Praise, Power, and Patronage in the Middle East

Undergraduate / Graduate

When we encounter praise for the powerful, our first instinct is often to dismiss the entreaty as superficial or sycophantic. Yet, in the Islamicate Middle East, certain modes of praise have long had resonances that go beyond the binary of sincerity and flattery. This course asks instead what praise does by tracing its many textual and material lives across the literary and historical record of the Middle East. We will read in translation the poetic boasts of pre-Islamic Arabia and religious paeans of the prophet, explore the scientific and architectural achievements of empires from the Abbasids to the Ottomans, and reflect on global sporting events and arts infrastructure in today's Gulf economies. Whether we look out from the palaces of medieval Baghdad (vividly recreated in Assassin's Creed) or the spectator stands of Qatar's many World Cup stadiums, we will engage critically with moments of praise and connect them to the expectations and conventions of patronage. By interrogating the relations that motivate the economy of praise, we will examine the power of praise to shape local and global realities while observing where these ambitions come up against their limits.