 2015 - 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0631-4161-01 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 4.0
Course description
Biographical dictionaries are one of the most developed and important genres of classical Arabic literature. Besides monographic works dedicated to specific categories of people such as poets, medical doctors, judges, legal scholars, theologians, hadith transmitters, Sufis, and princes, there is a large number of general Tabaqat works that include biographies from all of the above categories. Taken together, they allow us to trace important developments in Islamic society and religion throughout the centuries. After a theoretical introduction on the genre and on the structure of biographical works, a series of biographies of learned men and women from different areas and periods will be read and analysed.