NEH A Reverence for Words: Understanding Muslim Culture through the Arts Reading List

Here’s the general reading list I’ve been working on for the past few weeks:

*Note: This post contains affiliate links, for which I can receive compensation for purchases.

• Islam: A Short Guide to Faith (Introduction)
• Cornell University, Department of Near Eastern Studies: “Understanding Islam” by Ross Brann & Shawkat Toorawa
• Cornell University, Department of Near Eastern Studies: “What Is Islam” by Shawkat Toorawa
• Journal of Qur’anic Studies: “‘The Inimitable Rose’, being Qur’anic saj’ from Surat al-Duha to Surat al-Nas in English Rhyming Pose” by Shawkat Toorawa
• Voices of Islam: “Islamic Literatures: Writing in the Shade of the Qu’ran”
• New York Times: “How Artists Change the World” by David Brooks
• Harpers Weekly Magazine: “Impossible Histories: Why the Many Islams Cannot be Simplified” by Edward Said
• Black Mecca: The African Muslims of Harlem: “The Black Encounter” by Zain Abdullah
• Islam on the Street: Religion in Modern Arabic Literature: The Bifurcated Poetic: Islam as Poetry, by Muhsin Al-Musawi
• Arabic and Comparative Studies: “The Spirituality of Arabic-Islamic Poetry”: by Muhsin Al-Musawi
• Love, Death, and Exile: Poems Translated from Arabic by Abdul Wahab Al Bayat, translator Bassam K. Frangieh
• Islamic Arts and Architecture: “Calligraphy – The Geometry of the Spirit” by James David
• Widewalls: “Where is Arabic Calligraphy in Contemporary Art” by Ksenija Pantelić
• Mystical Poems of Rumi 2: Second Selection, Poems 201-400: “Ghazals” by Jalal al-Din Rumi, translator A. J. Arberry
• The Essential Rumi: New Expanded Edition: “Special Plates” and “Burnt Kabobs” by Jala al-Din Rumi, translator A.J. Arberry
• The Masnavi: Book Two: “Moses and the Shepherd” by Jalal al-Din Rumi, translator Jawid Mojaddedi
• Classical Islam: A Sourcebook of Religious Literature: “Hafiz and Six Ghazals from his Diwan”
• The Conference of the Birds by Farid Ud-Din Attar, translator Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis
• Excerpts of Poetry by Bushra Rehman, Suheir Hammad, and Mohja Kahf assembled by Bushra Rehman
• Sin: Selected Poems of Forugh Farrokhzad: Introduction by Forugh Farrokhzad, translator Sholeh Wolpe
• Marwa Helal
• Kundiman: Adeeba Shahid Talukder Interviews with NBC Asian America
• Haleh Liza
• Jess Rizkallah
• Columbia University: The word Ghazal
• Columbia University: Ghazal 111 (transliteration of the Urdu text; (translations by W.S. Merwin; translations by Ralph Russel)
• Poems by Faiz: “Do Not Ask from Me My Beloved, Love Like that Former One” by Faiz Ahmad Faiz
• Tongue Journal: “Found in Translation: Langston Hughes from Harlem to Samarqand” by Zohra Saed
• Asian Folklore Studies: “Dream Motif in Turkish Folk Stories and Shamanistic Initiation” by Ilhan Baṣgöz
• “[A] history of the Kings of the Ottoman Lineage and Their Holy Raid[s] against the Infidels by Kemal Silay
• An Anthology of Turkish Literature: “Muhibbi” by Suleyman the Magnificent (1494-1566), translator Talât Sait Halman
• An Anthology of Turkish Literature: “Nazım Hikmet”
• Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs: “Is There a Turkish Islam? The Emergence of Convergence and Consensus” by Hakan M. Vayuz
• Islamic Art and Architecture: “The Symbolism of the Islamic Garden” by Emma Clark
• NEH Summer Institute: Remix Culture by Hatim Belyamani
• Music of Central Asia by Theodore Levin (chapters 1, 3, & 4)
• Masterpieces from the Department of Islamic Art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “The New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia” by Navina Najat Haida
• Servants of Allah: African Americans Enslaved in the Americas by Sylviane A. Diouf (Introduction & chapter 3)
• Genius: “How Spiritual Arabic Sayings Appear in Hip Hop”

JMF

The views expressed in this blog do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the City Lore institute.  For detailed information about the institute, see http://citylore.org/grassroots-poetry/neh-institute/