Arabic literature
Encyclopedia
Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose
and poetry
, by writers in the Arabic language
. The Arabic word used for literature is adab
which is derived from a meaning of etiquette
, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Arabic literature emerged in the 6th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an
, widely regarded as the finest piece of literature work in the Arabic language
, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture
and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age
, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world achieving increasing success.
is known to Muslim
s as Jahiliyyah
or period of ignorance. Whilst this ignorance refers mainly to religious ignorance, there is little literature before this time, although significant oral tradition
is postulated. Tales like those about Sinbad
and Antar bin Shaddad were probably current, but were recorded later. The final decades of the 6th century, however, begin to show the flowering of a lively written tradition. This tradition was captured over two centuries later with two important compilations of the Mu'allaqat
and the Mufaddaliyat
.
The Qur'an
had a significant influence on the Arab language. The language used in the Qur'an is called classical Arabic
and while modern Arabic is very similar, the classical is still the style to be admired. Not only is the Qur'an the first work of any significant length written in the language it also has a far more complicated structure than the earlier literary works with its 114 sura
s (chapters) which contain 6,236 ayat (verses). It contains injunction
s, narrative
s, homilies
, parable
s, direct addresses from God, instructions and even comments on itself on how it will be received and understood. It is also, paradoxically, admired for its layers of metaphor as well as its clarity, a feature it mentions itself in sura 16:103.
Although it contains elements of both prose and poetry, and therefore is closest to Saj
or rhymed prose
, the Qur'an is regarded as entirely apart from these classifications. The text is believed to be divine revelation and is seen by some Muslims as being eternal or 'uncreated'. This leads to the doctrine of i'jaz or inimitability of the Qur'an which implies that nobody can copy the work's style.
This doctrine of i'jaz possibly had a slight limiting effect on Arabic literature; proscribing exactly what could be written. The Qur'an itself criticises poets in the 26th sura, actually called Ash-Shu'ara or The Poets:
This may have exerted dominance over the pre-Islamic poets of the 6th century whose popularity may have vied with the Qur'an amongst the people. There were a marked lack of significant poets until the 8th century. One notable exception was Hassan ibn Thabit
who wrote poems in praise of Muhammad
and was known as the "prophet's poet". Just as the Bible
has held an important place in the literature of other languages, The Qur'an is important to Arabic. It is the source of many ideas, allusions and quotes and its moral message informs many works.
Aside from the Qur'an the hadith
or tradition of what Muhammed is supposed to have said and done are important literature. The entire body of these acts and words are called sunnah
or way and the ones regarded as sahih or genuine of them are collected into hadith. Some of the most significant collections of hadith include those by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
and Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari.
The other important genre of work in Qur'anic study is the tafsir
or commentaries
Arab writings relating to religion also includes many sermon
s and devotional pieces as well as the sayings of Ali
which were collected in the 10th century as Nahj al-Balaghah or The Peak of Eloquence.
actually meeting Muhammed and converting to Islam—and their writings illuminated the times when these event occurred. Muhammad also inspired the first Arabic biographies
, known as al-sirah al-nabawiyyah; the earliest was by Wahb ibn Munabbih
, but Muhammad ibn Ishaq wrote the best known. Whilst covering the life of the prophet they also told of the battles and events of early Islam and have numerous digressions on older biblical traditions.
Some of the earliest work studying the Arabic language was started in the name of Islam. Tradition has it that the caliph Ali
, after reading a copy of Qur'an with errors in it, asked Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali
to write a work codifying Arabic grammar
. Khalil ibn Ahmad
would later write Kitab al-Ayn, the first dictionary of Arabic, along with works on prosody
and music
, and his Persian
pupil Sibawayh
would produce the most respected work of Arabic grammar known simply as al-Kitab or The Book.
Other caliphs exerted their influence on Arabic with 'Abd al-Malik making it the official language for administration of the new empire, and al-Ma'mun
setting up the Bayt al-Hikma or House of Wisdom
in Baghdad
for research and translations. Basrah and Kufah
were two other important seats of learning in the early Arab world, between which there was a strong rivalry.
The institutions set up mainly to investigate more fully the Islamic religion were invaluable in studying many other subjects. Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
was instrumental in enriching the literature by instructing scholars to translate works into Arabic. The first was probably Aristotle
's correspondence with Alexander the Great translated by Salm Abu al-'Ala'. From the east, and in a very different literary genre, the Persian
scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa
translated the animal fable
s of the Panchatantra
. These translations would keep alive scholarship and learning, particularly that of ancient Greece
, during the Dark Ages in Europe and the works would often be first re-introduced to Europe from the Arabic versions.
written by tata a poaltis
, a Baghdad
i bookseller, compiled a crucial work in the study of Arabic literature. Kitab al-Fihrist is a catalogue of all books available for sale in Baghdad and it gives a fascinating overview of the state of the literature at that time.
One of the most common forms of literature during the Abbasid
period was the compilation. These were collections of facts, ideas, instructive stories and poems on a single topic and covers subjects as diverse as house and garden, women, gate-crashers, blind people, envy, animals and misers. These last three compilations were written by al-Jahiz
the acknowledged master of the form. These collections were important for any nadim, a companion to a ruler or noble whose role was often involved regaling the ruler with stories and information to entertain or advise.
A type of work closely allied to the collection was the manual in which writers like ibn Qutaybah
offered instruction in subjects like etiquette, how to rule, how to be a bureaucrat and even how to write. Ibn Qutaybah
also wrote one of the earliest histories of the Arabs, drawing together biblical stories, Arabic folk tales and more historical events.
The subject of sex was frequently investigated in Arabic literature. The ghazal
or love poem had a long history being at times tender and chaste and at other times rather explicit. In the Sufi tradition the love poem would take on a wider, mystical and religious importance. Sex manuals were also written such as The Perfumed Garden
, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah
or The Dove's Neckring by ibn Hazm
and Nuzhat al-albab fi-ma la yujad fi kitab or Delight of Hearts Concerning What will Never Be Found in a Book by Ahmad al-Tifashi
. Countering such works are one like Rawdat al-muhibbin wa-nuzhat al-mushtaqin or Meadow of Lovers and Diversion of the Infatuated by ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah who advises on how to separate love and lust and avoid sin.
of Muhammad, the first major biographer to weigh character rather than just producing a hymn of praise was the Persian
scholar al-Baladhuri with his Kitab ansab al-ashraf or Book of the Genealogies of the Noble, a collection of biographies. Another important biographical dictionary was begun by ibn Khallikan
and expanded by al-Safadi and one of the first significant autobiographies
was Kitab al-I'tibar
which told of Usamah ibn Munqidh
and his experiences in fighting in the Crusades. This time period saw the emergence of the genre of tabaqat (biographical dictionaries or biographical compendia).
Ibn Khurdadhbih, apparently an official in the postal service
wrote one of the first travel book
s and the form remained a popular one in Arabic literature with books by ibn Hawqal
, ibn Fadlan, al-Istakhri, al-Muqaddasi
, al-Idrisi and most famously the travels of ibn Battutah. These give a fascinating view of the many cultures of the wider Islamic world and also offer Muslim
perspectives on the non-Muslim peoples on the edges of the empire. They also indicated just how great a trading power the Muslim peoples had become. These were often sprawling accounts that included details of both geography
and history
.
Some writers concentrated solely on history like al-Ya'qubi and al-Tabari
, whilst others focused on a small portion of history such as ibn al-Azraq
, with a history of Mecca
, and ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
, writing a history of Baghdad
. The historian regarded as the greatest of all Arabic historians though is ibn Khaldun
whose history Muqaddimah
focuses on society and is a founding text in sociology
and economics
.
, Arabic diaries
were first being written from before the 10th century, though the medieval diary which most resembles the modern diary was that of Ibn Banna in the 11th century. His diary was the earliest to be arranged in order of date (ta'rikh in Arabic), very much like modern diaries.
in Arabic literature often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis
have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of Islamic literature
.
Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic poetry
and literature from the 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz
in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan, and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz
in his Kitab al-Badi.
In the Arab world
, there was a great distinction between al-fusha (quality language) and al-ammiyyah (language of the common people). Not many writers would write works in this al-ammiyyah or common language and it was felt that literature had to be improving, educational and with purpose rather than just entertainment. This did not stop the common role of the hakawati or story-teller who would retell the entertaining parts of more educational works or one of the many Arabic fable
s or folk-tales, which were often not written down in many cases. Nevertheless, some of the earliest novel
s, including the first philosophical novel
s, were written by Arabic authors.
. A good example of the lack of popular Arabic prose fiction is that the stories of Aladdin
and Ali Baba
, usually regarded as part of the Tales from One Thousand and One Nights, were not actually part of the Tales. They were first included in French
translation of the Tales by Antoine Galland
who heard them being told by a traditional storyteller and only existed in incomplete Arabic manuscripts before that. The other great character from Arabic literature Sinbad
is from the Tales.
The One Thousand and One Nights is usually placed in the genre of Arabic epic literature
along with several other works. They are usually, like the Tales, collections of short stories or episodes strung together into a long tale. The extant versions were mostly written down relatively late on, after the 14th century, although many were undoubtedly collected earlier and many of the original stories are probably pre-Islamic. Types of stories in these collections include animal fables, proverb
s, stories of jihad
or propagation of the faith, humorous tales, moral tales, tales about the wily con-man Ali Zaybaq and tales about the prankster Juha.
Dante Alighieri
's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature
, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology
: the Hadith
and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad
's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi
.
not only straddles the divide between prose
and poetry
, being instead a form of rhymed prose
, it is also part way between fiction and non-fiction. Over a series of short narratives, which are fictionalised versions of real life situations, different ideas are contemplated. A good example of this is a maqama on musk, which purports to compare the feature of different perfumes but is in fact a work of political satire comparing several competing rulers. Maqama also makes use of the doctrine of badi
or deliberately adding complexity to display the writer's dexterity with language. Al-Hamadhani is regarded as the originator of the maqama and his work was taken up by Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri
with one of al-Hariri's maqama a study of al-Hamadhani own work. Maqama was an incredibly popular form of Arabic literature, being one of the few forms which continued to be written during the decline of Arabic in the 17th and 18th century.
is Layla and Majnun
, dating back to the Umayyad
era in the 7th century. It is a tragic
story of undying love
much like the later Romeo and Juliet
, which was itself said to have been inspired by a Latin
version of Layla and Majnun to an extent. Layla and Majnun is considered part of the platonic Love
(Arabic: حب عذري) genre, so-called because the couple never marry or consummate their relationship, that is prominent in Arabic literature, though the literary motif is found throughout the world. Other famous Virgin Love stories include "Qays and Lubna", "Kuthair and Azza", "Marwa and Al Majnoun Al Faransi
" and "Antara and Abla
".
The 10th century Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
features a fictional anecdote
of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride
. The story is used as a gnostic parable of the soul's pre-existence
and return from its terrestrial sojourn".
Another medieval Arabic love story was Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
(The Story of Bayad and Riyad), a 13th-century Arabic love story. The main characters of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from Damascus
, and Riyad, a well educated girl in the court of an unnamed Hajib
(vizier or minister) of 'Iraq which is referred to as the lady. The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arab presence in Spain.
