English summary: Nine essays explore the ways in which individual Arabic and Persian authors between the ninth and seventeenth centuries (with examples drawn from the Abbasid to the Safavid dynasties) chose rulers and other political leaders as recipients for their writings, and instrumentalized or re-created literary traditions in order to establish an authority for themselves, satisfy their own conditions and aspirations, and meet the demands of their addressees. German description: Neun Essays uber individuelle arabische und persische Autoren innerhalb des 9. bis 17. Jahrhunderts (Abbasidische bis Safavidische Dynastie) an Herrscher oder fuhrende Personlichkeiten gerichtet untersuchen, wie eben diese Autoren Literaturtradition instrumentalisierten oder rekreierten um sich selbst Autoritat zu verschaffen, eigene Bedingungen und Bestrebungen zu erfullen sowie dem Empfanger zu genugen.
About the Author: Contributor Biography - English Beatrice Gruendler (Ph.D. Harvard University 1995) is Professor of Arabic in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Yale University. Her three areas of research over the years have been Arabic script, medieval Arabic poetry with its social context, and the integration of modern literary theory into the study of Near Eastern literatures. Besides numerous articles, her major publications include "The Development of the Arabic Scripts: From the Nabatean Era to the First Islamic Century," Harvard Semitic Studies 43 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993); "Medieval Arabic Praise Poetry: Ibn al-Rumi and the Patron's Redemption" (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); and, co-edited with Verena Klemm, "Understanding Near Eastern Literatures: A Spectrum of Interdisciplinary Approaches," Literaturen im Kontext: Arabisch - Persisch - Turkisch 1 (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000).Louise Marlow (Ph.D. Princeton University, 1987) is currently Professor of Religion and Director of Middle Eastern Studies at Wellesley College. Her research falls in the fields of medieval Islamic intellectual and literary history, and she is particularly concerned with the study of mirrors for princes written in Arabic and Persian. Her publications include "Hierarchy and Egalitarianism in Islamic Thought" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), and "Kings, Prophets and the Ulama' in Mediaeval Islamic Advice Literature," Studia Islamica 81 (1995), 101-20. She is currently engaged in a study of literary works produced in Khurasan during the tenth and eleventh centuries in Arabic and Persian, and she is preparing a translation of the NasiHat al-muluk of Pseudo-Mawardi.