Arabic Literature

B

Adab and Maqama

Among medieval Arabic prose works, the adab tradition holds pride of place. This genre combined anecdotal prose with other elements, including Qur'anic verses, hadith, and poetry. Adab works were designed to be both educational and entertaining. A major subject in adab collections was literary character types, such as misers, uninvited guests, intelligent people, and madmen. Adab encyclopedias could cover an enormous range of topics and often filled many volumes. The organization of these multivolume works reflected the medieval Muslim social order, beginning with rulers and ending with women and the socially marginal.

The leading lights of medieval adab include al-Jahiz, Ibn Qutayba, and Ibn Abd Rabbihi. Al-Jahiz, a 9th-century scholar of wide-ranging knowledge, is considered the greatest stylist of Arabic prose and of the adab genre. His Kitab al-Bukhala’ (Book of Misers), a collection of entertaining stories that feature greedy characters, is a classic. Stories from it still appear in children's magazines from Syria to North Africa.

A literary cousin of the adab tradition was the maqama (plural maqamat), also an original medieval Arabic literary form. Normally translated as 'assemblies,' the maqamat are supposedly the invention of 10th-century writer Badi' al-Zaman al-Hamadhani. His assemblies are literary gems written in rhymed prose but including poetry. The hero of the maqama is a clever rogue whose exploits are presented by a narrator whose path keeps crossing that of the rogue hero. Eloquence and verbal mastery are among the chief tools of the rogue’s trade, as he attempts to outwit his listeners and gain from them. Al-Hariri, who died in the 12th century, also wrote in this genre, though his creations are more rhetorically fanciful than earlier maqamat. Some scholars have linked the classical Arabic maqama to the later Spanish picaresque novel.

C

Other Medieval Genres

The work of medieval Arabic literature best known today is Alf layla wa-layla (translated as The Thousand and One Nights or Arabian Nights). Now a literary classic throughout the world, The Thousand and One Nights did not enjoy the esteem of medieval Arabic literary scholars, who favored the stylistically more challenging and erudite adab works and maqamat. Yet the Nights, like the maqamat, was closely related to adab literature. The Nights is composed of enframed stories—that is, stories told within a story. The Nights was not composed all at once. It contains layers added at different times and stories that came from different parts of the Islamic world and from India. Hence, no single definitive text of the Nights exists, and some versions include tales not found in other versions. The stories of the Nights tell of sexuality in its various forms, murder, adventure, and fantasy—a winning formula to this day.

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Courtly love and sensual love are themes of other works as well. In Andalucía (southern Spain), 11th-century scholar Ibn Hazm wrote Tawq al-hamama (The Dove’s Neckring), describing love in its various manifestations. Part of the appeal of Ibn Hazm’s work lies in its autobiographical passages.

Medieval Arabic autobiography, however, receives its fullest treatment in al-Munqidh min al-Dalal (12th century; The Rescuer from Error), the spiritual autobiography of al-Ghazali, who died in the early years of the 12th century. Another classic in the medieval autobiographical genre is the Kitab al-I'tibar (A Syrian Arab Gentleman at the Time of the Crusades) by the great 12th-century Syrian warrior-writer, Usama ibn Munqidh. In this work, East meets West as the writer speaks about the Crusaders and describes how Arabs of the period felt about European Christian invaders (see Crusades).

But whether the reader enters the world of The Thousand and One Nights, the maqamat, adab, or any other medieval Arabic prose genre, one textual element is almost always present: poetry. It seems to readers today that almost every participant in the medieval Arab-Islamic cultural sphere composed poetry. Of course, not everyone who wrote a poem wrote a great poem. Nevertheless, there was a formalized system of meter, codified in the 8th century by al-Khalil. The ode, or qasida, survived through centuries of Arab history, though its nasib (erotic prologue) evolved and was made to fit new literary needs.

