A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.The Well-Tempered Reader provides a new understanding of the term
adab, a ubiquitous concept in Arabic literature with many meanings. In Sarah R. Bin Tyeer's analysis, adab is more than just a way of writing or the cultivation of moral excellence, as it is often understood. It is rather an ethical way of perceiving, understanding, and living that results from ceaseless critical interaction between the individual and all aspects of his or her social, cultural, natural, and metaphysical environment. Through a close reading of texts from eighth-century Baghdad to nineteenth-century Lebanon, in which adab emerges as a force across historical periods and geographies, Bin Tyeer posits the term as a generative literary and cultural framework and a discursive force for analyzing literary acts. This is the first book-length study of adab as an intellectual institution; examining its role and historical influence in the moral and intellectual formation of the adabized subject, Bin Tyeer reveals the import of adab not only for Arabic literary studies but for comparative literary inquiry.
Sarah R. Bin Tyeer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. She is author of The Qur’an and the Aesthetics of Premodern Arabic Prose and coeditor of Islam and New Directions of World Literature.
"Guided by the heritage of a millennial tradition, Sarah Bin Tyeer paves the way for cultural renewal by resurrecting the universal dimension of classical Arabic letters."—Stefan Sperl, Professor Emeritus of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, SOAS University of London
"A tour de force—erudite, original, and profoundly insightful. Tracing adab across centuries and genres, Bin Tyeer reveals its role as a critical and ethical framework grounded in murūʾa—the ideal of the human defined by intellectual virtue, moral resolve, and cultivated ways of reading."—Sarra Tlili, Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, University of Florida
248 pp.6 x 9
9780520424975$34.95|£30.00Paper
Dec 2025