Many of the tales in the One Thousand and One Nights are also love stories or involve romantic love as a central theme. This includes the frame story
of Scheherazade
herself, and many of the stories she narrates, including "Aladdin
", "The Ebony Horse", "The Three Apples", "Tale of Tàj al-Mulúk and the Princess Dunyà: The Lover and the Loved", "Adi bin Zayd and the Princess Hind", "Di'ibil al-Khuza'i With the Lady and Muslim bin al-Walid", "The Three Unfortunate Lovers", and others.
There were several elements of courtly love
which were developed in Arabic literature, namely the notions of "love for love's sake" and "exaltation of the beloved lady" which have been traced back to Arabic literature of the 9th and 10th centuries. The notion of the "ennobling power" of love was developed in the early 11th century by the Persian psychologist and philosopher
, Ibn Sina
(known as "Avicenna" in Europe), in his Arabic treatise Risala fi'l-Ishq (Treatise on Love). The final element of courtly love, the concept of "love as desire never to be fulfilled", was also at times implicit in Arabic poetry
.
murder mystery
was "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade
in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris
river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid
, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier
, Ja'far ibn Yahya
, to solve the crime and find the murdererer within three days, or be executed if he fails his assignment. Suspense
is generated through multiple plot twist
s that occur as the story progesses. This may thus be considered an archetype for detective fiction
.
, the genre of satirical
poetry was known as hija. Satire was introduced into prose literature by the Afro-Arab
author Al-Jahiz
in the 9th century. While dealing with serious topics in what are now known as anthropology
, sociology and psychology, he introduced a satirical approach, "based on the premise that, however serious the subject under review, it could be made more interesting and thus achieve greater effect, if only one leavened the lump of solemnity by the insertion of a few amusing anecdotes or by the throwing out of some witty or paradoxical observations. He was well aware that, in treating of new themes in his prose works, he would have to employ a vocabulary of a nature more familiar in hija, satirical poetry." For example, in one of his zoological
works, he satirized the preference for longer human penis size
, writing: "If the length of the penis were a sign of honor, then the mule
would belong to the (honorable tribe of) Quraysh". Another satirical story based on this preference was an Arabian Nights tale called "Ali with the Large Member".
In the 10th century, the writer Tha'alibi
recorded satirical poetry written by the poets As-Salami and Abu Dulaf, with As-Salami praising Abu Dulaf's wide breadth of knowledge
and then mocking his ability in all these subjects, and with Abu Dulaf responding back and satirizing As-Salami in return. An example of Arabic political satire
included another 10th century poet Jarir satirizing Farazdaq as "a transgressor of the Sharia
" and later Arabic poets in turn using the term "Farazdaq-like" as a form of political satire.
The terms "comedy
" and "satire" became synonymous after Aristotle
's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world
, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers
, such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi
, Avicenna
, and Averroes
. Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic
themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension", and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or troublous beginnings and happy endings, associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term "comedy" thus gained a new semantic meaning in Medieval literature
.
theatre and passion play
s were popular in the medieval Islamic world
, live theatre
and drama
has only been a visible part of Arabic literature in the modern era. There may have been a much longer theatrical tradition but it was probably not regarded as legitimate literature and mostly went unrecorded. There is an ancient tradition of public performance amongst Shi'i Muslims of a play depicting the life and death of al-Husayn at the battle of Karbala
in 680 CE. There are also several plays composed by Shams al-din Muhammad ibn Daniyal in the 13th century when he mentions that older plays are getting stale and offers his new works as fresh material.
The most popular forms of theater in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow play
s and marionette
productions) and live passion play
s known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history
. In particular, Shia Islamic plays
revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali
's sons Hasan ibn Ali
and Husayn ibn Ali
. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab
literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theater.
The Moors
had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele
and William Shakespeare
. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele's The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
, Titus Andronicus
and Othello
, which featured a Moorish Othello
as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegation
s from Morocco
to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century.
, Ibn Tufail
(Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis, were pioneers of the philosophical novel
as they wrote the earliest novel
s dealing with philosophical fiction
. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel Philosophus Autodidactus
as a response to al-Ghazali
's The Incoherence of the Philosophers
. This was followed by Ibn al-Nafis who wrote a fictional narrative Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail's Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonist
s (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic
individuals spontaneously generated
in a cave
and living in seclusion on a desert island
, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone on the desert island for most of the story in Philosophus Autodidactus (until he meets a castaway
named Absal), the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in Theologus Autodidactus (when castaways take him back to civilization with them), developing into the earliest known coming of age
plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction
novel.
Ibn al-Nafis described his book Theologus Autodidactus as a defense of "the system of Islam and the Muslims' doctrines on the missions of Prophets, the religious laws, the resurrection of the body, and the transitoriness of the world." He presents rational arguments for bodily resurrection
and the immortality
of the human soul, using both demonstrative reasoning and material from the hadith corpus to prove his case. Later Islamic scholars viewed this work as a response to the metaphysical
claim of Avicenna and Ibn Tufail that bodily resurrection cannot be proven through reason, a view that was earlier criticized by al-Ghazali. Ibn al-Nafis' work was later translated into Latin and English as Theologus Autodidactus in the early 20th century.
A Latin
translation of Ibn Tufail's work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke
the Younger. The first English translation by Simon Ockley
was published in 1708, and German
and Dutch
translations were also published at the time. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe
to write Robinson Crusoe
, which also featured a desert island narrative and was regarded as the first novel in English
. Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle
, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist, in the late 17th century. The story also anticipated Rousseau's Émile
in some ways, and is also similar to the later story of Mowgli
in Rudyard Kipling
's The Jungle Book
as well the character of Tarzan
, in that a baby is abandoned in a deserted tropical island where he is taken care of and fed by a mother wolf. Other European writers influenced by Philosophus Autodidactus include John Locke
, Gottfried Leibniz
, Melchisédech Thévenot
, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith
, Robert Barclay
, the Quakers
, and Samuel Hartlib
.
as Theologus Autodidactus, written by the Arab
ian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), is the earliest known science fiction
novel. While also being an early desert island
story and coming of age
story, the novel deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation
, futurology
, apocalyptic themes
, the end of the world and doomsday
, resurrection
and the afterlife
. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using his own extensive scientific knowledge in anatomy, biology, physiology, astronomy, cosmology and geology. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain Islam
ic religious teachings in terms of science
and philosophy
. For example, it was through this novel that Ibn al-Nafis introduces his scientific theory of metabolism
, and he makes references to his own scientific discovery of the pulmonary circulation
in order to explain bodily resurrection. The novel was later translated into English as Theologus Autodidactus in the early 20th century.
A number of stories within
the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist
Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality
leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden
and to Jahannam
, and travel across the cosmos
to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic
science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of jinns
, mermaid
s, talking serpents
, talking tree
s, and other forms of life. In another Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine
society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism
where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological
expedition across the Sahara
to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon
once used to trap a jinn
, and, along the way, encounter a mummified
queen, petrified
inhabitants, life-like humanoid robot
s and automata
, seductive marionette
s dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot
who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman
. "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.
Other examples of early Arabic proto-science fiction include Al-Farabi
's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopia
n society, Al-Qazwini
's futuristic tale of Awaj bin Anfaq about a man who travelled to Earth from a distant planet, and elements such as the flying carpet.
is the name of the conflict between the Arabs and Non-Arabs. Although producing heated debate amongst scholars and varying styles of literature, this was not a damaging conflict and had more to do with forging a single Islamic cultural identity. Bashshar ibn Burd, of Persian heritage, summed up his own stance in a few lines of poetry:
The cultural heritage of the desert dwelling Arabs continued to show its influence even though many scholars and writers were living in the large Arab cities. When Khalil ibn Ahmad
enumerated the parts of poetry he called the line of verse a bayt or tent and sabah or tent-rope for a foot. Even during the 20th century this nostalgia for the simple desert life would appear or at least be consciously revived.
A slow resurgence of the Persian language
and a re-location of the government and main seat of learning to Baghdad
, reduced the production of Arabic literature. Many Arabic themes and styles were taken up in Persian with Omar Khayyam
, Attar and Rumi all clearly influenced by the earlier work. The Arabic language still initially retained its importance in politics and administration, although the rise of the Ottoman Empire
confined it solely to religion. Alongside Persian
, the many variants of the Turkic languages
would dominate the literature of the Arab region until the 20th century. Nevertheless, some Arabic influences remained visible.
(النهضة), or Renaissance. This resurgence of writing in Arabic was confined mainly to Egypt
and Lebanon
until the 20th century when it spread to other countries in the region. This Renaissance was not only felt within the Arab world but also beyond with a great interest in the translating of Arabic works into European languages. Although the use of the Arabic language was revived, particularly in poetry, many of the tropes of the previous literature which served to make it so ornate and complicated were dropped.
Just as in the 8th century when a movement to translate ancient Greek
and other literature helped vitalise Arabic literature, another translation movement would offer new ideas and material for Arabic. An early popular success was The Count of Monte Cristo
which spurred a host of historical novel
s on Arabic subjects. Two important translators were Rifa'a el-Tahtawi
and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
.
Throughout the 20th century, Arabic writers in both poetry and prose have reflected the changing political and social circumstances of the Arab world in their work. Anti-colonial themes were prominent early in the 20th century, with writers continuing to explore the region's relationship with the West until the present day. Internal political upheaval has also been a challenge, with some writers suffering censorship and some such as There are many Arabic contemporary well known writes like Mahmoud saeed (Iraq) he wrought a very great novels: Bin Barka Ally, and I am the one who saw (Saddam City). And others Sonallah Ibrahim
and Abdul Rahman Munif
being imprisoned. At the same time, others who had written works supporting or praiseworthy of governments were promoted to positions of authority within cultural bodies. Non-fiction writers and academics have also produced political polemics and criticisms aiming to re-shape Arabic politics. Some of the best known are Taha Hussein's The Future of Culture in Egypt
which was an important work of Egyptian nationalism
and the works of Nawal el-Saadawi who campaigns for women's rights.
Beginning in the 19th century and early 20th centuries, as part of what is now called the renaissance or al-Nahda
, poets like Ahmad Shawqi and Hafiz Ibrahim began to explore the possibility of developing the classical poetic forms. These earliest neoclassical poets were acquainted with Western literature, but mostly continued to write in the classical qasida style. Increasingly, however, poets such as Khalil Mutran began to feel the limitations of the genre.
The next generation of poets, the so-called romantic poets, had begun to a far greater extent to absorb the impact of developments in Western poetry, and felt constrained by neo-classical tradition which writers like Shawqi tried to uphold. The Mahjar poets, including Khalil Gibran
and Mikha'il Na'ima
, were emigrants who mostly wrote in the Americas, but were similarly beginning to experiment further with the possibilities of Arabic poetry. This experimentation continued in the Middle East throughout the first half of the 20th century.
By the later part of the 20th century, Arab poets had begun to experiment with more modernist styles and themes. Perhaps one of the most well known, seen as being the originator of "free verse" in Arabic, is the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
. More recently, poets such as Adunis have pushed the boundaries of stylistic experimentation even further.
Poetry retains a very important status in the Arab world. Mahmoud Darwish
was regarded as the Palestinian national poet, and his funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. Nizar Qabbani
, the Syrian poet, addressed less political themes, but was regarded as a cultural icon, and his poems provide the lyrics for many popular songs.
and the Thousand and One Nights. In contrast, the Modernist movement began by translating Western works, primarily novels, into Arabic.
