Arab Christian Work Literary Genre(or Form) - Nisibis of Elias's work Kitāb Daf' al-Hamm

[pear...@gmail.com]

Dear Hello.

Does anyone happen to know which literary genre(or form) Nisibis Elias's work Kitāb Daf' al-Hamm belongs to?

Sidney Griffith introduces it as a genre of Arab-Christian consolation literature that succeeds the work of Kindi al-Ḥīlah li-Dafʿ al-Aḥzān.

The work exhibits a unique character distinct from other works of consolation literature, due to its content and structure.

Also, it has quotes from the Bible, Islamic, Persian, and wisdom maxims make up more than one-third of the entire text. It is known that there are over 2,000 such quotations, and it is difficult to identify all of their sources.

I understand it to be similar to the literature of the Book of Proverbs within the Jewish Scriptures.

If anyone knows the literary genre of Nisibis Elias's writing, I would be grateful if you could let me know or provide some relevant research that I can refer to.

Thank you so much.

All the best,

Yen

[Sofia Melikyan]

Dear Yen,

I have published an article on this topic in Russian in 2017 (abstract in English at the end): https://periodical.pstgu.ru/en/pdf/article/3660
It is just a preliminary study and I think that Elias' work deserves deeper study of its genre specifics.

Sincerely,

Sofia Melikyan

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Sunday, 28 June 2026, 08:23PM -04:00 from pear...@gmail.com pear...@gmail.com:

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[Miss Falafel]

Dear Sofiya, 

​Thank you so much for your response.  Yes I have already studied your fantastic article and included it in my bibliography. As you noted, this remains a rich area of research that reasons further investigation from multiple perspectives!  ​I am currently exploring lyric poetry (الرثاء) as genre within Adab, as well as Jewish literary genres. And I happened to come across your mention of المقامة the genre on a Youtube lecture. I understood that Elias's work also followed that formal tradition? However, since there are other Arabic genres as well, I became curious about them as well. Do you have any recommendations for an introduction to Arabic literature? 

Also, I recently studied the work of Bar Hebraeus The Laughable Stories, and it seemed that he inherited this unique writing form from Elias's work. (I still l look deeper into it though) 

I will continue to look into this genre issue. I will just try!

Thank you once again for your comments. 

All the best,

Yen

You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. (Rome 8 : 9)

2026년 6월 29일 (월) 오후 8:50, 'Sofia Melikyan' via North American Society for Christian Arabic Studies <nas...@googlegroups.com>님이 작성:

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/nascas/1782733824.687886165%40f273.i.mail.ru.

[Miss Falafel]

I apologize for sending another email to revise my previous message. I may have made a mistake. On reflection, I realize that I failed to pay sufficient attention to the fundamentals. Fr. Samir correctly pointed out that this work belongs to the genre of gnomology, and this is discussed in detail in the introduction to Vol. 9 of the "Patrimonio Culturale Arabo Cristiano" Series. I will therefore examine this genre and its literary tradition. Of course, I also believe that studies on the Arabic-Islamic tradition and its literary genres are equally important. Again, this work truly needs a rich area of research from a variety of perspectives. Thank you very much! 
All the best,

Yen

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