Among the most famous medieval Arabic poets were the innovator Abu Tammam and the conservative al-Buhturi, both of the 9th century. The fame of these two is perhaps only overshadowed by that of the 10th-century poet al-Mutannabī, the macho poet of medieval Arabic literature. Yet not all poets felt the urge to follow in the same literary footsteps. Abu Nuwas, who died in the early 9th century, had no qualms about mocking the erotic prologue of the qasida by addressing the first verses of one of his famous poems to a tavern. Other important poets of the medieval period were active in Andalucía, including Ibn Zaydun in the 11th century and Ibn Khafaja in the 12th. The complex and hybrid world of Islamic Spain also gave birth to a poetic form, the muwashshahat, which mixed Arabic and local linguistic elements. These poems could be set to music and can be heard even today in the Arab world.

The majority of medieval Islamic scholars and intellectuals—whose lives are documented in biographical collections known as tabaqat—were familiar with an astonishingly diverse range of topics. One example of a multitalented individual is 12th-century Andalusian physician and philosopher Ibn Tufayl. He wrote an allegory titled Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Alive Son of Awake) about a child who grows up alone on a desert island and discovers truth purely through the use of reason. This allegory transcends its own time and continues to resurface in children's literature.

Scholars have long held that Arabic culture declined in the 15th and 16th centuries. Yet this time can also be viewed as a shift in the types of textual creation rather than as a decline. Prose had already flourished in a different guise in the 14th century. Ibn Battūtah of North Africa, for example, recounted his travels and adventures throughout the Islamic world. The 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun, also from North Africa, produced one of the most significant works on the philosophy of history. This work, the Muqaddamah, is the introductory volume to his monumental Kitab al-Ibar (Universal History). Works written by the 15th-century scholar Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti range from the theological to the literary and include an anthology of poetry by women. Other writers of the late medieval period whose names are familiar to 20th-century Arab readers include the 17th-century satirist al-Shirbini and the 18th-century mystical writer al-Nabulusi, whose book of dream interpretation still delights readers.

IV

Modern Arabic Literature

In 1798 French general Napoleon Bonaparte and his army invaded Egypt. This event heralded a new phase in Arabic literature. Western imperialism brought with it new genres: the novel and the short story. More important, the subsequent emergence of independent countries in the Middle East and North Africa meant that a multiplicity of viewpoints populated the Arabic literary scene.

The literary scene began to come alive again in the 19th century, although many writers continued to employ older genres. Lebanon’s Nasif al-Yaziji, for example, composed maqamat in imitation of the medieval form. These maqamat served as a model for literary experiments by early 20th-century prose writers such as Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, Ahmad Shawqi, and Hafiz Ibrahim of Egypt. Shawqi and Ibrahim are also famous for their neoclassical odes.

Arabic poets eventually cut loose from their classical moorings and looked to more modern forms, such as free verse—poetry with no fixed rhyme or meter. Iraqi female poet Nazik al-Mala'ika is most closely associated with the inception of the free-verse movement in the 1940s and 1950s. Modern Arabic poetry is a complex genre, including prose poems and forms that are experimental in varying degrees. Poets such as Salah Abd al-Sabbur of Egypt, Adonis of Syria, and Mahmud Darwish of Palestine have helped ensure that poetry remains an integral and living part of modern Arabic literature.

The prose tradition as well underwent fundamental transformations in the modern period. Drama developed as a literary form in its own right, rather than a form derived from the maqama. The writer most often associated with contemporary Arabic theater is Tawfiq al-Hakim of Egypt. In his play Shahrazad (1934; translated 1981), he recast the famous frame story of The Thousand and One Nights.

Autobiography also flourished anew in the 20th century. The genre received a major stimulus from the three-volume al-Ayyam (The Days) by Egyptian social reformer and intellectual, Taha Husayn. Published across four decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, this passionate autobiography is a monument of modern Arabic prose and to the conquest of a handicap—the author’s blindness. Taha Husayn’s account details a dramatic life in both Europe and the Middle East. The autobiography is read by school children in countries from Sudan to Syria and has been the subject of television and motion-picture productions.

