Читать книгу The Sword of Ambition - 'Uthman ibn Ibrahim al-Nabulusi - Страница 12

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful for the generous financial and logistical support this project received from four institutions in particular: the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, the Mellon Faculty Development Grant of Saint Louis University, Saint Louis University, and Princeton University. A visit to manuscripts in 2014 was made possible by practical support from the Centre d’Études Maghrébines à Tunis, the Centre d’Études Maghrébines en Algérie, and their respective directors, Laryssa Chomiak and Robert Parks. In this connection, too, I am supremely grateful to the Kacimi Library of Zawiyat El Hamel, Algeria and, above all, to Muhammad Foued Kacimi al-Hasani al-Sharif for his intellectual generosity, personal sincerity, and warm hospitality. For access to images of manuscripts I thank M. Şükrü Hanioglu, the Süleymaniye Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale de Tunisie, the British Library, and the Widener Library of Harvard University.

Numerous individuals have given generously of their time and expertise to assist me in this project. They include Mark Cohen, Michael Cook, Matthew Gordon, Hannah-Lena Hagemann, Kamel Hameidia, Andras Hamori, Alaa Kacimi, Amr Osman, Thomas Madden, Johannes Pahlitzsch, Alex Petras, Marina Rustow, Adam Sabra, Samir Khalil Samir, S.J., Uri Shachar, Rebekah Sheldon, Damian Smith, Daniel Stolz, Mark Swanson, Alexander Treiger, Elizabeth Urban, Joseph Witztum, Oded Zinger, and my colleagues at Saint Louis University and at the Fall 2012 seminar of the Katz Center. Particular thanks are due Amr Osman, Torki Fahad Al Saud, Yossef Rapoport, and Christian Sahner for reading and critiquing large parts of the book, and especially to Andras Hamori, who gave exceedingly generous and learned assistance with the poetry. Project Editor Devin Stewart deserves special thanks, too, for providing steady guidance and correcting countless errors while reading multiple drafts of the manuscript. I am also grateful to the other editors of the Library of Arabic Literature for further corrections and for their vision and faith in this project. It is fitting, too, that I acknowledge my debt to the late Claude Cahen for his pioneering work, without which this volume could not have come to be.

I wish finally to extend warmest thanks to my family. My wife Aubrey has lent encouragement and support in countless ways, notably by critiquing a draft of the translation. My parents, too, extended moral support and frequent hospitality. The labor in these pages is dedicated to my grandmother, D.B.G., whose kindness, curiosity, and wit are a legacy to her family. I alone bear responsibility for the book’s shortcomings.

Luke Yarbrough