islamic arts and literature

Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi (1003-1071) known as Ibn Zaydún (Arabic full name,أبو الوليد أحمد بن زيدون المخزومي) was a famous Arab poet of Cordoba and Seville. His romantic and literary life was dominated by his relations with the poet Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, the daughter of the Umayyad Caliph Muhammad III of Cordoba.^[1] According to Jayyusi in her book The Legacy of Muslim Spain, "Ibn Zaydun brought into Andalusi poetry something of balance, the rhetorical command, the passionate power and grandeur of style that marked contemporary poetry in the east...he rescued Andalusi poetry from the self-indulgence of the poets of externalized description." Ibn Zaydun was born in Cordoba to an aristocratic Arab family of the tribe of Makhzum.^[3] He grew up during the decline of the Umayyad caliphate and was involved in the political life of his age. He joined the court of the Jahwarid Abu al-Hazm of cordoba and was imprisoned by him after he was accused of conspiring against him and his patrons. His relationship with the Umayyad princess Wallada was quickly terminated by Wallada herself. Some attributed this change of heart to Ibn Zaydun's early anti-Umayyad activities, while others mention his rivalry with the rich minister Ibn Abdus, a former friend of Ibn Zaydun, who supposedly gains Wallada's favor and supported her. It is suggested that Ibn Abdus himself was the one who instigated Abu al-Hazm ibn Jahwar against Ibn Zaydun. He sought refuge with Abbad II of Seville and his son al-Mu'tamid.^[6] He was able to return home for a period after the ruler of Seville conquered Cordoba. Much of his life was spent in exile and the themes of lost youth and nostalgia for his city are present in many of his poems.

Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibnʿArabī al-Ḥātimī aṭ-Ṭāʾī (Arabic: أبو عبد الله محمد بن علي بن محمد بن عربي الحاتمي الطائي‎‎) ‎(26 July 1165 – 16 November 1240), also known simply as Shaykh Al-Akbar, "the greatest master", was an Arab^[1] Andalusian Sunni scholar of Islam, Sufi mystic, poet, and philosopher.^[2][3] He is renowned by practitioners of Sufism as "the greatest master"^[4] and also as a genuine saint.

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī (Persian: جلال‌الدین محمد رومی‎‎), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī (جلال‌الدین محمد بلخى), Mevlânâ/Mawlānā (مولانا, "our master"), Mevlevî/Mawlawī (مولوی, "my master"), and more popularly simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century Persian^[1][7] Sunni^[8] Muslim poet, jurist, Islamic scholar, theologian, and Sufi mystic.^[9] Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other Central Asian Muslims, and the Muslims of South Asia have greatly appreciated his spiritual legacy for the past seven centuries.^[10] His poems have been widely translated into many of the world's languages and transposed into various formats. Rumi has been described as the "most popular poet"^[11] and the "best selling poet" in the United States.Rumi's works are written mostly in Persian, but occasionally he also used Turkish, Arabic, and Greek,^[14][15][16] in his verse. His Masnavi (Mathnawi), composed in Konya, is considered one of the greatest poems of the Persian language.^[19][20] His works are widely read today in their original language across Greater Iran and the Persian-speaking world.^[21][22] Translations of his works are very popular, most notably in Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United States, and South Asia.^[23] His poetry has influenced not only Persian literature, but also Turkish, Ottoman Turkish, Azerbaijani, as well as the literature of some other Turkic, Iranian, and Indo-Aryan languages including Chagatai, Urdu and Pashto.

Abū-Muhammad Muslih al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī^[2] (Persian: ابومحمد مصلح‌الدین بن عبدالله شیرازی‎‎), better known by his pen-name Saadi(سعدی Saʿdī( Sa'di (help·info))), also known as Saadi of Shiraz (سعدی شیرازی Saadi Shirazi), was a major Persian poet and literary of the medieval period. He is recognized for the quality of his writings and for the depth of his social and moral thoughts. Saadi is widely recognized as one of the greatest poets of the classical literary tradition, earning him the nickname "Master of Speech" (ارباب سخن) or "The Master" among Persian scholars. He has been quoted in the Western traditions as well.

Khwāja Shams-ud-Dīn Muḥammad Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī (Persian: خواجه شمس‌‌الدین محمد حافظ شیرازی‎‎), known by his pen name Hafez (حافظ Ḥāfeẓ'the memorizer; the (safe) keeper'; 1315-1390), was a Persian poet who "lauded the joys of love and wine but also targeted religious hypocrisy." His collected works are regarded as a pinnacle of Persian literature and are often found in the homes of people in the Persian speaking world, who learn his poems by heart and still use them as proverbs and sayings. His life and poems have been the subject of much analysis, commentary and interpretation, influencing post-14th century Persian writing more than any other author. Hafez, who was a 14th-century poet in Iran, is best known for his poems that can be described as "antinomian" and with the medieval use of the term "theosophical"; this term theosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries was used to indicate mystical work by "authors only inspired by the holy books" (as distinguished from theology). Hafez primarily wrote in the literary genre of lyric poetry that is the ideal style for expressing the ecstasy of divine inspiration in the mystical form of love poems. Themes of his ghazals are the beloved, faith, and exposing hypocrisy. In his ghazals, he deals with love, wine and tavern, all presenting the ecstasy and freedom from restraint, whether in actual worldly release or in the voice of the lover^[5] speaking of divine love.^[6] His influence in the lives of Persian speakers can be found in "Hafez readings" (fāl-e hāfez, Persian: فال حافظ‎‎) and the frequent use of his poems in Persian traditional music, visual art, and Persian calligraphy.

