Branches of the Goodly Tree contains fifteen articles in honor of Professor George Kanazi, from the Department of Arabic language and literature at the University of Haifa. The essays cover four branches of Arabic literature and language: classical poetry and prose; Arabic criticism; modern literature (theater, poetry and prose); and Arabic grammar and language including modern dialectology.
In the book, a wide range of issues is discussed:
– bacchic poetry in the Umayyad era;
– love narratives mainly from The Arabian Nights;
– Shi՟a literature;
– Ibn Tabataba's philosophical approach to criticism;
Saul Joseph's criticism and understanding of medieval Hebrew poetry in the light of medieval Arabic poetry;
– the influences of Ottoman and European music on the Arabic theater in the nineteenth century;
– the uses of language in the writings of Mayy Ziyada;
– Sufism in modern poetry mainly in the works of al-Bayyati, ՟Abd as-Sabbur, and Adunis;
– the image of the merchant in modern Arabic literature;
– grammatical and linguistic issues in the Arabic translation of the Pentateuch from Coptic;
– the influence of classical Arabic grammar on medieval Hebrew grammar; the rural dialects of Palestine;
– and the Palestinian dialect of Ashdod, and the dialect of the fishermen of Acre.