Afif Abd al-Rahman
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Afif Abd al-Rahman is a modern scholar and literary researcher specializing in classical Arabic literature, known for his critical and bibliographical research on pre-Islamic poetry and its reception, including al-Adab al-Jahili fi Athar al-Darisin Qadiman wa Hadithan (Pre-Islamic Literature in the Works of Classical and Modern Scholars).
Scholarly Contributions and Critical Approach
Abd al-Rahman focused extensively on documenting, analyzing, and contextualizing scholarship on pre-Islamic Arabic literature. He initially compiled al-Maktaba al-Jahiliyya (The Pre-Islamic Library) to gather and summarize available research on the subject; however, recognizing both the rapid expansion of contemporary scholarship and the need to assess how defined methodologies were applied to poetic texts, he expanded his inquiry into a broader study . In addition to his research on pre-Islamic poetry, his scholarship addressed early Arabic prose, including studies dedicated to pre-Islamic proverbs.
In his critical writings, Abd al-Rahman examined the historical evolution of Arabic literary criticism, noting that close textual and vertical analysis of pre-Islamic poetry began taking clearer shape in the late 1960s and 1970s. He categorized contemporary approaches into two principal trends: objective induction and symbolic interpretation. His work surveyed various modern critical paradigms applied to pre-Islamic verse—including mythological, structuralist, sociological, psychological, and integrative frameworks—aiming to present each framework's features descriptively so readers could compare and assess them independently.
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List of Works
al-Adab al-Jahili fi Athar al-Darisin Qadiman wa Hadithan (Pre-Islamic Literature in the Works of Classical and Modern Scholars) is a bibliographical and critical study examining the history of scholarship and critical approaches applied to pre-Islamic Arabic literature. Rather than offering an exhaustive chronicle, it focuses on studies that adopted defined methodological frameworks and applied them to pre-Islamic poetic texts.