The holograph; title: The translation; title: The Arabs' religions before Islam; title: The Arab hussies; title: The Arab thieves; title: 'Amr of the dog; title: Ta'abbata Sarran; title: Al-Sanfara; title: Al-Sulayk b. al-Sulakah al-Sa'di; title: Al-Muntasir; title: Awfa b. Matar al-Mazini; title: 'Amr b. Barraqah; title: Al-Uhaymir; title: Nizam; title: Yazid.