Geschichte des östlichen zagal

Unlike stanzaic poetry in colloquial Arabic (zaǧal) from al-Andalus the very rich and diverse zaǧal tradition of the Arab East from its rise in the 12th century to the end of the Mamluk era has remained almost completely unexplored. The present volume closes this lacuna. Hakan Özkan shows how important this literary form was throughout that period, how it built a bridge between illiterates and elite poets, and finally, how one can draw a line from its beginnings in al-Andalus up to the zaǧals of the present. In addition to text-based analyses of exemplary poems, the study draws on poetics, linguistics, historical dialectology, literary history, and other approaches, that transcend the individual poems, including the exploration of their musical and performative aspects, their "Sitz im Leben", and their economic, political, and social backgrounds.