This paper aims to shed light on the pivotal historical event of the Crusaders' Destruction and Capture of "Jerusalem" in 1099, with a specific emphasis on nuanced perspectives drawn from Arabic poetic sources and Judeo-Arabic fragments found in the Genizah collection. The inquiry encompasses a diverse range of Arabic sources from the 12th century, including poetry, folk stories, and written accounts. Emphasizing the significance of poetry and correspondence within the Genizah as primary sources, the research strives to unveil the emotions and narratives surrounding these tragic events. The study seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of the Jewish and Islamic lament surrounding the Crusaders' actions in "Jerusalem." It examines the correlation between Jews' self-perception and their perspectives on non-Jews, specifically Latin Europeans (Crusaders), who conquered the Holy City of Jerusalem. The city had been a place where Muslims, Christians, and Jews had coexisted peacefully under Islamic rule for centuries prior to this event. Simultaneously, the examination of Islamic laments aims to explore the voices of Islamic Jihad in defending the city, examining its connection with the city's significance in Islam. Additionally, the study delves into how Jews associated the crusading conquest with imaginative memories of the destruction of the Temple, diaspora, and the enduring longing for Jerusalem and the Promised Land, all of which collectively shaped the memory of Jews during that period.

This paper contributes to the growing field of "Al-Andalus legacy studies" but takes an unusual route - focusing not on wars or migrations, music, art, kings or saints but on historically under-utilized source of literary biography. The life, works, trial and passion of one man, Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374 CE) became a distinct emotive symbol of Al-Andalus in three distinct period after his strangulation in prison and the immolation of his body by his political rivals. First, there was an immediate impact. In letters and works of his friend, rival and sometime protégé Ibn Khaldun, Lisan al-Din Ibn al-Khatib was an instant "martyr" of poetic eloquence, one who died due to the political machinations of the fourteenth century court of the Nasrid ruler Muhammad V of Granada. His status as a literary martyr only increased by the time of Ahmad al-Maqqari (d. 1632 CE). He and a group of literary elite scholars working for the Sultan in Morocco, many of them bureaucrats and secretaries versed in Andalusi eloquence and literature and claiming descent from Andalusis, sat around Ibn al-Khatib's grave in Fes and wept spontaneously. A whole volume of Al-Maqqari's, "Breath of Perfume", is an extended hagiography of Ibn al-Khatib and he is held up as the insurmountable peak of eloquence. In the 21st his legacy in Spain was recently marked with a celebration of his birth in Loja, a town outside of Granada, including the painting of his imagined likeness on the foundations of historic monuments. In 2022 there were still refreshed black and white outlines of the poet on the ruins of the Loja, Alcazar. Following the theoretical path set out by scholars such as Eric Calderwood, Elizabeth Drayson and Alejandro García-Sanjuán, and history of emotions methodology, I show how Ibn al-Khatib, in fact, has been, like the larger legacy of Al-Andalus he is meant to represent, re-imagined for widely different purposes and in three different ways, first in letters between friends, then in hagiography and then in images used by a working-class town in modern Andalucía far outside the tourist bustle of the Alhambra.

Recent historiographical trends are witnessing a rise of an ‘emotional turn’ in the discipline of history. Including emotions in their frameworks offers scholars a separate analytical category for interpreting the past and its textual representations of narrative forms. Moving beyond the universalist and relativist dichotomy of the elusive nature of emotions, historians have focused on how they function as agents of history, appearing, changing and continuing as components of the human condition across ages and communities. However, despite its potential, this analytical category remains relatively understudied in pre-modern Arabic literature. The present study attempts to apply the emotional perspective to the Mat̲h̲ālib genre, an inherently emotionally charged type in Arabic literature. Mat̲h̲ālib literature, characterised by its oppositional and reactionary tendencies, emerged as a response to the sectarian and partisan divides within the Islamic world. Among diverse texts in this genre addressing political and religious themes, Mat̲h̲ālib al-Nawāṣib (Shortcomings of the Nawāṣib), authored by Ibn Shahrāshūb (d. 588/1192) - an influential Shīʿī scholar- stands out as a notable example. The work reveals the ‘emotional styles’ of the Mat̲h̲ālib literature, showcasing how writers perceived and portrayed emotions and what narratives they crafted to evoke specific emotional responses. By employing a close reading approach and comparing this text with its religious and political counterparts in the Mat̲h̲ālib genre, this paper seeks to ask the following questions: (1) Which emotions frequent the Mat̲h̲ālib literature, and where are they located? (2) To what extent do these emotions represent lived experiences? (3) What role do these emotions play in constructing the narrative? Finally, (4) how Mat̲h̲ālib texts contribute to forming ‘emotional communities’, as conceptualised by Barbara Rosenwin, wherein shared values foster collective social identities. Consequently, the study underscores the significance of the Mat̲h̲ālib genre and Ibn Shahrāshūb’s text as an avenue in the landscape of Arabo-Islamic emotion history. Secondly, by focusing on Ibn Shahrāshūb’s arrangement of vignettes, his voice as an author and agency as an editor, and the paratext he provides, it highlights emotions as an essential element of the narrative. Lastly, it identifies the text as a site from whence nuanced emotions are created and transferred within a community. While the study encounters limitations, such as challenges in translation that hinder the rendering of exact emotive meaning, it examines how emotions manifest within social contexts through their literary depictions and will pave further paths for considering the interplay between lived and literary emotions.