One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: أَلْف لَيْلَة وَلَيْلَة‎‎ ʾAlf layla wa-layla^[1]) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English-language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West, Central, and South Asia and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Jewish,^[3] and Egyptian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Abbasid era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان‎‎, lit. A Thousand Tales), which in turn relied partly on Indian elements. What is common throughout all the editions of the Nights is the initial frame story of the ruler Shahryār and his wife Scheherazade and the framing device incorporated throughout the tales themselves. The stories proceed from this original tale; some are framed within other tales, while others begin and end of their own accord. Some editions contain only a few hundred nights, while others include 1,001 or more. The bulk of the text is in prose, although verse is occasionally used for songs and riddles and to express heightened emotion. Most of the poems are single couplets or quatrains, although some are longer. Some of the stories very widely associated with The Nights, in particular "Aladdin's Wonderful Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves", and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor", were not part of The Nights in its original Arabic versions but were added to the collection by Antoine Galland and other European translators.

- Aladdin (/əˈlædɪn/; Arabic: علاء الدين‎, ʻAlāʼ ud-Dīn/ ʻAlāʼ ad-Dīn, IPA: [ʕalaːʔ adˈdiːn]) is a folk tale of Middle Eastern origin. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (The Arabian Nights), and one of the best known—despite not being part of the original Arabic text. It was added to the collection in the 18th century by the Frenchman Antoine Galland, who attributed the tale to a Syrian storyteller, Youhenna Diab. Since it first appeared in the early 18th century "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" has been one of the best known and most retold of all fairy tales.

• ************** https://beta.scmp.com/culture/books/article/2182653/aladdin-really-chinese-how-hollywood-invented-tales-middle-eastern In books and films, Aladdin is often depicted wearing a turban or fez and baggy, Middle Eastern-style harem pants, flying on his magic carpet with his princess, who is dressed in what could pass as a belly dancer’s outfit.So it may come as a surprise to many to learn that Aladdin and his princess might actually be Chinese. In the original story, Aladdin is born to a poor tailor in “the capital of one of China’s vast and wealthy kingdoms”. The Chinese setting of the story, however, has in most recent iterations, notably the Disney animated film of 1992, been almost entirely rewritten. And in Disney’s new live-action film, due for release in May, the omission is likely to be perpetuated. In years past, Aladdin’s Chinese aspects have even been amplified: in book illustrations of the Victorian era, when the craze for Chinoiserie was at its peak, Aladdin sports a Manchurian queue and Chinese slippers, and the architecture features distinctly Chinese pagodas.Reacting negatively to China’s growing role in global trade, on the other hand, British pantomimes in mid-Victorian times sarcastically renamed Aladdin characters after types of tea. But now China seems to have disappeared completely. ‘Aladdin’ is a shape-shifter, a paradox: it’s one of the most instantly familiar stories, and also one of the least known. It has survived by changing and reinventing itself – the Disney film is just one in a long line of reincarnations that depart quite radically from the original story,” says French-Syrian writer Yasmine Seale, whose new translation of the original tale was published by WW Norton last November.

Pottery

- Iznik pottery, or Iznik ware, named after the town of İznik in western Anatolia where it was made, is a decorated ceramic that was produced from the last quarter of the 15th century until the end of the 17th century. İznik was an established centre for the production of simple earthenware pottery with an underglaze decoration when, in the last quarter of the 15th century, craftsmen in the town began to manufacture high quality pottery with a fritware body painted with cobalt blue under a colourless transparent lead glaze. The designs combined traditional Ottoman arabesque patterns with Chinese elements. The change was almost certainly a result of active intervention and patronage by the recently established Ottoman court in Istanbul who greatly valued Chinese blue-and-white porcelain.

• Following the establishment of the Ottoman Empire in the early 14th century, Iznik pottery initially followed Seljuk Empire antecedents. After this initial period, Iznik vessels were made in imitation of Chinese porcelain, which was highly prized by the Ottomansultans. As the potters were unable to make porcelain, the vessels produced were fritware, a low-fired body comprising mainly silica and glass. The originality of the potters was such that their use of Chinese originals has been described as adaptation rather than imitation.^[1] Chinese ceramics had long been admired, collected and emulated in the Islamic world. This was especially so in the Ottoman court and the Safavid court in Persia which had important collections of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. Such Chinese porcelains influenced the style of Safavid pottery and had a strong impact on the development of Iznik ware.^[2] By the mid-16th century, Iznik had its own vocabulary of floral and abstract motifs in tight designs making use of a limited palette. Decoration progressed from pure symmetry to subtle rhythms.

architecture

- safavid

• The Allahverdi Khan Bridge (Persian: پل الله‌وردی‌خان‎), popularly known as Si-o-se-pol (Persian: سی‌وسه‌پل‎, lit. '[the] bridge of thirty-three [spans]'),^[2] is one of the eleven bridges in Isfahan, Iran.^[3] It is the longest bridge on the Zayanderud, with a total length of 297.76 metres (976.9 ft), and is one of the most famous examples of Safavid bridge design. Built between 1599 and 1602, the construction was financed and supervised by the Georgian chancellor of Abbas I, Allahverdi Khan Undiladze. It consists of two superimposed rows of 33 arches.