Arabic riddles

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Riddles are historically a significant genre of Arabic literature. The Qur’an does not contain riddles as such, though it does contain conundra.[1] But riddles are attested in early Arabic literary culture, 'scattered in old stories attributed to the pre-Islamic bedouins, in the ḥadīth and elsewhere; and collected in chapters'.[2] Since the nineteenth century, extensive scholarly collections have also been made of riddles in oral circulation.

Although in 1996 the Syrian proverbs scholar Khayr al-Dīn Shamsī Bāshā published a survey of Arabic riddling,[3] analysis of this literary form has been neglected by modern scholars,[4] including its emergence in Arabic writing;[5][6] there is also a lack of editions of important collections.[7]: 134 n. 61  A major study of grammatical and semantic riddles was, however, published in 2012,[8] and since 2017 both legal riddles[9][10][7]: 119–56  and verse riddles[11][12] have enjoyed growing attention.

  1. ^ A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), pp. 14-15.
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference :5 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Khayr al-Dīn Shamsī Bāshā, ‘al-Alghāz wa-l-aḥajī wa-l-muʿammayāt', Majallat Majmaʿ al-Lugha al-ʿArabiyya bi-Dimashq, 71.4 (1996), 768–816; volume at archive.org.
  4. ^ Cf. A. A. Seyed-Gohrab, Courtly Riddles: Enigmatic Embellishments in Early Persian Poetry (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2010), 14-18.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference :9 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ a b Elias G. Saba, Harmonizing Similarities: A History of Distinctions Literature in Islamic Law, Islam – Thought, Culture, and Society, 1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), doi:10.1515/9783110605792.
  8. ^ Muḥammad Sālimān, Fann al-alghāz ʿind al-ʿarab wa-maʿhu l-Lafẓ al-lāʾiq wa-l-maʿnā l-rāʾiq; al-Alghāz al-naḥwiyya; al-Ṭāʾir al-maymūn fī ḥall lughz al-Kanzal-madfūn, ed. by Muḥammad Sālimān (Cairo: al-Hayʾaal-Miṣriyyaal-ʿĀmma li-l-Kitāb, 2012).
  9. ^ Christian Mauder, “In the Sultan's Salon: Learning, Religion and Rulership at the Mamluk Court of Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī (r. 1501–1516)” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Göttingen, 2017).
  10. ^ Cite error: The named reference :4ra was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  11. ^ Fāṭima Hilāl Fawzī, 'Fann al-ʾalḡāz aš-šiʿriyya — al-ruʾya wa-l-taškīl', Majallat Buḥūṯ Kulliyyat al-ʾādāb, 134 (2023), 433–512, doi:10.21608/sjam.2023.188810.1887.
  12. ^ Rifrāfī Bilkāsim, 'Fann al-ʾalḡāz aš-šiʿriyya fī al-šiʿr al-ʿarabiyy al-qadīm (tīmāt wa-fanniyyāt)', Majallat qirāʾāt, 13.1 (2012), 199–212.