Mālik b. al-Rayb (d. 58/677) was said to be a bandit poet before he had embraced Islam and later joined the army of Sa‘īd ibn Affān (d.c. 60/680). Among his notable works is the self-elegy (rithā’ nafs), a poetic genre that delves into the anticipation of his own death and the introspective exploration of the self and mortality. This article aims to first examine how Mālik b. al-Rayb navigates the complexities of time, memory, and personal identity while facing the reality that he will inevitably cease to exist. It then illuminates the poet’s adept manipulation of temporal layers, juxtaposing past, present, and future to construct his reflection on mortality, loss, grief, and the transience of human existence. This analysis also explores his poetic talent and achievements by uncovering reflections about his remarkable and courageous past, highlighting his physical strength, chivalrous exploits, and spiritual qualities, such as wisdom, intelligence, and rich discourse, all while grappling with the looming inevitability of his own mortality. Through a close analysis of Mālik b. al-Rayb’s poem, this study intends to explore the poet’s engagement with themes of time and loss, longing, and existential contemplation. Furthermore, it investigates the linguistic devices, such as metaphor and imagery, employed by the poet to evoke profound emotional responses and convey complex ideas concerning the image of time, highlighting how he comes to realize the fragility of his existence in the face of impending death. Consequently, death serves as a vantage point from which he gains a profound appreciation for the significance of his life experiences. By elucidating the significance of Mālik b. al-Rayb’s self-elegy, this article contributes to a deeper understanding of both the poet’s literary legacy and the cultural milieu in which he operated, shedding light on a universal theme—death—that resonates within the Arab literary tradition.

Tropes surrounding women’s supposed lack of intelligence are widespread in the literature of the medieval Islamic world. Authors of works of political commentary and advice often warned their elite audiences not to trust women, supporting their claims with references to a well-known narration in which the Prophet Muhammad declared women to be deficient in intelligence (naqisat al-ʿaql). Normative authors, like the famous Persian vizier Nizam al-Mulk (d. 1092), usually advocated for the absolute exclusion of women from political decision-making. Nizam al-Mulk’s views regarding the necessity of women’s isolation from decision-making roles had a long-lasting influence in the political literature of the Islamic world until the Ottoman era. Yet these attitudes were not universal, and it is possible to recover a very different approach to women’s political authority by investigating lesser-studied regions on the periphery of the Islamic world. The Yemeni jurist, poet, and chronicler ʿUmara al-Yamani (d. 1174) lived in an environment where on more than one occasion, women not only held political authority, but ruled in their own right: Sulayhid and Najahid Yemen. His History of Yemen offers a radically different view of female authority, framed by his personal experiences with the women of these two dynasties. The central figure in ʿUmara’s chronicle is the Sulayhid queen Sayyida Hurra (also known as Queen ʿArwa), who ruled Yemen first as a queen regent for her underage son, then as queen in her own right (1094–1138). ʿUmara departs from the misogynistic tropes common to many of his contemporaries, portraying Sayyida Hurra as a wise sovereign whose careful strategizing established her authority in Yemen. His account belies the notion that there existed a monolithic “Islamic” attitude toward the rule of women. By analyzing his account in comparison with that of Nizam al-Mulk, this study explores the circumstances under which female political power could be legitimized and even praised in medieval Islamic literature.