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Book Review

No. 10 (2026): Open Issue

The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition: Sarah R. Bin Tyeer, University of California Press, 2026. 250 pp.: ISBN 9780520424982

DOI
https://doi.org/10.64957/nesir.1935065
Submitted
17.04.2026
Published
22.04.2026

Abstract

This book review investigates Sarah R. Bin Tyeer’s book The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition, to explore the concept of adab. In premodern Islamic societies, adab embodied the ideal of the educated and ethical human being. In this review, I examine the author’s categorization of readers and modes of reading as ethical and unethical. I critique the idealization of reader types and the book’s noncontextual approach to reading. Furthermore, I challenge the book’s limited scope, focusing on the Arabic literary tradition in the Arab lands. I point out that the cultivation of Arabic literary tradition extended beyond these regions, encompassing the Persian and Ottoman intellectual milieus.

References

  1. Ahmed, Shahab. 2016. What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic. Princeton University Press.
  2. Ghraowi, Ghayde, and Hacı Osman Gündüz, eds. 2022. “The Ascendant Field: Critical Engagements with Ottoman Arabic Literature.” Philological Encounters 7 (3–4).
  3. Harb, Lara. 2020. Arabic Poetics: Aesthetic Experience in Classical Arabic Literature. Cambridge University Press.
  4. Pfeifer, Helen. 2022. Empire of Salons: Conquest and Community in Early Modern Ottoman Lands. Princeton University Press.
  5. el-Rouayheb, Khaled. 2015. Islamic Intellectual History in the Seventeenth Century: Scholarly Currents in the Ottoman Empire and the Maghreb. Cambridge University Press.
  6. Tyeer, Sarah R. bin. 2025. The Well-Tempered Reader: The Legitimization of Adab in the Arabic Literary Tradition. California University Press.