Individual authors in Syria
, Lebanon
, and Egypt
created original works by imitating the classical maqama. The most prominent of these was al-Muwaylihi, whose book, The Hadith of Issa ibn Hisham (حديث عيسى بن هشام), critiqued Egyptian society in the period of Ismail. This work constitutes the first stage in the development of the modern Arabic novel. This trend was furthered by Georgy Zeidan, a Lebanese Christian writer who immigrated with his family to Egypt following the Damascus
riots of 1860. In the early twentieth century, Zeidan serialized his historical novels in the Egyptian newspaper al-Hilal. These novels were extremely popular because of their clarity of language, simple structure, and the author's vivid imagination. Two other important writers from this period were Khalil Gibran
and Mikha'il Na'ima
, both of whom incorporated philosophical musings into their works.
Nevertheless, literary critics do not consider the works of these four authors to be true novels, but rather indications of the form that the modern novel would assume. Many of these critics point to Zaynab
, a novel by Muhammad Husayn Haykal
as the first true Arabic-language novel, while others point to Adraa Denshawi by Muhammad Tahir Haqqi.
A common theme in the modern Arabic novel is the study of family life with obvious resonances with the wider family of the Arabic world. Many of the novels have been unable to avoid the politics and conflicts of the region with war often acting as background to small scale family dramas. The works of Naguib Mahfuz depict life in Cairo
, and his Cairo Trilogy
, describing the struggles of a modern Cairene family across three generations, won him a Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He was the first Arabic writer to win the prize.
and the second an epilogue for the Thousand and One Nights. Other important dramatists of the region include Yusuf al'Ani of Iraq
and Saadallah Wannous
of Syria
.
and Layla al-Akhyaliyyah of the 7th century. Their concentration on the ritha' or elegy suggests that this was a form designated for women to work in. A later poetess Walladah, Umawi princess of al-Andulus wrote Sufi poetry and was the lover of fellow poet ibn Zaydun
. These and other minor women writers suggest a hidden world of female literature. Women still played an important part as characters in Arabic literature with Sirat al-amirah Dhat al-Himmah an Arabic epic
with a female warrior as the chief protagonist and Scheherazade
cunningly telling stories in the Thousand and One Nights to save her life.
Modern Arabic literature has allowed a greater number of female writers' works to be published: May Ziade
, Fadwa Touqan, Suhayr al-Qalamawi, Ulfat Idlibi, Layla Ba'albakki, Zuhrabi Mattummal, Hoda Barakat
and Alifa Rifaat
are just some of the novelists and short story writers. There has also be a number of significant female academics such as Zaynab al-Ghazali, Nawal el-Saadawi and Fatema Mernissi
who amongst other subject wrote of the place of women in Muslim society. Women writers also courted controversy with Layla Ba'albakki charged with insulting public decency with her short story Spaceships of Tenderness to the Moon.
Some of the first studies of the poetry are Qawa'id al-shi'r or The Rules of Poetry by Tha'lab and Naqd al-shi'r Poetic Criticism by Qudamah ibn Ja'far. Other works tended to continue the tradition of contrasting two poets in order to determine which one best follows the rule of classical poetic structure. Plagiarism also became a significant idea exercising the critics' concerns. The works of al-Mutanabbi were particularly studied with this concern. He was considered by many the greatest of all Arab poets but his own arrogant self-regard for his abilities did not endear him to other writers and they looked for a source for his verse. Just as there were collections of facts written about many different subjects, numerous collections detailing every possible rhetorical figure used in literature emerged as well as how to write guides.
Modern criticism at first compared the new works unfavourably with the classical ideals of the past but these standards were soon rejected as too artificial. The adoption of the forms of European romantic poetry
dictated the introduction of corresponding critical standards. Taha Hussayn, himself keen on European thought, would even dare to challenge the Qur'an with modern critical analysis in which he pointed out the ideas and stories borrowed from pre-Islamic poetry.
Europe and as a conduit for transmitting literature from distant regions. In this role though it is rarely read but simply re-translated into another standard language like Latin
. One of the first important translations of Arabic literature was Robert of Ketton
's translation of the Qur'an
in the 12th century but it would not be until the early 18th century that much of Arabic's diverse literature would be recognised, largely due to Arabist
s such as Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
and his books such as Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature.
Antoine Galland
's translation of the Thousand and One Nights was the first major work in Arabic which found great success outside the Muslim world. Other significant translators were Friedrich Rückert
and Richard Burton
, along with many working at Fort William, India
. The Arabic works and many more in other eastern languages fuelled a fascination in Orientalism
within Europe. Works of dubious 'foreign' morals were particularly popular but even these were censored for content, such as homosexual references, which were not permitted in Victorian society
. Most of the works chosen for translation helped confirm the stereotypes of the audiences with many more still untranslated. Few modern Arabic works have been translated into other languages.
However, towards the end of the twentieth century, there was an increase of translations of Arabic books into other languages, and Arabic authors began to receive acclaim. Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz
has most if not all of his works translated after he won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. Several other writers, including Abdul Rahman Munif
and Tayeb Salih
have been taken quite seriously by Western scholars, and both Alaa Al Aswany
's The Yacoubian Building
and Rajaa al-Sanea
's Girls of Riyadh
attracted significant Western media attention in the first decade of the 21st century.
: As since 2007 KITAB (arabic for „book“) organises the fair - a Joint Venture
of the Authority for Culture and Heritage and the Frankfurt Book Fair
.
In 1987 the Authority for Culture and Heritage had founded the fair. Traditionally, the bookfairs in the area are public fairs to sell to everyone. Now the new Abu Dhabi International Book Fair organisation provides workshops, also over the whole year, to the arabic bookmarkets. The Fair is no to trade booklicences. There is little distribution system in the countries around, censorship, small numbers of printed copies per book... There is an up and coming English-speaking education system.
In 2009-numbers: The Abu Dhabi
International Book Fair had 200.000 visitors, 637 exhibitors from 52 countries, most Arabian.
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, by writers in the Arabic language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
. The Arabic word used for literature is adab
Adab (behavior)
Adab, in the context of behavior, refers to prescribed Islamic etiquette: "refinement, good manners, morals, decorum, decency, humaneness". While interpretation of the scope and particulars of Adab may vary among different cultures, common among these interpretations is regard for personal standing...
which is derived from a meaning of etiquette
Etiquette
Etiquette is a code of behavior that delineates expectations for social behavior according to contemporary conventional norms within a society, social class, or group...
, and implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Arabic literature emerged in the 6th century with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
, widely regarded as the finest piece of literature work in the Arabic language
Arabic language
Arabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
, would have the greatest lasting effect on Arabic culture
Arabic culture
Arab culture refers to the culture in Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa, from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy, mysticism are all part of the cultural heritage of the pan-Arab world.-Language:The Arabic...
and its literature. Arabic literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age
Islamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
, but has remained vibrant to the present day, with poets and prose-writers across the Arab world achieving increasing success.
Pre-Islamic literature
The period before the writing of the Qur'an and the rise of IslamIslam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
is known to Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
s as Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah
Jahiliyyah is an Islamic concept of "ignorance of divine guidance" or "the state of ignorance of the guidance from God" or "Days of Ignorance" referring to the condition in which Arabs found themselves in pre-Islamic Arabia, i.e. prior to the revelation of the Qur'an to Muhammad...
or period of ignorance. Whilst this ignorance refers mainly to religious ignorance, there is little literature before this time, although significant oral tradition
Oral tradition
Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another. The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants...
is postulated. Tales like those about Sinbad
Sinbad
Sinbad or Sindbad may refer to:* Sinbad the Sailor, from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as Arabian Nights* Sinbad the Sailor, an alias of Edmond Dantes in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo...
and Antar bin Shaddad were probably current, but were recorded later. The final decades of the 6th century, however, begin to show the flowering of a lively written tradition. This tradition was captured over two centuries later with two important compilations of the Mu'allaqat
Mu'allaqat
The Mu‘allaqāt is the title of a group of seven long Arabic poems or qasida that have come down from the time before Islam. Each is considered the best work of these pre-Islamic poets...
and the Mufaddaliyat
Mufaddaliyat
The Mufaddaliyat or Mofaddaliyat , meaning "The Examination of al-Mufaddal", is an anthology of ancient Arabic poems, which derives its name from al-Mufaddal, son of Muhammad, son of Yal, a member of the tribe of Banu Dhabba, who compiled it some time between 762 and 784 CE in the latter of which...
.
The Qur'an and Islam
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
had a significant influence on the Arab language. The language used in the Qur'an is called classical Arabic
Classical Arabic
Classical Arabic , also known as Qur'anic or Koranic Arabic, is the form of the Arabic language used in literary texts from Umayyad and Abbasid times . It is based on the Medieval dialects of Arab tribes...
and while modern Arabic is very similar, the classical is still the style to be admired. Not only is the Qur'an the first work of any significant length written in the language it also has a far more complicated structure than the earlier literary works with its 114 sura
Sura
A sura is a division of the Qur'an, often referred to as a chapter. The term chapter is sometimes avoided, as the suras are of unequal length; the shortest sura has only three ayat while the longest contains 286 ayat...
s (chapters) which contain 6,236 ayat (verses). It contains injunction
Injunction
An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a court order that requires a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. A party that fails to comply with an injunction faces criminal or civil penalties and may have to pay damages or accept sanctions...
s, narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
s, homilies
Homily
A homily is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture. In Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Eastern Orthodox Churches, a homily is usually given during Mass at the end of the Liturgy of the Word...
, parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
s, direct addresses from God, instructions and even comments on itself on how it will be received and understood. It is also, paradoxically, admired for its layers of metaphor as well as its clarity, a feature it mentions itself in sura 16:103.
Although it contains elements of both prose and poetry, and therefore is closest to Saj
Rhymed prose
Rhymed prose is a literary form and literary genre, written in unmetrical rhymes. This form has been known in many different cultures. In some cases the rhymed prose is a distinctive, well-defined style of writing...
or rhymed prose
Rhymed prose
Rhymed prose is a literary form and literary genre, written in unmetrical rhymes. This form has been known in many different cultures. In some cases the rhymed prose is a distinctive, well-defined style of writing...
, the Qur'an is regarded as entirely apart from these classifications. The text is believed to be divine revelation and is seen by some Muslims as being eternal or 'uncreated'. This leads to the doctrine of i'jaz or inimitability of the Qur'an which implies that nobody can copy the work's style.
This doctrine of i'jaz possibly had a slight limiting effect on Arabic literature; proscribing exactly what could be written. The Qur'an itself criticises poets in the 26th sura, actually called Ash-Shu'ara or The Poets:
This may have exerted dominance over the pre-Islamic poets of the 6th century whose popularity may have vied with the Qur'an amongst the people. There were a marked lack of significant poets until the 8th century. One notable exception was Hassan ibn Thabit
Hassan ibn Thabit
Hassan ibn Thabit was an Arabian poet and one of the Sahaba, or companions of Muhammad. He was born in Yathrib , and was member of the Banu Khazraj tribe. According to tradition, he was the court poet to Muhammad.-Life:...
who wrote poems in praise of Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
and was known as the "prophet's poet". Just as the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
has held an important place in the literature of other languages, The Qur'an is important to Arabic. It is the source of many ideas, allusions and quotes and its moral message informs many works.
