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1While the initial purpose of this 13th issue of Arabian Humanities was to propose a random set of articles on the Arabian Peninsula, some themes end up imposing themselves through the proposals sent by our colleagues, generating a form of coherence. This issue clearly sets a specific emphasis on matters linked to narratives, knowledge and its transmission, be it through books, education, memory or genealogy. While not ignoring other societies, our current issue focuses much on Yemen showing how much, despite the war, new approaches and problematics can be developed, building or not on analysis from afar. The link the CEFAS maintains with researchers and intellectuals in Yemen is one that our academic community is seeking to preserve, if not develop. Their voices are more than ever necessary.
2Literature can become a useful entry to understand changes in a society, and analyze what (counter‑)narratives are emerging. Franck Mermier’s proposal to pick and translate recent texts written by Yemeni authors pursues the work once initiated by the late Houda Ayoub, whose passion for the Arabic language was only equaled by her love for Yemen. In the early 2000s, within the CEFAS and its Chroniques yéménites peer-reviewed journal, she, her students and professor Luc-Willy Deheuvels had translated a variety of authors, making their prose accessible beyond Arabic speakers. In collaboration with Ali al-Muqri, Franck Mermier presents here an anthology of fifteen texts by Yemeni authors, some of whom had already been translated by Houda Ayoub. Our journal takes pride in such continuity and loyalty.
3Knowledge and transmission are also analyzed in the other articles of this 13th issue. Muḥammad ‘Abd al-Raḥīm Jāzim focuses on the way the city of Ta‘iz has historically been structured by institutions of knowledge. Marcella Rubino revisits her fieldwork on bookbinders in Sanaa and Tarīm. Luca Nevola focuses on the way genealogy is central to understanding how, in a small village near Sanaa, the Huthi movement managed to mobilize. The figure of ‘Abd Allāh al-Baraddūnī and his capacity to develop a new, bottom-up, historical narrative of the 1962 revolution in Yemen are explored by Noura Kamal. Finally, Leon Goldsmith analyses the emergence of a department of political science at Sultan Qaboos University in Oman, trying to understand the implications of social sciences on narratives and practices of future decision makers. Book reviews also delve into similar topics, reinforcing the somewhat surprising coherence of our Varia issue.
4The context of the Covid-19 pandemic justifies, in our view, the addition of six short texts. These serve as a testimony of the way in which, beyond the human catastrophes that the crisis entails, the pandemic has affected the practices of researchers in the Arabian Peninsula. These notes are likely to the first steps of a new field of research that social scientists will not fail to explore in the years to come and that Arabian Humanities will certainly echo.
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Laurent Bonnefoy et Abbès Zouache, « Editorial », Arabian Humanities [En ligne], 13 | 2020, mis en ligne le 03 juillet 2020, consulté le 03 décembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cy/5907 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/cy.5907
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