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IMC 2011: Sessions

Session 504: Moving up and Moving down in the Islamic World

Tuesday 12 July 2011, 09.00-10.30

Moderator/Chair:Hugh Kennedy, Department of the Languages & Cultures of the Near & Middle East, School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London
Paper 504-aWealth and Poverty as Phases in a Life Cycle: A Sample Survey of Medieval Arabic Writing
(Language: English)
Julia Bray, Département d'Études Arabes, Université Paris VIII - Vincennes-Saint-Denis
Index terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies, Language and Literature - Semitic, Social History
Abstract

Paper -a:
Achieving wealth or falling into poverty is a very common theme of medieval Arabic story-telling and historiography, but one that has not yet been the subject of any specific discussion or survey. This paper will establish a sample corpus of real and imagined life-cycles in which the gaining or losing of wealth is what gives a life its moral meaning.