Aside from the Qur'an the hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
or tradition of what Muhammed is supposed to have said and done are important literature. The entire body of these acts and words are called sunnah
Sunnah
The word literally means a clear, well trodden, busy and plain surfaced road. In the discussion of the sources of religion, Sunnah denotes the practice of Prophet Muhammad that he taught and practically instituted as a teacher of the sharī‘ah and the best exemplar...
or way and the ones regarded as sahih or genuine of them are collected into hadith. Some of the most significant collections of hadith include those by Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj
Abul Husayn Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj ibn Muslim ibn Warat al-Qushayri al-Nisaburi was the author of the second authentic sahih collection of hadith in Sunni Islam, Sahih Muslim.-Biography:...
and Muhammad ibn Isma'il al-Bukhari.
The other important genre of work in Qur'anic study is the tafsir
Tafsir
Tafseer is the Arabic word for exegesis or commentary, usually of the Qur'an. Ta'wīl is a subset of tafsir and refers to esoteric or mystical interpretation. An author of tafsir is a mufassir .- Etymology :...
or commentaries
Close reading
Close reading describes, in literary criticism, the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of text. Such a reading places great emphasis on the particular over the general, paying close attention to individual words, syntax, and the order in which sentences and ideas unfold as they...
Arab writings relating to religion also includes many sermon
Sermon
A sermon is an oration by a prophet or member of the clergy. Sermons address a Biblical, theological, religious, or moral topic, usually expounding on a type of belief, law or behavior within both past and present contexts...
s and devotional pieces as well as the sayings of Ali
Ali
' |Ramaḍān]], 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661).His father's name was Abu Talib. Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and ruled over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam...
which were collected in the 10th century as Nahj al-Balaghah or The Peak of Eloquence.
Islamic scholarship
The research into the life and times of Muhammad, and determining the genuine parts of the sunnah, was an important early reason for scholarship in or about the Arabic language. It was also the reason for the collecting of pre-Islamic poetry; as some of these poets were close to the prophet—LabidLabid
Labid can either refer to*Labīd, the Arabian poet*Labid, a brand name for theophylline...
actually meeting Muhammed and converting to Islam—and their writings illuminated the times when these event occurred. Muhammad also inspired the first Arabic biographies
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
, known as al-sirah al-nabawiyyah; the earliest was by Wahb ibn Munabbih
Wahb ibn Munabbih
'Wahb ibn Munabbih' was a Muslim traditionist of Dhimar in Yemen; died at the age of ninety, in a year variously given by Arabic authorities as 725, 728, 732, and 737 C.E....
, but Muhammad ibn Ishaq wrote the best known. Whilst covering the life of the prophet they also told of the battles and events of early Islam and have numerous digressions on older biblical traditions.
Some of the earliest work studying the Arabic language was started in the name of Islam. Tradition has it that the caliph Ali
Ali
' |Ramaḍān]], 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661).His father's name was Abu Talib. Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and ruled over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam...
, after reading a copy of Qur'an with errors in it, asked Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali
Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali
Abu al-Aswad Al-Du'ali was a close companion of Ali ibn Abi Talib and grammarian. He was the first to place dots on Arabic letters and the first to write on Arabic linguistics...
to write a work codifying Arabic grammar
Arabic grammar
Arabic grammar is the grammar of the Arabic language. Arabic is a Semitic language and its grammar has many similarities with the grammar of other Semitic languages....
. Khalil ibn Ahmad
Khalil ibn Ahmad
Abu ‘Abd ar-Rahmān al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad al-Farāhīdī , more commonly known as al-Farahidi, was a philologist from southern Arabia . His best known contributions are Kitab al-'Ayn , the current standard for Harakat , and the invention al-'arud . He moved to Basra, Iraq, he was Ibadi...
would later write Kitab al-Ayn, the first dictionary of Arabic, along with works on prosody
Prosody (linguistics)
In linguistics, prosody is the rhythm, stress, and intonation of speech. Prosody may reflect various features of the speaker or the utterance: the emotional state of the speaker; the form of the utterance ; the presence of irony or sarcasm; emphasis, contrast, and focus; or other elements of...
and music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, and his Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
pupil Sibawayh
Sibawayh
Abū Bishr ʻAmr ibn ʻUthmān ibn Qanbar Al-Bishrī , commonly known as Sībawayh , was an influential linguist and grammarian of the Arabic language. He was of Persian origin born ca...
would produce the most respected work of Arabic grammar known simply as al-Kitab or The Book.
Other caliphs exerted their influence on Arabic with 'Abd al-Malik making it the official language for administration of the new empire, and al-Ma'mun
Al-Ma'mun
Abū Jaʿfar Abdullāh al-Māʾmūn ibn Harūn was an Abbasid caliph who reigned from 813 until his death in 833...
setting up the Bayt al-Hikma or House of Wisdom
House of Wisdom
The House of Wisdom was a library and translation institute established in Abbassid-era Baghdad, Iraq. It was a key institution in the Translation Movement and considered to have been a major intellectual centre during the Islamic Golden Age...
in Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
for research and translations. Basrah and Kufah
Kufah
Kufah may refer to:* Ovophis okinavensis, a.k.a. the Okinawa pitviper, a venomous pitviper species found in the Ryukyu Islands of Japan.* Alternative English spelling for Kufa, a city in modern Iraq....
were two other important seats of learning in the early Arab world, between which there was a strong rivalry.
The institutions set up mainly to investigate more fully the Islamic religion were invaluable in studying many other subjects. Caliph Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik
Hisham ibn Abd al-Malik 10th Umayyad caliph who ruled from 723 until his death in 743. When he was born in 691 his mother named him after her father....
was instrumental in enriching the literature by instructing scholars to translate works into Arabic. The first was probably Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's correspondence with Alexander the Great translated by Salm Abu al-'Ala'. From the east, and in a very different literary genre, the Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
scholar Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa
Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa
Abū-Muhammad Abd-Allāh Rūzbeh ibn Dādūya/Dādōē , known as Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ , Ibn Muqaffa/Ebn-e Moghaffa , or Rūzbeh pūr-e Dādūya , was a Persian thinker and a Zoroastrian convert to Islam.-Biography:...
translated the animal fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s of the Panchatantra
Panchatantra
The Panchatantra is an ancient Indian inter-related collection of animal fables in verse and prose, in a frame story format. The original Sanskrit work, which some scholars believe was composed in the 3rd century BCE, is attributed to Vishnu Sharma...
. These translations would keep alive scholarship and learning, particularly that of ancient Greece
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history that lasted from the Archaic period of the 8th to 6th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine era. Included in Ancient Greece is the...
, during the Dark Ages in Europe and the works would often be first re-introduced to Europe from the Arabic versions.
written by tata a poaltis
Arabic poetry
A large proportion of Arabic literature before the 20th century is in the form of poetry, and even prose from this period is either filled with snippets of poetry or is in the form of saj or rhymed prose. The themes of the poetry range from high-flown hymns of praise to bitter personal attacks and from religious and mystical ideas to poems on sex and wine. An important feature of the poetry which would be applied to all of the literature was the idea that it must be pleasing to the ear. The poetry and much of the prose was written with the design that it would be spoken aloud and great care was taken to make all writing as mellifluous as possible. Indeed saj originally meant the cooing of a dove.Compilations and manuals
In the late 9th century Ibn al-NadimIbn al-Nadim
Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim , whose father was known as al-Warrāq was a Shia Muslim scholar and bibliographer. Some scholars regard him as a Persian, but this is not certain. He is famous as the author of the Kitāb al-Fihrist...
, a Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
i bookseller, compiled a crucial work in the study of Arabic literature. Kitab al-Fihrist is a catalogue of all books available for sale in Baghdad and it gives a fascinating overview of the state of the literature at that time.
One of the most common forms of literature during the Abbasid
Abbasid
The Abbasid Caliphate or, more simply, the Abbasids , was the third of the Islamic caliphates. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphate from all but the al-Andalus region....
period was the compilation. These were collections of facts, ideas, instructive stories and poems on a single topic and covers subjects as diverse as house and garden, women, gate-crashers, blind people, envy, animals and misers. These last three compilations were written by al-Jahiz
Al-Jahiz
Al-Jāḥiẓ was an Arabic prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics.In biology, Al-Jahiz introduced the concept of food chains and also proposed a scheme of animal evolution that entailed...
the acknowledged master of the form. These collections were important for any nadim, a companion to a ruler or noble whose role was often involved regaling the ruler with stories and information to entertain or advise.
A type of work closely allied to the collection was the manual in which writers like ibn Qutaybah
Ibn Qutaybah
Ibn Qutaybah was a renowned Islamic scholar of Persian origin.-Biography:His full name is Abu Muhammad ‘Abdullaah bin Muslim Ibn Qutaybah Ad-Dinawaree. He was born in Kufa in what is now modern day Iraq. He was of Iranian descent; his father was from Merv...
offered instruction in subjects like etiquette, how to rule, how to be a bureaucrat and even how to write. Ibn Qutaybah
Ibn Qutaybah
Ibn Qutaybah was a renowned Islamic scholar of Persian origin.-Biography:His full name is Abu Muhammad ‘Abdullaah bin Muslim Ibn Qutaybah Ad-Dinawaree. He was born in Kufa in what is now modern day Iraq. He was of Iranian descent; his father was from Merv...
also wrote one of the earliest histories of the Arabs, drawing together biblical stories, Arabic folk tales and more historical events.
The subject of sex was frequently investigated in Arabic literature. The ghazal
Ghazal
The ghazal is a poetic form consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same meter. A ghazal may be understood as a poetic expression of both the pain of loss or separation and the beauty of love in spite of that pain. The form is ancient, originating in 6th century...
or love poem had a long history being at times tender and chaste and at other times rather explicit. In the Sufi tradition the love poem would take on a wider, mystical and religious importance. Sex manuals were also written such as The Perfumed Garden
The Perfumed Garden
The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi is a fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature....
, Ṭawq al-Ḥamāmah
The Ring of the Dove
The Ring of the Dove is a treatise on love written ca. 1022 by Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Ḥazm al-Andalusī. Normally a writer of theology and law, The Ring of the Dove is his only work of literature....
or The Dove's Neckring by ibn Hazm
Ibn Hazm
Abū Muḥammad ʿAlī ibn Aḥmad ibn Saʿīd ibn Ḥazm ) was an Andalusian philosopher, litterateur, psychologist, historian, jurist and theologian born in Córdoba, present-day Spain...
and Nuzhat al-albab fi-ma la yujad fi kitab or Delight of Hearts Concerning What will Never Be Found in a Book by Ahmad al-Tifashi
Ahmad al-Tifashi
Ahmad al-Tifashi , born in Tiffech, a village near Souk Ahras in Algeria was an Arabic poet, writer, and anthologist.-Biography:...
. Countering such works are one like Rawdat al-muhibbin wa-nuzhat al-mushtaqin or Meadow of Lovers and Diversion of the Infatuated by ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah who advises on how to separate love and lust and avoid sin.
