The Anonymous Multi-AttributedʿAẓama: A Network of Cosmological and Wondrous Narratives from Daniyāl’s Books in Four Manuscripts

Abstract

This thesis presents an in-depth study of al-‘Aẓama as a multi-stranded intellectual project reimagined in four of its manuscripts. I approach these manuscripts through a posthuman reading that intersects with the new philological approaches by moving the text from its rigid framework to a more fluid and open network. Thus, allowing for an understanding of the transmission of knowledge production and the process of constant transformation of texts within it based on the taste and reception of the audience and the scripts’ creativity and experimental talents dealing with their sources. The analysis in this thesis is conducted on two main levels: textual and contextual. At the textual level, I examine the linguistic identity of the manuscripts (Middle Arabic), as well as the narrative and rhetorical mechanisms they employ—from the frame narrative to the apocryphal knowledge documentation methods. At the contextual level, I analyze the manuscripts in terms of the tools they offer for knowledge production, including emotions, senses, and questions, and based on their interaction with the surrounding circumstances of this production, particularly regarding the addressed tastes and the reception of the audience. Based on this analysis, the thesis proposes that this network exhibits a fluid relationship with eschatological and wondrous Adab. It also suggests a connection with a narrative and storytelling tradition traceable through specific works and with the Quran itself. Accordingly, the manuscripts are divided into two groups, each containing two manuscripts. My analysis of their interactions proposes that each group adheres to a distinctive pattern or project. For the first group, based on my reading of its project and my reimagining of it, I suggest that it has didactic project or concerns. While in light of the characteristics of the second group and its active engagement with various frameworks, I propose that this group has more epistemological concerns in its conceptualization of knowledge from the beginning of creation, with a complex and dynamic relationship to the religious texts in the literary heritage and in the Quran itself, forming a project that through its structure, themes, and ethics aligns with a particular Quranic Surah.