Refinement and the Abbasid Court

In pre-modern Arabic culture, zarf indicates a set of character traits and behaviours which represent the epitome of refinement. It has been compared to the Greek concept of asteiotes and, like the latter, it is the expression of an urban, literate society. In fact, largely due to the existence of a tenth-century manual, detailing not only moral qualities but also very granular norms of dress and behaviour, twentieth-century scholarship has described those who practice ẓarf as a social group without much qualification—in the past few years, the discussion has become more sophisticated. This paper investigates, in a comparative perspective with similar concepts in other cultures, how the concept of zarf intersects with, and is an expression of, court culture.