Biography, history, and geography
Aside from the early biographiesBiography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of Muhammad, the first major biographer to weigh character rather than just producing a hymn of praise was the Persian
Persian people
The Persian people are part of the Iranian peoples who speak the modern Persian language and closely akin Iranian dialects and languages. The origin of the ethnic Iranian/Persian peoples are traced to the Ancient Iranian peoples, who were part of the ancient Indo-Iranians and themselves part of...
scholar al-Baladhuri with his Kitab ansab al-ashraf or Book of the Genealogies of the Noble, a collection of biographies. Another important biographical dictionary was begun by ibn Khallikan
Ibn Khallikan
Shams al-Dīn Abū Al-ʿAbbās Aḥmad Ibn Muḥammad Ibn Khallikān was a 13th Century Shafi'i Islamic scholar of Kurdish origin.-Biography:...
and expanded by al-Safadi and one of the first significant autobiographies
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
was Kitab al-I'tibar
Kitab al-I'tibar
Kitab al-I'tibar is the autobiography of Usāmah ibn-Munqidh, an Arab Syrian diplomat and soldier of the 12th century.Usāmah's autobiography is part of the literary genre known as adab which aims at "pleasing, diverting and titilating" its readers, as well as instructing them. Philip K...
which told of Usamah ibn Munqidh
Usamah ibn Munqidh
Majd ad-Dīn Usāma ibn Murshid ibn ʿAlī ibn Munqidh al-Kināni was a medieval Muslim poet, author, faris , and diplomat from the Banu Munqidh dynasty of Shaizar in northern Syria...
and his experiences in fighting in the Crusades. This time period saw the emergence of the genre of tabaqat (biographical dictionaries or biographical compendia).
Ibn Khurdadhbih, apparently an official in the postal service
Mail
Mail, or post, is a system for transporting letters and other tangible objects: written documents, typically enclosed in envelopes, and also small packages are delivered to destinations around the world. Anything sent through the postal system is called mail or post.In principle, a postal service...
wrote one of the first travel book
Guide book
A guide book is a book for tourists or travelers that provides details about a geographic location, tourist destination, or itinerary. It is the written equivalent of a tour guide...
s and the form remained a popular one in Arabic literature with books by ibn Hawqal
Ibn Hawqal
Muḥammad Abū’l-Qāsim Ibn Ḥawqal was a 10th century Muslim writer, geographer, and chronicler. His famous work, written in 977, is called Ṣūrat al-’Arḍ ....
, ibn Fadlan, al-Istakhri, al-Muqaddasi
Al-Muqaddasi
Muhammad ibn Ahmad Shams al-Din Al-Muqaddasi , also transliterated as Al-Maqdisi and el-Mukaddasi, was a medieval Arab geographer, author of Ahsan at-Taqasim fi Ma`rifat il-Aqalim .-Biography:Al-Muqaddasi, "the Hierosolomite" was born in Jerusalem in 946 AD...
, al-Idrisi and most famously the travels of ibn Battutah. These give a fascinating view of the many cultures of the wider Islamic world and also offer Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
perspectives on the non-Muslim peoples on the edges of the empire. They also indicated just how great a trading power the Muslim peoples had become. These were often sprawling accounts that included details of both geography
Geography
Geography is the science that studies the lands, features, inhabitants, and phenomena of Earth. A literal translation would be "to describe or write about the Earth". The first person to use the word "geography" was Eratosthenes...
and history
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
.
Some writers concentrated solely on history like al-Ya'qubi and al-Tabari
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari
Abu Ja'far Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari was a prominent and influential Sunni scholar and exegete of the Qur'an from Persia...
, whilst others focused on a small portion of history such as ibn al-Azraq
Ibn al-Azraq
Abū 'Abd-Allāh Ibn al-Azraq was a Muslim jurist born in Granada, Al Andalus in 1427.Educated in Law in Granada, he became a judge in Malaga, and finally became Chief Judge of Granada under Sultan Abu al-Hasan...
, with a history of Mecca
Mecca
Mecca is a city in the Hijaz and the capital of Makkah province in Saudi Arabia. The city is located inland from Jeddah in a narrow valley at a height of above sea level...
, and ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur
Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur was an Iranian linguist and poet of Arabic language. He was born in Baghdad. Tayfur was his father's name who was from Khorasan, Persia. He played an important role in Arabic literature revolution. Ibn Abi Tahir Tayfur was the first writer who devoted a book to writers...
, writing a history of Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
. The historian regarded as the greatest of all Arabic historians though is ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldun
Ibn Khaldūn or Ibn Khaldoun was an Arab Tunisian historiographer and historian who is often viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology and economics...
whose history Muqaddimah
Muqaddimah
The Muqaddimah , also known as the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun or the Prolegomena , is a book written by the Maghrebian Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun in 1377 which records an early view of universal history...
focuses on society and is a founding text in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
and economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
.
Diaries
In the medieval Near EastIslamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
, Arabic diaries
Diary
A diary is a record with discrete entries arranged by date reporting on what has happened over the course of a day or other period. A personal diary may include a person's experiences, and/or thoughts or feelings, including comment on current events outside the writer's direct experience. Someone...
were first being written from before the 10th century, though the medieval diary which most resembles the modern diary was that of Ibn Banna in the 11th century. His diary was the earliest to be arranged in order of date (ta'rikh in Arabic), very much like modern diaries.
Literary theory and criticism
Literary criticismLiterary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals...
in Arabic literature often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis
Exegesis
Exegesis is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially a religious text. Traditionally the term was used primarily for exegesis of the Bible; however, in contemporary usage it has broadened to mean a critical explanation of any text, and the term "Biblical exegesis" is used...
have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of Islamic literature
Islamic literature
Islamic literature is literature written with an Islamic perspective, in any language.The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales told by the Persian Queen Scheherazade...
.
Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
and literature from the 9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz
Al-Jahiz
Al-Jāḥiẓ was an Arabic prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics.In biology, Al-Jahiz introduced the concept of food chains and also proposed a scheme of animal evolution that entailed...
in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan, and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz
Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz
Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz was persuaded to assume the role of caliph of the Abbasid dynasty following the premature death of al-Muktafi. He succeeded in ruling for a single day and a single night, before he was forced into hiding, found, and then strangled in a palace intrigue that brought...
in his Kitab al-Badi.
Fiction literature
Arab world
The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...
, there was a great distinction between al-fusha (quality language) and al-ammiyyah (language of the common people). Not many writers would write works in this al-ammiyyah or common language and it was felt that literature had to be improving, educational and with purpose rather than just entertainment. This did not stop the common role of the hakawati or story-teller who would retell the entertaining parts of more educational works or one of the many Arabic fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
s or folk-tales, which were often not written down in many cases. Nevertheless, some of the earliest novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s, including the first philosophical novel
Philosophical novel
Philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of...
s, were written by Arabic authors.
Epic literature
The most famous example of Arabic fiction is the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), easily the best known of all Arabic literature and which still affects many of the ideas non-Arabs have about Arabic cultureArabic culture
Arab culture refers to the culture in Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa, from Morocco to the Persian Gulf. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy, mysticism are all part of the cultural heritage of the pan-Arab world.-Language:The Arabic...
. A good example of the lack of popular Arabic prose fiction is that the stories of Aladdin
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
and Ali Baba
Ali Baba
Ali Baba is a fictional character from medieval Arabic literature. He is described in the adventure tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves...
, usually regarded as part of the Tales from One Thousand and One Nights, were not actually part of the Tales. They were first included in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
translation of the Tales by Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights...
who heard them being told by a traditional storyteller and only existed in incomplete Arabic manuscripts before that. The other great character from Arabic literature Sinbad
Sinbad
Sinbad or Sindbad may refer to:* Sinbad the Sailor, from The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, also known as Arabian Nights* Sinbad the Sailor, an alias of Edmond Dantes in the novel The Count of Monte Cristo...
is from the Tales.
The One Thousand and One Nights is usually placed in the genre of Arabic epic literature
Arabic epic literature
Arabic epic literature encompasses epic poetry and epic fantasy in Arabic literature. Virtually all societies have developed folk tales encompassing tales of heroes...
along with several other works. They are usually, like the Tales, collections of short stories or episodes strung together into a long tale. The extant versions were mostly written down relatively late on, after the 14th century, although many were undoubtedly collected earlier and many of the original stories are probably pre-Islamic. Types of stories in these collections include animal fables, proverb
Proverb
A proverb is a simple and concrete saying popularly known and repeated, which expresses a truth, based on common sense or the practical experience of humanity. They are often metaphorical. A proverb that describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a maxim...
s, stories of jihad
Jihad
Jihad , an Islamic term, is a religious duty of Muslims. In Arabic, the word jihād translates as a noun meaning "struggle". Jihad appears 41 times in the Quran and frequently in the idiomatic expression "striving in the way of God ". A person engaged in jihad is called a mujahid; the plural is...
or propagation of the faith, humorous tales, moral tales, tales about the wily con-man Ali Zaybaq and tales about the prankster Juha.
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature
Italian literature
Italian literature is literature written in the Italian language, particularly within Italy. It may also refer to literature written by Italians or in Italy in other languages spoken in Italy, often languages that are closely related to modern Italian....
, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology
Islamic eschatology
Islamic eschatology is concerned with the al-Qiyāmah . Like the other Abrahamic religions, Islam teaches the bodily resurrection of the dead, the fulfillment of a divine plan for creation, and the judgement of the soul; the righteous are rewarded with the pleasures of Jannah while the unrighteous...
: the Hadith
Hadith
The term Hadīth is used to denote a saying or an act or tacit approval or criticism ascribed either validly or invalidly to the Islamic prophet Muhammad....
and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad
Muhammad
Muhammad |ligature]] at U+FDF4 ;Arabic pronunciation varies regionally; the first vowel ranges from ~~; the second and the last vowel: ~~~. There are dialects which have no stress. In Egypt, it is pronounced not in religious contexts...
's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi
Ibn Arabi
Ibn ʿArabī was an Andalusian Moorish Sufi mystic and philosopher. His full name was Abū 'Abdillāh Muḥammad ibn 'Alī ibn Muḥammad ibn `Arabī .-Biography:...
.
Maqama
MaqamaMaqama
Maqāma are an Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century...
not only straddles the divide between prose
Prose
Prose is the most typical form of written language, applying ordinary grammatical structure and natural flow of speech rather than rhythmic structure...
and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
, being instead a form of rhymed prose
Rhymed prose
Rhymed prose is a literary form and literary genre, written in unmetrical rhymes. This form has been known in many different cultures. In some cases the rhymed prose is a distinctive, well-defined style of writing...
, it is also part way between fiction and non-fiction. Over a series of short narratives, which are fictionalised versions of real life situations, different ideas are contemplated. A good example of this is a maqama on musk, which purports to compare the feature of different perfumes but is in fact a work of political satire comparing several competing rulers. Maqama also makes use of the doctrine of badi
Badi
Badi may refer to:People:*Badí‘, an early Bahá'í martyr from Persia*Badi II, ruler of the Kingdom of Sennar*Badi III, ruler of the Kingdom of Sennar*Badi IV, ruler of the Kingdom of Sennar...
or deliberately adding complexity to display the writer's dexterity with language. Al-Hamadhani is regarded as the originator of the maqama and his work was taken up by Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri
Al-Hariri of Basra
Muhammad al-Qasim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Uthman al-Hariri , popularly known as al-Hariri of Basra was an Arab poet, scholar of the Arabic language and a high government official of the Seljuk Empire...
with one of al-Hariri's maqama a study of al-Hamadhani own work. Maqama was an incredibly popular form of Arabic literature, being one of the few forms which continued to be written during the decline of Arabic in the 17th and 18th century.
