November 10, 2025

If on Washington Square @ Sullivan Street

A poster for the launch of the Book of Rain by Abu Zayd al-Ansari, translated by David Larsen, featuring the book's cover and a color headshot of the translator, with the following title and description: 'Pre-Modern Islamicate World Lecture Series: Weather History and Sciences of Language in the Book of Rain. The Book of Rain (Kitāb al-Maṭar) originated in 9th-century Basra as a lexicographic lecture to students by Abu Zayd al-Ansari. But it is a catalog of the precipitation and groundwaters necessary for human survival in the Arabian Peninsula. Multiple disciplinary readings are possible and necessary in an age of climate crisis. David Larsen will discuss the text's intellectual history and its defiance of modern genre categories, by way of launching his new translation of The Book of Rain from Wave Books. David Larsen is a scholar and translator of premodern Arabic literature, and a faculty member of NYU Liberal Studies. His translation of Ibn Khalawayh's Names of the Lion received the 2018 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. A former research fellow of the Library of Arabic Literature, he is at work on an edition and translation of the collected poetry of Jamil Buthaynah (d. 685 or 701 CE).'

This Wednesday 12 November
is the Book of Rain's noontime launch at NYU's
Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies.
RSVP to attend remotely or in person as you please

tr. by David Larsen at 10:00 AM  

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