The first Arabic novel is generally considered to be Zaynab (1913; Zainab, 1989), by Egyptian writer Muhammad Husayn Haykal. The novel, along with the short story, continued to grow in importance throughout the 20th century. Egypt’s Naguib Mahfouz, one of the best-known Arabic novelists of the 20th century, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1988. His al-Thulathiyya (The Cairo Trilogy), which chronicles the travails of an Egyptian family, won him critical acclaim and, according to some, was the major contribution to his winning the Nobel Prize. The trilogy is composed of Bayna al-Qasrayn (1956; Palace Walk, 1990), Qasr al-Shawq (1956; Palace of Desire, 1991), and al-Sukkariyah (1957, Sugar Street, 1992). Yūsuf Idrīs of Egypt has been the acknowledged master of the Arabic short story, with his powerful narratives on sexuality and male-female roles.

Palestinian writer Emile Habiby is best known for his novel al-Waqa'i' al-Ghariba fi-Ikhtifa' Sa'id Abi al-Nahs al-Mutasha'il (1974; The Secret Life of Saeed, the Ill-Fated Pessoptimist, 1982). He uses humor and irony to describe the plight of Palestinians living in Israel.

Habiby is one of a group of Arabic writers who have moved away from realism as a literary mode. Many of them have drawn upon centuries-old literary traditions for material. A prominent example is the novel al-Zayni Barakat (1974; translated 1988), by Jamal al-Ghitani, which employs 15th- and 16th-century texts to create a postmodern narrative. The writer Yusuf al-Qa'id is another important figure. His three-volume Shakawa al-Misri al-Fasih (The Complaints of the Eloquent Egyptian, 1981-1985) demonstrates that the textual tradition a writer mines can hark back a few thousand years, to Egypt’s past under the pharaohs.

Women living in many countries have become a strong presence in modern Arabic literature. Lebanese writer Hanan al-Shaykh’s powerful narratives about the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990) include Hikayat Zahra (1980; The Story of Zahra, 1986). Palestinian Fadwa Tuqan is known for her poetry and autobiography, notably Rihla Sa'ba, Rihla Jabaliyya (1985; A Mountainous Journey: An Autobiography, 1990). Perhaps the most vocal and most prominent woman writer from the Arab world today is feminist physician Nawal El Saadawi, whose uncompromising and powerful prose has made her as many enemies as admirers. Her prison memoirs, Mudhakkirati fi Sijn al-Nisa' (1984; Memoirs from the Women's Prison, 1986), are in many ways a testimony to the interplay of politics and literature in modern Arabic letters.

V

Contemporary Arabic Literature

On the fast-changing contemporary scene, older literary figures such as Jamal al-Ghitani and Yusuf al-Qa'id remain major players. Such events as the migration of teachers and workers to oil-rich states on the Persian Gulf have given rise to more adventurous texts dealing with the plight of the intellectual in a type of exile. An eloquent example is the novel Barari al-Humma (1985; Prairies of Fever, 1993) by Palestinian writer Ibrahim Nasr Allah. Today, Arab writers who live in exile—because of political instability, repression, or other difficulties in their homeland—continue to write works in Arabic that circulate both in the Arab world and in Arabic-speaking communities outside the Middle East and North Africa.

As renewed Islamic religious fervor spreads across the Arab world, Arabic literature has begun yet another process of adaptation. Religious-minded writers now compete with the more secular intellectuals in such genres as poetry, the novel, and the short story. At the same time, both religious and secular writers draw on much of the same premodern Arabic literary tradition. Novels by physician and born-again Muslim Mustafa Mahmud are best-sellers. The prison memoirs of female Muslim activist Zaynab al-Ghazali, Ayyam min hayati (Days from My Life, 1977), have had many printings.

The vitality of the Arabic literary tradition becomes visible as one walks the streets of Middle Eastern and North African capitals and gazes in bookshop windows. At the same time, bookstores of London, Paris, and other world capitals with large Arab populations offer a similar experience. This diversity underscores the long and powerful history of Arabic literature and demonstrates its continued role in world culture.

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