Adab Colloquium: Who Was a Good Poet in Sixteenth Century Damascus?

With ALQ contributor Haci Osman Gündüz (Ozzy)!

Biographical dictionaries often also served as anthologies with—at times—detailed analyses of poetry and literary aesthetics. One such work is Ibn Ayyūb al-Anṣārī’s (d. 1003/1595) Kitāb al-rawḍ al- ʿāṭir which is an indispensable resource on major Damascene figures of the sixteenth century. This talk provides a preliminary study of the dictionary with focus on what Ibn Ayyūb al-Anṣārī and his contemporaries deemed good poetry was, and what skills a poet needed to be successful.