Modernity In A Classical Arabic Adab Work, The Kitāb Al-aghānī

The Kitāb al-aghānī is not now most people’s idea of a modern book. But modernity, in this essay, I take to mean what was new in the 4th/10th century, when Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī was writing. ¹ I would suggest that certain aspects of the Aghānī deserve the epithet “modern”, either because they are characteristic of the general evolution of prose literature in Arabic in the late 3rd/9th and early 4th/10th century, or because they seem to be innovations of Abū al-Faraj’s.