AUB Press

Khalil Hawi is accepted by critics as one of the leading poets of the Arab world, and this admirable translation by Fuad Said Haddad opens a door to his writing for those who do not read Arabic. The book also aims to provide readers of English with a demonstration of new trends in Lebanese poetry, hence the two poems by Nadeem Naimy, here translated for the first time. The English translations of the poems are printed alongside the Arabic originals. ​

​Kahlil Gibran's work is well known and has been widely published in many languages. The substance of this book, however, is contained in the photographs of original manuscript pages of Gibran's writing. Some are parts of published works such as The Prophet, but the book also contains four fragments published here for the first time. Sections begin with a description of the manuscript, and there is a transcription of each page opposite its photograph. These are the first Gibran manuscripts, apart from his letters, to be published in this way. They are of great interest because they demonstrate the process by which Gibran refined his writings into their final form.

The author presents the English poet, Lord Byron, in a new light, focusing on his attraction to the East (specifically Greece, Turkey, and Albania), to Muslims, in general, and to Islam and its culture. The analysis and discussion of the poems are accompanied by a close examination of Byron's journals and letters, showing that Byron's intellectual and poetic development was closely tied to his experiences in and knowledge of the East. ​

Editor: Saouma Bou Jaoude

​​Over the last two centuries, the French dimension of Arab history has loomed large. The Arab world equally has played a major role in recent French history. Franco-Arab Encounters treats the many aspects of this interaction, tracing not just the political, but also the cultural, social, and intellectual. Twenty authors present these “encounters" in seven sections covering the Arab world, from Morocco to Saudi Arabia, over the past two hundred years. The book is dedicated to the memory of David C. Gordon, a pioneer and leader in this field of scholarship, who taught history at AUB from 1949 to 1955 and 1958 to 1975.

This publication contains the proceedings of a 2007 conference organized by the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies (CAMES) at the American University of Beirut and the Center for Antiochene Studies at the University of Balamand. It is divided into two parts comprising two respective chronological eras, reflecting the intention of the conference to pursue a dual and comparative focus with the hope of throwing fresh light on both eras – the early Islamic period, from the Islamic conquests of Syria until the fall of the Umayyad dynasty (632–750), and the period of Byzantine reconquest of Syria (969–1084).​​