Al-Muḥassin ibn
ʿAlī al-Tanūkhī (327–84/939–94) lived in Basra and Baghdad. As a judge and man of letters belonging to a family with many connections, he was well placed to record the literary trends of his day. Deliverance Follows Adversity is one of two anthologies he compiled.
Julia Bray became the Abdulaziz Saud AlBabtain Laudian Professor of Arabic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of St. John’s College in 2012, having previously taught at the universities of Manchester, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Paris 8-Vincennes—Saint-Denis. She writes on medieval to early modern Arabic literature, life-writing, and social history. She has contributed to the New Cambridge History of Islam (2010), to Essays in Arabic Literary Biography 1350-1850 (2009), and to cross-cultural studies such as Approaches to the Byzantine Family (2013) and edited Writing and Representation in Medieval Islam (2006). With Wen-chin Ouyang, she edits the monograph series Edinburgh Studies in Classical Arabic Literature. With Helen Blatherwick, she is editing a special issue of the journal Cultural History on the history of emotions in Arabic.