Romantic literature
A famous example of romantic Arabic poetryArabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
is Layla and Majnun
Layla and Majnun
Layla and Majnun, also known as The Madman and Layla – in Arabic مجنون ليلى or قيس وليلى , in , Leyli və Məcnun in Azeri, Leyla ile Mecnun in Turkish, in Urdu and Hindi – is a classical Arab story, popularized by Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi's...
, dating back to the Umayyad
Umayyad
The Umayyad Caliphate was the second of the four major Arab caliphates established after the death of Muhammad. It was ruled by the Umayyad dynasty, whose name derives from Umayya ibn Abd Shams, the great-grandfather of the first Umayyad caliph. Although the Umayyad family originally came from the...
era in the 7th century. It is a tragic
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
story of undying love
Love
Love is an emotion of strong affection and personal attachment. In philosophical context, love is a virtue representing all of human kindness, compassion, and affection. Love is central to many religions, as in the Christian phrase, "God is love" or Agape in the Canonical gospels...
much like the later Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written early in the career of playwright William Shakespeare about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately unite their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular archetypal stories of young, teenage lovers.Romeo and Juliet belongs to a...
, which was itself said to have been inspired by a Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
version of Layla and Majnun to an extent. Layla and Majnun is considered part of the platonic Love
Platonic love
Platonic love is a chaste and strong type of love that is non-sexual.-Amor Platonicus:The term amor platonicus was coined as early as the 15th century by the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino. Platonic love in this original sense of the term is examined in Plato's dialogue the Symposium, which has...
(Arabic: حب عذري) genre, so-called because the couple never marry or consummate their relationship, that is prominent in Arabic literature, though the literary motif is found throughout the world. Other famous Virgin Love stories include "Qays and Lubna", "Kuthair and Azza", "Marwa and Al Majnoun Al Faransi
Marwa and Al Majnoun Al Faransi
The madman of Marwa - known in Arabic as: مروة و المجنون الفرنسي , and in Persian, simply: مروة والمجنون - is a classical Middle Eastern love story. It is based on the real story of a young man called Shams al Faransy from Central Asia, born during the 14th century...
" and "Antara and Abla
Antarah ibn Shaddad
'Antarah Ibn Shaddād al-'Absī عنترة بن شداد العبسي was a pre-Islamic Arabian hero and poet famous both for his poetry and his adventurous life. What many consider his best or chief poem is contained in the Mu'allaqat...
".
The 10th century Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity
The Encyclopedia of the Brethren of Purity was a large encyclopedia in 52 treatises written by the mysterious Brethren of Purity of Basra, Iraq sometime in the second half of the 10th century CE...
features a fictional anecdote
Anecdote
An anecdote is a short and amusing or interesting story about a real incident or person. It may be as brief as the setting and provocation of a bon mot. An anecdote is always presented as based on a real incident involving actual persons, whether famous or not, usually in an identifiable place...
of a "prince who strays from his palace during his wedding feast and, drunk, spends the night in a cemetery, confusing a corpse with his bride
Corpse Bride
Corpse Bride, often promoted as Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, is a 2005 stop-motion-animated fantasy musical film directed by Mike Johnson and Tim Burton. It is set in a fictional Victorian era village in Europe. Johnny Depp led an all-star cast as the voice of Victor, while Helena Bonham Carter ...
. The story is used as a gnostic parable of the soul's pre-existence
Pre-existence
Pre-existence , beforelife, or pre-mortal existence refers to the belief that each individual human soul existed before conception, and at conception one of these pre-existent souls enters, or is placed by God, in the body...
and return from its terrestrial sojourn".
Another medieval Arabic love story was Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
Hadith Bayad wa Riyad
Hadith Bayāḍ wa Riyāḍ or Qissat Bayad wa Riyad is a 13th-century Arabic love story...
(The Story of Bayad and Riyad), a 13th-century Arabic love story. The main characters of the tale are Bayad, a merchant's son and a foreigner from Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
, and Riyad, a well educated girl in the court of an unnamed Hajib
Hajib
The term "hajib" is not to be confused with the word "hijab", which is a headscarf for Muslim women.A hajib was a government official in Al-Andalus and Egypt. They began as treasurers or Chamberlains but by 756, the position had evolved to be equivalent to a vizier or higher....
(vizier or minister) of 'Iraq which is referred to as the lady. The Hadith Bayad wa Riyad manuscript is believed to be the only illustrated manuscript known to have survived from more than eight centuries of Muslim and Arab presence in Spain.
Many of the tales in the One Thousand and One Nights are also love stories or involve romantic love as a central theme. This includes the frame story
Frame story
A frame story is a literary technique that sometimes serves as a companion piece to a story within a story, whereby an introductory or main narrative is presented, at least in part, for the purpose of setting the stage either for a more emphasized second narrative or for a set of shorter stories...
of Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
herself, and many of the stories she narrates, including "Aladdin
Aladdin
Aladdin is a Middle Eastern folk tale. It is one of the tales in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights , and one of the most famous, although it was actually added to the collection by Antoine Galland ....
", "The Ebony Horse", "The Three Apples", "Tale of Tàj al-Mulúk and the Princess Dunyà: The Lover and the Loved", "Adi bin Zayd and the Princess Hind", "Di'ibil al-Khuza'i With the Lady and Muslim bin al-Walid", "The Three Unfortunate Lovers", and others.
There were several elements of courtly love
Courtly love
Courtly love was a medieval European conception of nobly and chivalrously expressing love and admiration. Generally, courtly love was secret and between members of the nobility. It was also generally not practiced between husband and wife....
which were developed in Arabic literature, namely the notions of "love for love's sake" and "exaltation of the beloved lady" which have been traced back to Arabic literature of the 9th and 10th centuries. The notion of the "ennobling power" of love was developed in the early 11th century by the Persian psychologist and philosopher
Early Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...
, Ibn Sina
Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
(known as "Avicenna" in Europe), in his Arabic treatise Risala fi'l-Ishq (Treatise on Love). The final element of courtly love, the concept of "love as desire never to be fulfilled", was also at times implicit in Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
.
Murder mystery
The earliest known example of a whodunitWhodunit
A whodunit or whodunnit is a complex, plot-driven variety of the detective story in which the puzzle is the main feature of interest. The reader or viewer is provided with clues from which the identity of the perpetrator of the crime may be deduced before the solution is revealed in the final...
murder mystery
Crime fiction
Crime fiction is the literary genre that fictionalizes crimes, their detection, criminals and their motives. It is usually distinguished from mainstream fiction and other genres such as science fiction or historical fiction, but boundaries can be, and indeed are, blurred...
was "The Three Apples", one of the tales narrated by Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
in the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights). In this tale, a fisherman discovers a heavy locked chest along the Tigris
Tigris
The Tigris River is the eastern member of the two great rivers that define Mesopotamia, the other being the Euphrates. The river flows south from the mountains of southeastern Turkey through Iraq.-Geography:...
river and he sells it to the Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid
Harun al-Rashid
Hārūn al-Rashīd was the fifth Arab Abbasid Caliph in Iraq. He was born in Rey, Iran, close to modern Tehran. His birth date remains a point of discussion, though, as various sources give the dates from 763 to 766)....
, who then has the chest broken open only to find inside it the dead body of a young woman who was cut into pieces. Harun orders his vizier
Vizier
A vizier or in Arabic script ; ; sometimes spelled vazir, vizir, vasir, wazir, vesir, or vezir) is a high-ranking political advisor or minister in a Muslim government....
, Ja'far ibn Yahya
Ja'far ibn Yahya
Ja'far bin Yahya Barmaki, Jafar al-Barmaki was the son of a Persian Vizier of the Arab Abbasid Caliph, Harun al-Rashid, from whom he inherited that position. He was a member of the influential Barmakids family...
, to solve the crime and find the murdererer within three days, or be executed if he fails his assignment. Suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
is generated through multiple plot twist
Plot twist
A plot twist is a change in the expected direction or outcome of the plot of a film, television series, video game, novel, comic or other fictional work. It is a common practice in narration used to keep the interest of an audience, usually surprising them with a revelation...
s that occur as the story progesses. This may thus be considered an archetype for detective fiction
Detective fiction
Detective fiction is a sub-genre of crime fiction and mystery fiction in which an investigator , either professional or amateur, investigates a crime, often murder.-In ancient literature:...
.
Satire and comedy
In Arabic poetryArabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
, the genre of satirical
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
poetry was known as hija. Satire was introduced into prose literature by the Afro-Arab
Afro-Arab
Afro-Arab refers to people of mixed Black African and genealogical Arab ancestral heritage and/or linguistically and culturally Arabized Black Africans...
author Al-Jahiz
Al-Jahiz
Al-Jāḥiẓ was an Arabic prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics.In biology, Al-Jahiz introduced the concept of food chains and also proposed a scheme of animal evolution that entailed...
in the 9th century. While dealing with serious topics in what are now known as anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
, sociology and psychology, he introduced a satirical approach, "based on the premise that, however serious the subject under review, it could be made more interesting and thus achieve greater effect, if only one leavened the lump of solemnity by the insertion of a few amusing anecdotes or by the throwing out of some witty or paradoxical observations. He was well aware that, in treating of new themes in his prose works, he would have to employ a vocabulary of a nature more familiar in hija, satirical poetry." For example, in one of his zoological
Zoology
Zoology |zoölogy]]), is the branch of biology that relates to the animal kingdom, including the structure, embryology, evolution, classification, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinct...
works, he satirized the preference for longer human penis size
Human penis size
Human penis size is the measured length and width of the human penis. The most accurate measurement of the human penis comes from several measurements at different times, as there is natural variability in size due to arousal level, time of day, room temperature, frequency of sexual activity, and...
, writing: "If the length of the penis were a sign of honor, then the mule
Mule
A mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse. Horses and donkeys are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes. Of the two F1 hybrids between these two species, a mule is easier to obtain than a hinny...
would belong to the (honorable tribe of) Quraysh". Another satirical story based on this preference was an Arabian Nights tale called "Ali with the Large Member".
In the 10th century, the writer Tha'alibi
Tha'alibi
Tha'ālibī [Abu Manşūr 'Abd ul-Malik ibn Mahommed ibn Isma'īl] , Muslim philologist, was born in Nishapur, Iran, and is said to have been at one time a furrier. Although he wrote prose and verse of his own, he was most famous for his anthologies and collections of epigrams...
recorded satirical poetry written by the poets As-Salami and Abu Dulaf, with As-Salami praising Abu Dulaf's wide breadth of knowledge
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
and then mocking his ability in all these subjects, and with Abu Dulaf responding back and satirizing As-Salami in return. An example of Arabic political satire
Political satire
Political satire is a significant part of satire that specializes in gaining entertainment from politics; it has also been used with subversive intent where political speech and dissent are forbidden by a regime, as a method of advancing political arguments where such arguments are expressly...
included another 10th century poet Jarir satirizing Farazdaq as "a transgressor of the Sharia
Sharia
Sharia law, is the moral code and religious law of Islam. Sharia is derived from two primary sources of Islamic law: the precepts set forth in the Quran, and the example set by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the Sunnah. Fiqh jurisprudence interprets and extends the application of sharia to...
" and later Arabic poets in turn using the term "Farazdaq-like" as a form of political satire.
