Lecture | Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language & Culture
Lecture by Professor Tahera Qutbuddin: Between This World and the Next: Moving Reflections on Mortality and Morality in the Orations of Ali ibn Abi Talib
- Date
- Tuesday 27 May 2025
- Time
- Explanation
- The lecture starts at 17:00 hours and is followed by a drinks reception
- Serie
- Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture
- Address
- Rijksmuseum van Oudheden
Rapenburg 28
Leiden - Room
- Tempelzaal
Abstract
The orations of Ali ibn Abi Talib—first Shia Imam, fourth Sunni Caliph, and widely acclaimed master of eloquence—span a remarkable range of doctrinal, ethical, political, and practical concerns. Among their many profound reflections, three overarching and interwoven themes emerge with particular force: graphic depictions of death, the looming permanence of the hereafter, and an urgent call to lead a pious and virtuous life. Drawing on Ali’s orations, letters, and sayings as preserved in her newly edited and translated volume, Nahj al-Balaghah: The Wisdom and Eloquence of Ali (Brill, 2024), Tahera Qutbuddin will examine the prompts and parameters of these teachings, as well as their striking oral style, marked by pounding rhythms, vivid imagery, and compelling rhetorical force. Situating these themes within the context of Ali’s life and the early Islamic literary moment, she will reflect on their enduring resonance—how they continue to speak to timeless human concerns and to our own search for meaning, morality, and purpose.
About Tahera Qutbuddin
Tahera Qutbuddin is Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford. Her research in classical Arabic literature and Islamic studies focuses on intersections of the literary, the religious, and the political in poetry and prose. Her interests include classical Arabic poetry, orations, epistles, aphorisms, narrative, poetics, and philology; orations and sayings of Imam Ali ibn Abi Talib; ethical hadith and orations of the Prophet Muhammad; Fatimid and Tayyibi Bohra poetry, history, theology, and law; literary features and symbolic exegesis of the Quran; classical Arabic women’s literature, including orations and poetry; and the history, functions, and literary genres of Arabic in India.