Verses and Sayings. Impetus and Range of Scholarly and Popularising Discourses in the Arabic World

The project examines micro-texts in poetry and gnomic texts in Arabic and related traditions such as Syriac and Greek, i.e. single verses and maxims that entered popular and scholarly discourses over the course of several centuries and across various language barriers. The circulation of these miniscule text elements and the condensations they underwent in their respective literary or scientific contexts allows us to examine the ‘momenta’ of a reciprocal transfer of knowledge. The analysis of the microstructures of these dynamic processes of appropriation and transmission and the recontextualisations the micro-texts underwent provide a model that will make it possible to trace the interaction of the multiple factors and impulses of epistemic change in other contexts, too.