Accounts of remarkable women at the world's most powerful court
Consorts of the Caliphsis a seventh/thirteenth-century compilation of anecdotes about thirty-eight women who were consorts to those in ...power, most of them concubines of the early Abbasid caliphs and wives of latter-day caliphs and sultans. This slim but illuminating volume is one of the few surviving texts by the prolific Baghdadi scholar Ibn al-Sa'i, who chronicled the academic and political elites of his city in the final years of the Abbasid dynasty and the period following the cataclysmic Mongol invasion of 656 H/1258 AD.
In this work, Ibn al-Sa'i is keen to forge a connection between the munificent wives of his time and the storied lovers of the so-called golden age of Baghdad. Thus, from the earlier period, we find Harun al-Rashid pining for his brother's beautiful slave, Ghadir, and the artistry of such musical and literary celebrities as Arib and Fadl, who bested the male poets and singers of their day. From times closer to Ibn al-Sa?i's own, we meet women such as Banafsha, who endowed law colleges, had bridges built, and provisioned pilgrims bound for Mecca; slave women whose funeral services were led by caliphs; and noble Saljuq princesses from Afghanistan.
Informed by the author's own sources, his insider knowledge, and well-known literary materials, these singular biographical sketches bring the belletristic culture of the Baghdad court to life, particularly in the personal narratives and poetry of culture heroines otherwise lost to history.
Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Anecdotes is a lively, funny and sometimes touching look at the adventures of some of Broadway's most colorful practitioners. From authors, directors, actors, ...producers and designers to the myriad other folk involved keeping the fabulous invalid alive, Far from a dry repetition of names, facts, and figures, Show and Tell offers up a history of Broadway shows and its practitioners from a skewed prospective in all their idiosyncratic glory.
In Treasury of Laughs Hsu Pi-ching reconstructs the Chinese original and provides the only complete annotated English translation of Feng Menglong's Xiaofu, a 17th-century anthology of traditional ...Chinese humour with rich historical, linguistic, psychological, and anthropological connotations.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century Ji Xiaolan, widely regarded as the most eminent scholar and foremost wit of his age, published five collections of anecdotes and discourses centring on the ...interaction between the mundane and spirit worlds, but also including purely earthly life stories and happenings. Some items represent Ji’s own thought and experiences, but the majority were supplied by others, Ji acting only as recorder. Settings range socially from the milieux of peasants, servants and merchants to those of governors and ministers, and geographically extend to the far reaches of the Qing empire. Contents may dwell on comedy or tragedy, cruelty or kindness, corruption or integrity, erudition or ignorance, credulity or scepticism; several items borrow ghost stories to satirize men and manners; some straightforwardly examine current beliefs and practices. Taken together, this miscellany presents a picture of the contemporary world unmatched in its scope and variety of perspectives, and in this way comes nearer to depicting “real life" than novels or institutional histories.
An unrivalled collection of literary gossip and intimate sidelights on the lives of the authors. This hugely entertaining anthology ranges from Chaucer to the present day, with anecdotes that are ...hilarious, touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, and downright weird.
Fotografija prikazuje naslovnico knjige Smeh na prepihu. V njej so anekdote in prigode, ki jih je zbral in napisal Jože Dular. Izšla je leta 1995, založil in izdal jo je Dolenjski list, natisnilo pa ...Tiskarstvo Opara Mali Slatnik.
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