Professor Ibrahim Mumayiz

Dr Ibrahim Mumayiz, Professor of English Literature, an avid reader, active researcher and passionate lover of English literature. Professor Mumayiz and I have been friends since early 1990s when I fell in love with him academically after he had delivered a lecture on English literary history. A year or so afterwards, I attended the viva of a student who wrote his MA dissertation on Tennyson, and Mumayiz was one of the main external examiners. Mumayiz with his knowledgability of the subject stole the entire show; from the student, the other external examiner and the examining committee chairman. The way Mumayiz explained to the examinee--and to us the audience--Tennyson's daily life and habits, created in us the impression as if he had lived with poet in the same household.
In recent years, Mumayiz, who is currently living and researching in USA, has been concentrating on Orientalism, especially Arabic-English literary common channels. He has authored about a dozen of books, all published, beside scores of articles and papers read at conferences and forums. The way Mumayiz describes life and poetry in pre-Islamic Arabia transports the reader to those locations in that fabulous era. Reading Mumayiz's writings is a joy that reconciles us to life, and helps us ward off, to pilfer a phrase from Hamlet, "the slings and arrows flesh is heir to". Now published is:


IBRAHIM MUMAYIZ

SOCIETY, RELIGION AND POETRY

IN PRE-ISLAMIC ARABIA

(Antwerp, GARANT) ISBN: (9789044125122) 244pp.


PART ONE of this new book contains seven essays, by the author, on selected aspects of Pre-Islamic Arabia: “The Land and the people”; “Nabataean Influences on Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia”; “Christianity in Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia – Part- I”; “Christianity in Pre-Islamic Northern Arabia-Part-II’; “Collyridianism and the Virgin Mary”; “The Reign of Queen Mavia” and “Poetry and the Mu’allaqat”.

PART TWO contains a poetic translation of the seven Odes –Mu’allaqat- based on Al-Zawzani’s text. The first, that of Imru’Al-Qays, is in English iambic couplets, and the remaining six Mu’allaqat – those of Tarafa; Zuhayr, Labid ,’Amr b. Kulthoum, ‘Antarah, and Al-Harith b. Hilliza are poetically translated in rhymed alexandrines.

This book makes the latest - and a valuable - contribution to Pre-Islamic Arabian studies.

Copies could be ordered directly from the publisher at:

www.garant-uitgevers.be

uitgeverij@garant.be