Papers by Dwight Reynolds
Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes
The people listened to the storytellers in the cafes; they heard about Sayf ibn Dhi Yazin, who le... more The people listened to the storytellers in the cafes; they heard about Sayf ibn Dhi Yazin, who left no stone unturned all over the world looking fo r the Book of the Nile. Their hearts were aflutter with love fo r the Princess Dhat al-Himma. They fo llowed the stories of the Barmacides with the Abbasids, Abu Zayd and Diyab and Zanati Khalifa, Solomon and how he controlled thejinn, the martyrdom of the dearly beloved Husayn at Karbala. Nobody knew that one thread ran through what all the professional singers, chanters, and storytellers in Egypt did. Gamal al-Ghitani, AI-Zayni Barakat
The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus, 2020
The Journal of American Folklore, 1989
Language in Society, 1990
Journal of Islamic Studies, 2013
International Journal of Middle East Studies, 1999
Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period
Oxford Scholarship Online
The chapter looks at a specific group of enslaved and freed women performers in Islamic Spain (al... more The chapter looks at a specific group of enslaved and freed women performers in Islamic Spain (al-Andalus). The qiyan constituted a public and, often, prominent class of women, especially those individuals associated with the caliphal court. There is a comparatively rich body of documentary evidence about their training, their performances, their personalities, and their distinctive characteristics and talents. For a small number of individuals, there exist relatively complete biographies, although this information is usually presented as a series of separate anecdotes rather than as a cohesive narrative. For the majority, however, only brief glimpses of key moments in their lives are preserved. Relative to other classes of women and other categories of slaves, the qiyan offer a unique opportunity for the study of gender, slavery, and social relations in the medieval Islamic period.
Oral Tradition, 1989
At the very heart of The Merchant of Art lies an evening's performance of Southern Egyptian oral ... more At the very heart of The Merchant of Art lies an evening's performance of Southern Egyptian oral epic singing, recorded, transcribed, and painstakingly redacted and explicated by Susan Slyomovics. She strives for a "co-authored" text (24), that is, one where the input of poet, audience members, and even variant texts coexist in a multi-vocal reading of the central text. To achieve this, she rapidly builds, in four brief chapters, a context for the text we are to examine in detail.
The Musical Heritage of Al-Andalus, 2020
Charting Memory: Recalling Medieval Spain, 2019
Then he remembers how he used to like to go out of the house at sunset when people were having th... more Then he remembers how he used to like to go out of the house at sunset when people were having their evening meal, and used to lean against the maize fence pondering deep in thought, until he was recalled to his surroundings by the voice of a poet who was sitting at some distance to his left, with his audience round him. Then the poet would begin to recite in a wonderfully sweet tone the doings of Abu Zaid, Khalifa and Diyab, and his hearers would remain silent except when ecstasy enlivened them or desire startled them. Then they would demand a repetition and argue and dispute. And so the poet would be silent until they ceased their clamour after a period which might be short or long. Then he would continue his sweet recitation in a monotone. . .. (Hussein 1982:2) This poetic tradition which Egypt’s preeminent literary scholar, Ṭaha Hussein, recalls at the outset of his autobiography is one familiar through much of the Arab world—the sīra of the Banī Hilāl Bedouin tribe which chroni...
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Papers by Dwight Reynolds
The study of the Middle East and the broader Islamic world has been no less impacted by this new paradigm. Scholars are making daily use of digital tools and repositories including private and state-sponsored archives of textual sources, digitized manuscript collections, densitometrical imaging, visualization and modeling software, and various forms of data mining and analysis. This collection of essays explores the state of the art in digital scholarship pertaining to Islamic & Middle Eastern studies, addressing areas such as digitization, visualization, text mining, databases, mapping, and e-publication. It is of relevance to any researcher interested in the opportunities and challenges engendered by this changing scholarly ecosystem.
The Neapolitan song—as a site of contact and convergence between the diverse cultures and civilizations of the Mediterranean—has always been the meeting ground of engaging narratives in transit. By virtue of this, the identity dimension of Naples is of spontaneous integration and constant observation of the foreigner. Singing in Neapolitan dialect has become a national cultural expression and, through the vocal style and manner of local production, it has contributed to recount the experience of a country turning into a nation [1880-1920], then a nation throwing into the colonial experiences [1890-1940s] and today a Mediterranean region preparing its personal way of meeting the Islamic world. So that, the practice of inclusion and appropriation of stories resulting in the relationship with the traveller, is a model that we know to be practiced yesterday and today.
In this paper I will observe the phenomenon of Neapolitan song as a narrative through excerpts from the repertory of the Italian diaspora, colonial propaganda and that contemporary one emerging in contact with the Muslim community. In all three cases chosen, the city has expressed strong identity. In the perspective of meeting the foreigner or traveller, Naples counts a path of self-expression through music as a form of behavior, and –as evidenced by Norton H. Fried and Marcello Sorce Keller— this form of behavior often becomes symbol and metaphor for other [not musical] aspects of the socio-economic life.