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Thesis

Italian

ID: <

10670/1.op500d

>

Where these data come from
The banquet does not: Formation and development of the concept of adab in Islam, from the origins to the literature of the ādāb al-whatsoever ūfiyya

Abstract

The root of the word adab is not found in the Qur'ān. In pre-Islamic literature as well as in the hadith, its use is limited exclusively to the sense of “invitation to a banquet”, “education”, “correction” and “punishment” (addaba, ta'dīb). After a period in which scholars did not taken seriously the opinion of Muslim linguists and thinkers concerning the etymology of adab from the “invitation to the Banquet of God (ma'dubat Allāh)”, more recent scholarship has questioned this opinion. In fact, the notion of a divine or sacred ceremonial banquet in the history of ancient civilizations is quite widespread, finding its origin in the archetype of the “Divine Banquet” or “Divine Hospitality”, which had a strong influence on the religious and cultural contexts of a number of different civilizations. However, from the beginning of the 9th century CE Islamic religious literature also began to use the term adab in a new usage, that one might call “technical”. The source of this semantic enrichment should be traced to the court secretaries, the kuttāb, the Persian mawālī who were well-known translators and transmitters of Persian state and cultural heritage. In addition to influencing the cultural imaginary of classical adab literature, the Sasanian court imagery will also influence the technical terminology, as well as the practice in Sufism, producing a genre of the Sufi literature, the ādāb al-ṣūfiyya literature.

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