Abstract

This article analyzes the pre-modern Arab discourse on poverty and the poor. Based on a sample of widespread “classical” texts from the “belles-lettres” (adab) and the traditional religious canon, special interest is paid to the discourse on begging and beggars, as it is particularly revealing for our purpose. It turns out that the pre-modern Arab discourse on poverty and begging is highly ambivalent, but more or less marginalizing or valorizing depending on the social milieu (elite vs. “middle class” or “ʿāmma”) of the author(s) of a particular source text, and on whether the latter is moreover a “belles-lettres” or “religious” text.