Probably the spookiest story in the Arabian Nights, the “City of Copper” (madīnat al-nuḥās) tells of a caravan lost in the desert and its serendipitous discovery of a forgotten city of the dead. The story has a long, continuous history in Arabic, Persian, Armenian, and—crucial for these lectures—in Tamil: the Tamil version by Imām al-‘Arūs (c. 1850), first recorded in the Arabic script, may well be the first appearance of modern literary prose in that language. Shulman will explore the meanings of this story in its various tellings, including Laxe’s film. Buried in the City of Copper lie, so it seems, the secret codes and rhythms of time.
David Shulman was born in Iowa and studied at the Hebrew University, the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and various sites in India. Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University, he specializes in the languages and cultural history of southern India with special emphasis on Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Sanskrit. Among his publications are More than Real: A History of the Imagination in South India (2012) and Tamil: A Biography (2016). He is an activist in Ta‘ayush, one of the most persistent of the Israeli-Palestinian peace and human-rights groups, and the author of a new book on this subject: Freedom and Despair: Notes from the South Hebron Hills (2018). He is a passionate devotee of Carnatic and Hindustani music.