Abstract

This article addresses key concepts pertaining to Adab on the one hand and Abbasid administrative practices on the other, by focusing on an unpublished work that straddles both themes. It is shown that Arabic works on both Adab and bureaucracy are difficult to isolate and categorise conclusively as both genres were receptive to diverse flavourings, be they of an ornamental or of a strictly practical nature. Although the article adopts a comparative approach to these issues, detailed attention is paid to the character of the particular work under discussion and its author.

Highlights

  • Where the Abbasid crown-prince had his offices. ^ in a tantalizing "slip of the tongue" the author employs an informal term current amongst those officials who straddled the pre- and post-Buyid periods: in noting that copies of official documents are forwarded to senior authorities as a means of administrative control he writes that this copy is to be sent on to "al-Shrf\ that is to say, to the Buyid sovereign or his representative. This phrase may well be innocent, a nuanced reading of the context suggests that a member of the ancien régime is mocking his Buyid supervisor or, at the very least, regarding the latter as an inferior outsider. ^ There is a series of ñirther hints that help establish the date of composition as circa the mid-tenth century CE, shortly after the de facto transfer of power from an administration directly controlled by the Abbasid authorities to one in which the Buyid amirs have assumed authority

  • J. van Gelder has analysed Abu Hayyân al-Tawhïdî's (d. first quarter of the eleventh century CE) stance in the context of an argument between a "man of letters" and a "man of numbers", the latter being represented by al-Tawhïdî himself ^s it is in this broader context of vocational jealousies and competition that the perceived cattiness displayed by the author of the present manual towards the kuttáb in the bureau of correspondence ^9 is to be understood

  • This article addresses key concepts pertaining to Adab on the one hand and Abbasid administrative practices on the other, by focusing on an unpublished work that straddles both themes

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Summary

The title of the work

The fascinating, but slightly misleading title of the work is to be considered as a tentative one, as there are reasons to suspect that orig-. ^ The page includes the title and various additions that are clearly the handiwork of later readers, booksellers, or librarians. One example of this is the attempt by one such reader to label the work "On Medicine", presumably owing to the description of the royal physician that occurs towards the end of the text. AQ, XXV, 2004 ORNATE MANUALS OR PRACTICAL ADAB'l most, we may consider the text in its present form to be a fresh copy in which the processes of correction, reconsideration, and thoughtful additions overlapped

The date of the work
The ambivalent character of the author
Literary concepts and Adab works reflected in the text
Sayings of a religious or literary character
Findings
Encouragement to read literary works
Full Text
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