Bedouin Poetry from Sinai and the Negev: Mirror of a Culture [Hardcover]

Clinton Bailey (Author), Wilfred Thesiger (Foreword)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198265476 | ISBN-13: 978-0198265474 | Publication Date: April 11, 1991

Like other nonliterate peoples, the Bedouin have a strong oral tradition and use poetry for all forms of communication and entertainment. Based on twenty years of studying the poetry of the Bedouin of Sinai and the Negev, this book presents 115 poems recorded between 1967 and 1985. Bailey arranges the poems according to their content, providing for each an introduction, a version of the poem in Arabic script and transliteration, and notes on the poem's cultural, linguistic, and historical background.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

For over 20 years, Bailey lived among the Bedouin tribes of the Sinai area, gaining cultural understanding and gathering a fascinating collection of 113 Bedouin poems grouped into themes of expression, communication, instruction, entertainment, and historical and episodic poetry. The capacity of these fierce and courageous illiterate nomads to retain and recite scores of poems in one sitting is truly remarkable. Poetry retains a prominent position in Bedouin life and is also vital in studying and understanding the desert nomads from ancient times to the present. The commentary, translations, and transliterations with the original Arabic make this an important addition to library collections emphasizing anthropology, comparative literature, biblical, and Middle East studies.
- Paula I. Nielson, Loyola Marymount Univ. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

`Bailey's collection is the fruit of twenty years of fieldwork and is of great richness. There is excellent documentation on bedouin life, customs, the social and political scene, recorded at first hand but with reference to relevant literature ... To read through Bedouin Poetry is to enter into the heart and mind, joys and sorrows of a bedouin society through the greatest of thier arts - that of verse. Clinton Bailey's study of them through this medium is no mean achievement.' Journal of Arabic Literature, XXXIV (1993)

`quite wonderful poetry ... so admirably presented and translated by the author in a very handsome book by the Clarendon Press at its best.' Times Literary Supplement

`a fascinating collection of Bedouin poetry, making available over a hundred poems spoken in the voices of the Bedouin out of the rich resources of their oral tradition. Clinton Bailey is to be commended for undertaking and bringing to fruition this valuable research project.' Times Literary Supplement

`The poetry would have disappeared for sure, like the tents. Bailey has done work for many generations to come'. Isabel Kershner, The Jerusalem Report.

'Here we have a major hoard of Bedouin oral poetry.' Inea Bushnaq, Journal of Palestine Studies

'Viewed from the perspective of Bailey's own extensive involvement with research on Bedouin themes, the book under review is without doubt the author's magnum opus, assembling in one place the fruit of some 20 years of assiduous fieldwork carried out among tent-dwelling Bedouins in Sinai and the Negev ... a distinguished contribution to a field that has been attracting increasing attention among Arabists during the last decade ... deserves to find its place on the bookshelves of all admirers of Bedouin culture.' Alexander Borg, Ben-Gurion University, Ariel, Number 96, 1994

`The present work is well presented and very comprehensive, and it is good to have such a solid collection of poems to add to the growing corpus of works on Bedouin and Arabian oral literature.' Bulletin of the SOAS

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 11, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198265476
• ISBN-13: 978-0198265474
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,296,718 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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