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Akbar’s Chamber offers a non-political, non-sectarian and non-partisan space for exploring the past and present of Islam. It has no political or theological bias other than a commitment to the Socratic method (which is to say that questions lead us to understanding) and the empirical record (which is to say the evidence of the world around us). By these methods, Akbar’s Chamber is devoted to enriching public awareness of Islam and Muslims both past and present. The podcast aims to improve understanding of Islam in all its variety, in all regions of the world, by inviting experts to share their specialist knowledge in terms that we can all understand.
Episodes
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
Tuesday Feb 28, 2023
The story of Joseph is one of the greatest sagas in world history. A youth of stunning beauty, beloved of his father but envied by his brothers, who is sold into slavery, before resisting the seductions of his owner’s wife and rising up to be governor of Egypt after interpreting Pharoah’s dreams. It is a story that has everything: jealousy and love, ambition and humility, edification and adventure. Unsurprisingly, from its scriptural foundations in the Book of Genesis and the Quranic chapter Yusuf (‘Joseph’), the saga has been retold, and reinterpreted, countless times, whether in the influential medieval Persian version of the poet Jami or the masterly modern retelling of the novelist Thomas Mann. In this episode, though, we focus on African versions of the life of Joseph as recounted by generations of Swahili Muslims through utendi poems and qissa tales. Working our way from medieval manuscripts and modern printed texts to more recent online tellings, we hear how East African Muslims have been both entertained and elevated by the memory of the prophet Yusuf. Nile Green talks to Annachiara Raia, author of Rewriting Yusuf: A Philological and Intertextual Study of a Swahili Islamic Manuscript Poem (Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 2020).
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