Abstract
In his essays on “Self-Expression” and “The Human Ideal” in the medieval Islamic world, the late Gustave E. von Grunebaum argued that both expressions and portrayals of individuality were a comparative rarity in the literature of pre-modern Islamic civilization.1 Von Grunebaum concluded from reviewing both autobiographical and biographical works written by Muslims that the social customs, religious values, and literary conventions of premodern Islamic society combined to discourage evocations or depictions of idiosyncratic personalities in favor of representations of impersonal stereotypes.
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