The terms "comedy
Comedy
Comedy , as a popular meaning, is any humorous discourse or work generally intended to amuse by creating laughter, especially in television, film, and stand-up comedy. This must be carefully distinguished from its academic definition, namely the comic theatre, whose Western origins are found in...
" and "satire" became synonymous after Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's Poetics was translated into Arabic in the medieval Islamic world
Islamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
, where it was elaborated upon by Arabic writers and Islamic philosophers
Early Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...
, such as Abu Bischr, his pupil Al-Farabi
Al-Farabi
' known in the West as Alpharabius , was a scientist and philosopher of the Islamic world...
, Avicenna
Avicenna
Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Sīnā , commonly known as Ibn Sīnā or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 treatises on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived...
, and Averroes
Averroes
' , better known just as Ibn Rushd , and in European literature as Averroes , was a Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy,...
. Due to cultural differences, they disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic
Arabic poetry
Arabic poetry is the earliest form of Arabic literature. Present knowledge of poetry in Arabic dates from the 6th century, but oral poetry is believed to predate that. Arabic poetry is categorized into two main types, rhymed, or measured, and prose, with the former greatly preceding the latter...
themes and forms, such as hija (satirical poetry). They viewed comedy as simply the "art of reprehension", and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or troublous beginnings and happy endings, associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term "comedy" thus gained a new semantic meaning in Medieval literature
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
.
Theatre
While puppetPuppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....
theatre and passion play
Passion play
A Passion play is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in Catholic tradition....
s were popular in the medieval Islamic world
Islamic Golden Age
During the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
, live theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...
and drama
Drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...
has only been a visible part of Arabic literature in the modern era. There may have been a much longer theatrical tradition but it was probably not regarded as legitimate literature and mostly went unrecorded. There is an ancient tradition of public performance amongst Shi'i Muslims of a play depicting the life and death of al-Husayn at the battle of Karbala
Battle of Karbala
The Battle of Karbala took place on Muharram 10, in the year 61 of the Islamic calendar in Karbala, in present day Iraq. On one side of the highly uneven battle were a small group of supporters and relatives of Muhammad's grandson Husain ibn Ali, and on the other was a large military detachment...
in 680 CE. There are also several plays composed by Shams al-din Muhammad ibn Daniyal in the 13th century when he mentions that older plays are getting stale and offers his new works as fresh material.
The most popular forms of theater in the medieval Islamic world were puppet theatre (which included hand puppets, shadow play
Shadow play
Shadow play or shadow puppetry Shadow puppets have a long history in China, India, Turkey and Java, and as a popular form of entertainment for both children and adults in many countries around the world. A shadow puppet is a cut-out figure held between a source of light and a translucent screen...
s and marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
productions) and live passion play
Passion play
A Passion play is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering and death. It is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in Catholic tradition....
s known as ta'ziya, where actors re-enact episodes from Muslim history
Muslim history
Muslim history is the history of Muslim people. In the history of Islam the followers of the religion of Islam have impacted political history, economic history, and military history...
. In particular, Shia Islamic plays
Play (theatre)
A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of scripted dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. There are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference whether their plays were performed...
revolved around the shaheed (martyrdom) of Ali
Ali
' |Ramaḍān]], 40 AH; approximately October 23, 598 or 600 or March 17, 599 – January 27, 661).His father's name was Abu Talib. Ali was also the cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and ruled over the Islamic Caliphate from 656 to 661, and was the first male convert to Islam...
's sons Hasan ibn Ali
Hasan ibn Ali
Al-Hasan ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Tālib is an important figure in Islam, the son of Fatimah the daughter of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and of the fourth Caliph Ali ibn Abi Talib. Hasan is a member of the Ahl al-Bayt and Ahl al-Kisa...
and Husayn ibn Ali
Husayn ibn Ali
Hussein ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib was the son of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah Zahrā...
. Live secular plays were known as akhraja, recorded in medieval adab
Adab (behavior)
Adab, in the context of behavior, refers to prescribed Islamic etiquette: "refinement, good manners, morals, decorum, decency, humaneness". While interpretation of the scope and particulars of Adab may vary among different cultures, common among these interpretations is regard for personal standing...
literature, though they were less common than puppetry and ta'ziya theater.
The Moors
Moors
The description Moors has referred to several historic and modern populations of the Maghreb region who are predominately of Berber and Arab descent. They came to conquer and rule the Iberian Peninsula for nearly 800 years. At that time they were Muslim, although earlier the people had followed...
had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele
George Peele
George Peele , was an English dramatist.-Life:Peele was christened on 25 July 1556. His father, who appears to have belonged to a Devonshire family, was clerk of Christ's Hospital, and wrote two treatises on bookkeeping...
and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele's The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice
The Merchant of Venice is a tragic comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare's other romantic comedies, the play is perhaps most remembered for its dramatic...
, Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, and possibly George Peele, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593. It is thought to be Shakespeare's first tragedy, and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were...
and Othello
Othello
The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1603, and based on the Italian short story "Un Capitano Moro" by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565...
, which featured a Moorish Othello
Othello (character)
Othello is a character in Shakespeare's Othello . The character's origin is traced to the tale, "Un Capitano Moro" in Gli Hecatommithi by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio. There, he is simply referred to as the Moor....
as its title character. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegation
Delegation
Delegation is the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person to carry out specific activities. However the person who delegated the work remains accountable for the outcome of the delegated work. Delegation empowers a subordinate to make decisions, i.e...
s from Morocco
Morocco
Morocco , officially the Kingdom of Morocco , is a country located in North Africa. It has a population of more than 32 million and an area of 710,850 km², and also primarily administers the disputed region of the Western Sahara...
to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century.
Philosophical novels
The Arab Islamic philosophersEarly Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...
, Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail
Ibn Tufail was an Andalusian Muslim polymath: an Arabic writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, vizier,...
(Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis, were pioneers of the philosophical novel
Philosophical novel
Philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of...
as they wrote the earliest novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
s dealing with philosophical fiction
Philosophy and literature
Philosophy and literature is the literary treatment of philosophers and philosophical themes, and the philosophical treatment of issues raised by literature.-The philosophy of literature:...
. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel Philosophus Autodidactus
Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is an Arabic philosophical novel and allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century.- Translations :* from Wikisource* English translations of Hayy bin Yaqzan...
as a response to al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
Abu Hāmed Mohammad ibn Mohammad al-Ghazzālī , known as Algazel to the western medieval world, born and died in Tus, in the Khorasan province of Persia was a Persian Muslim theologian, jurist, philosopher, and mystic....
's The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers
The Incoherence of the Philosophers is the title of a landmark 11th century polemic by the Sufi sympathetic Imam Al-Ghazali of the Asharite school of Islamic theology criticizing the Avicennian school of early Islamic philosophy...
. This was followed by Ibn al-Nafis who wrote a fictional narrative Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail's Philosophus Autodidactus. Both of these narratives had protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
s (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic
Autodidacticism
Autodidacticism is self-education or self-directed learning. In a sense, autodidacticism is "learning on your own" or "by yourself", and an autodidact is a person who teaches him or herself something. The term has its roots in the Ancient Greek words αὐτός and διδακτικός...
individuals spontaneously generated
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
in a cave
Cave
A cave or cavern is a natural underground space large enough for a human to enter. The term applies to natural cavities some part of which is in total darkness. The word cave also includes smaller spaces like rock shelters, sea caves, and grottos.Speleology is the science of exploration and study...
and living in seclusion on a desert island
Desert island
A desert island or uninhabited island is an island that has yet to be populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often used in movies or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves and...
, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone on the desert island for most of the story in Philosophus Autodidactus (until he meets a castaway
Castaway
A castaway is a person who is cast adrift or ashore. While the situation usually happens after a shipwreck, some people voluntarily stay behind on a deserted island, either to evade their captors or the world in general. Alternatively, a person or item can be cast away, meaning rejected or discarded...
named Absal), the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in Theologus Autodidactus (when castaways take him back to civilization with them), developing into the earliest known coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel.
Ibn al-Nafis described his book Theologus Autodidactus as a defense of "the system of Islam and the Muslims' doctrines on the missions of Prophets, the religious laws, the resurrection of the body, and the transitoriness of the world." He presents rational arguments for bodily resurrection
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
and the immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
of the human soul, using both demonstrative reasoning and material from the hadith corpus to prove his case. Later Islamic scholars viewed this work as a response to the metaphysical
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is a branch of philosophy concerned with explaining the fundamental nature of being and the world, although the term is not easily defined. Traditionally, metaphysics attempts to answer two basic questions in the broadest possible terms:...
claim of Avicenna and Ibn Tufail that bodily resurrection cannot be proven through reason, a view that was earlier criticized by al-Ghazali. Ibn al-Nafis' work was later translated into Latin and English as Theologus Autodidactus in the early 20th century.
A Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
translation of Ibn Tufail's work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke
Edward Pococke
Edward Pococke was an English Orientalist and biblical scholar.-Early life:He was the son of clergyman from Chieveley in Berkshire, and was educated at Lord Williams's School of Thame in Oxfordshire and at Corpus Christi College, Oxford...
the Younger. The first English translation by Simon Ockley
Simon Ockley
Simon Ockley was a British Orientalist.-Biography:Ockley was born at Exeter. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1697, MA. in 1701, and B.D. in 1710. He became fellow of Jesus College and vicar of Swavesey, and in 1711 was chosen Adams Professor of Arabic in the...
was published in 1708, and German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
and Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
translations were also published at the time. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe
Daniel Defoe , born Daniel Foe, was an English trader, writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. Defoe is notable for being one of the earliest proponents of the novel, as he helped to popularise the form in Britain and along with others such as Richardson,...
to write Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe
Robinson Crusoe is a novel by Daniel Defoe that was first published in 1719. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character—a castaway who spends 28 years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and...
, which also featured a desert island narrative and was regarded as the first novel in English
First novel in English
The following works of literature have each been claimed as the first novel in English.* Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, * William Baldwin, Beware the Cat,...
. Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...
, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist, in the late 17th century. The story also anticipated Rousseau's Émile
EMILE
EMILE is the Early Mac Image LoadEr, a bootloader for loading Linux on Macintosh computers that have m68k processors. It was written by Laurent Vivier, and is meant to eventually replace the Penguin Booter that is more usually in use....
in some ways, and is also similar to the later story of Mowgli
Mowgli
Mowgli is a fictional character from India who originally appeared in Rudyard Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his fantasies, The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book , which also featured stories about other...
in Rudyard Kipling
Rudyard Kipling
Joseph Rudyard Kipling was an English poet, short-story writer, and novelist chiefly remembered for his celebration of British imperialism, tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. Kipling received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Literature...
's The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book is a collection of stories by British Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–4. The original publications contain illustrations, some by Rudyard's father, John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling was born in India and spent the first six...
as well the character of Tarzan
Tarzan
Tarzan is a fictional character, an archetypal feral child raised in the African jungles by the Mangani "great apes"; he later experiences civilization only to largely reject it and return to the wild as a heroic adventurer...
, in that a baby is abandoned in a deserted tropical island where he is taken care of and fed by a mother wolf. Other European writers influenced by Philosophus Autodidactus include John Locke
John Locke
John Locke FRS , widely known as the Father of Liberalism, was an English philosopher and physician regarded as one of the most influential of Enlightenment thinkers. Considered one of the first of the British empiricists, following the tradition of Francis Bacon, he is equally important to social...
, Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
, Melchisédech Thévenot
Melchisédech Thévenot
Melchisédech Thévenot was a French author, scientist, traveler, cartographer, orientalist, inventor, and diplomat...
, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith
George Keith
George Keith was a Scottish missionary.-Life:Born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, to a Presbyterian family, he received an M.A. from the University of Aberdeen...
, Robert Barclay
Robert Barclay
Robert Barclay was a Scottish Quaker, one of the most eminent writers belonging to the Religious Society of Friends and a member of the Clan Barclay. He was also governor of the East Jersey colony in North America through most of the 1680s, although he himself never resided in the...
, the Quakers
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
, and Samuel Hartlib
Samuel Hartlib
Samuel Hartlib was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education. He settled in England, where he married and died...
.
Science fiction
Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (The Treatise of Kamil on the Prophet's Biography), known in EnglishEnglish language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as Theologus Autodidactus, written by the Arab
Arab
Arab people, also known as Arabs , are a panethnicity primarily living in the Arab world, which is located in Western Asia and North Africa. They are identified as such on one or more of genealogical, linguistic, or cultural grounds, with tribal affiliations, and intra-tribal relationships playing...
ian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), is the earliest known science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
novel. While also being an early desert island
Desert island
A desert island or uninhabited island is an island that has yet to be populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often used in movies or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves and...
story and coming of age
Coming of age
Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood. The age at which this transition takes place varies in society, as does the nature of the transition. It can be a simple legal convention or can be part of a ritual, as practiced by many societies...
story, the novel deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
, futurology
Futurology
Futures studies is the study of postulating possible, probable, and preferable futures and the worldviews and myths that underlie them. There is a debate as to whether this discipline is an art or science. In general, it can be considered as a branch under the more general scope of the field of...
, apocalyptic themes
Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction
Apocalyptic fiction is a sub-genre of science fiction that is concerned with the end of civilization due to a potentially existential catastrophe such as nuclear warfare, pandemic, extraterrestrial attack, impact event, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, supernatural...
, the end of the world and doomsday
Islamic eschatology
Islamic eschatology is concerned with the al-Qiyāmah . Like the other Abrahamic religions, Islam teaches the bodily resurrection of the dead, the fulfillment of a divine plan for creation, and the judgement of the soul; the righteous are rewarded with the pleasures of Jannah while the unrighteous...
, resurrection
Resurrection
Resurrection refers to the literal coming back to life of the biologically dead. It is used both with respect to particular individuals or the belief in a General Resurrection of the dead at the end of the world. The General Resurrection is featured prominently in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim...
and the afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
. Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using his own extensive scientific knowledge in anatomy, biology, physiology, astronomy, cosmology and geology. His main purpose behind this science fiction work was to explain Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
ic religious teachings in terms of science
Islamic science
Science in the medieval Islamic world, also known as Islamic science or Arabic science, is the science developed and practised in the Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age . During this time, Indian, Iranian and especially Greek knowledge was translated into Arabic...
and philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy
Early Islamic philosophy or classical Islamic philosophy is a period of intense philosophical development beginning in the 2nd century AH of the Islamic calendar and lasting until the 6th century AH...
. For example, it was through this novel that Ibn al-Nafis introduces his scientific theory of metabolism
Metabolism
Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that happen in the cells of living organisms to sustain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments. Metabolism is usually divided into two categories...
, and he makes references to his own scientific discovery of the pulmonary circulation
Pulmonary circulation
Pulmonary circulation is the half portion of the cardiovascular system which carries Oxygen-depleted Blood away from the heart, to the Lungs, and returns oxygenated blood back to the heart. Encyclopedic description and discovery of the pulmonary circulation is widely attributed to Doctor Ibn...
in order to explain bodily resurrection. The novel was later translated into English as Theologus Autodidactus in the early 20th century.
A number of stories within
Story within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights) also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality
Elixir of life
The elixir of life, also known as the elixir of immortality and sometimes equated with the philosopher's stone, is a legendary potion, or drink, that grants the drinker eternal life and or eternal youth. Many practitioners of alchemy pursued it. The elixir of life was also said to be able to create...
leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden
Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden is in the Bible's Book of Genesis as being the place where the first man, Adam, and his wife, Eve, lived after they were created by God. Literally, the Bible speaks about a garden in Eden...
and to Jahannam
Jahannam
Jahannam is the Arabic language equivalent to Hell. The term comes from the Greek Gehenna, itself derived from the Hebrew geographical name for the Valley of Hinnom.-Jahannam in the Qur'an:...
, and travel across the cosmos
Cosmos
In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic
Galaxy
A galaxy is a massive, gravitationally bound system that consists of stars and stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and an important but poorly understood component tentatively dubbed dark matter. The word galaxy is derived from the Greek galaxias , literally "milky", a...
science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of jinns
Genie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
, mermaid
Mermaid
A mermaid is a mythological aquatic creature with a female human head, arms, and torso and the tail of a fish. A male version of a mermaid is known as a "merman" and in general both males and females are known as "merfolk"...
s, talking serpents
Serpent (symbolism)
Serpent in Latin means: Rory Collins :&, in turn, from the Biblical Hebrew word of: "saraf" with root letters of: which refers to something burning-as, the pain of poisonous snake's bite was likened to internal burning.This word is commonly used in a specifically mythic or religious context,...
, talking tree
Tree
A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...
s, and other forms of life. In another Arabian Nights tale, the protagonist Abdullah the Fisherman gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...
society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism
Primitive communism
Primitive communism is a term used by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to describe what they interpreted as early forms of communism: As a model, primitive communism is usually used to describe early hunter-gatherer societies, that had no hierarchical social class structures or capital accumulation...
where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological
Archaeology
Archaeology, or archeology , is the study of human society, primarily through the recovery and analysis of the material culture and environmental data that they have left behind, which includes artifacts, architecture, biofacts and cultural landscapes...
expedition across the Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon
Solomon
Solomon , according to the Book of Kings and the Book of Chronicles, a King of Israel and according to the Talmud one of the 48 prophets, is identified as the son of David, also called Jedidiah in 2 Samuel 12:25, and is described as the third king of the United Monarchy, and the final king before...
once used to trap a jinn
Genie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
, and, along the way, encounter a mummified
Mummy
A mummy is a body, human or animal, whose skin and organs have been preserved by either intentional or incidental exposure to chemicals, extreme coldness , very low humidity, or lack of air when bodies are submerged in bogs, so that the recovered body will not decay further if kept in cool and dry...
queen, petrified
Petrifaction in mythology and fiction
Petrifaction, as definied as turning people to stone, is also a common theme in folklore and mythology, as well as in some works of modern fiction.-Historical:...
inhabitants, life-like humanoid robot
Humanoid robot
A humanoid robot or an anthropomorphic robot is a robot with its overall appearance, based on that of the human body, allowing interaction with made-for-human tools or environments. In general humanoid robots have a torso with a head, two arms and two legs, although some forms of humanoid robots...
s and automata
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
, seductive marionette
Marionette
A marionette is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a manipulator. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or revealed to an audience by using a vertical or horizontal control bar in different forms...
s dancing without strings, and a brass horseman robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny boatman
Sailor
A sailor, mariner, or seaman is a person who navigates water-borne vessels or assists in their operation, maintenance, or service. The term can apply to professional mariners, military personnel, and recreational sailors as well as a plethora of other uses...
. "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction.
Other examples of early Arabic proto-science fiction include Al-Farabi
Al-Farabi
' known in the West as Alpharabius , was a scientist and philosopher of the Islamic world...
's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n society, Al-Qazwini
Zakariya al-Qazwini
Abu Yahya Zakariya' ibn Muhammad al-Qazwini , was a Persian physician, astronomer, geographer and proto-science fiction writer....
's futuristic tale of Awaj bin Anfaq about a man who travelled to Earth from a distant planet, and elements such as the flying carpet.
The decline of Arabic literature
The expansion of the Arab people in the 7th and 8th century brought them into contact with a variety of different peoples who would affect their culture. Most significant for literature was the ancient civilization of Persia. Shu'ubiyyaShu'ubiyya
Shu'ubiyyah refers to the response by non-Arab Muslims to the privileged status of Arabs within the Ummah.There has been discrimination and in many cases oppression of minority groups resulting in many defined periods of cultural struggle throughout Islamic History.-Terminology:The name of the...
is the name of the conflict between the Arabs and Non-Arabs. Although producing heated debate amongst scholars and varying styles of literature, this was not a damaging conflict and had more to do with forging a single Islamic cultural identity. Bashshar ibn Burd, of Persian heritage, summed up his own stance in a few lines of poetry:
- Never did he sing camel songs behind a scabby beast,
- nor pierce the bitter colocynth out of sheer hunger
- nor dig a lizard out of the ground and eat it...
The cultural heritage of the desert dwelling Arabs continued to show its influence even though many scholars and writers were living in the large Arab cities. When Khalil ibn Ahmad
Khalil ibn Ahmad
Abu ‘Abd ar-Rahmān al-Khalīl ibn Ahmad al-Farāhīdī , more commonly known as al-Farahidi, was a philologist from southern Arabia . His best known contributions are Kitab al-'Ayn , the current standard for Harakat , and the invention al-'arud . He moved to Basra, Iraq, he was Ibadi...
enumerated the parts of poetry he called the line of verse a bayt or tent and sabah or tent-rope for a foot. Even during the 20th century this nostalgia for the simple desert life would appear or at least be consciously revived.
A slow resurgence of the Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
and a re-location of the government and main seat of learning to Baghdad
Baghdad
Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...
, reduced the production of Arabic literature. Many Arabic themes and styles were taken up in Persian with Omar Khayyam
Omar Khayyám
Omar Khayyám was aPersian polymath: philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet. He also wrote treatises on mechanics, geography, mineralogy, music, climatology and theology....
, Attar and Rumi all clearly influenced by the earlier work. The Arabic language still initially retained its importance in politics and administration, although the rise of the Ottoman Empire
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
confined it solely to religion. Alongside Persian
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
, the many variants of the Turkic languages
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages constitute a language family of at least thirty five languages, spoken by Turkic peoples across a vast area from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean to Siberia and Western China, and are considered to be part of the proposed Altaic language family.Turkic languages are spoken...
would dominate the literature of the Arab region until the 20th century. Nevertheless, some Arabic influences remained visible.
Modern literature
A revival took place in Arabic literature during the 19th century along with much of Arabic culture and it is referred to in Arabic as al-NahdaAl-Nahda
Al-Nahda was a cultural renaissance that began in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Egypt, then later moving to Ottoman-ruled Arabic-speaking regions including Lebanon, Syria and others...
(النهضة), or Renaissance. This resurgence of writing in Arabic was confined mainly to Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
and Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
until the 20th century when it spread to other countries in the region. This Renaissance was not only felt within the Arab world but also beyond with a great interest in the translating of Arabic works into European languages. Although the use of the Arabic language was revived, particularly in poetry, many of the tropes of the previous literature which served to make it so ornate and complicated were dropped.
Just as in the 8th century when a movement to translate ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
and other literature helped vitalise Arabic literature, another translation movement would offer new ideas and material for Arabic. An early popular success was The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas's most popular work. He completed the work in 1844...
which spurred a host of historical novel
Historical novel
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, a historical novel is-Development:An early example of historical prose fiction is Luó Guànzhōng's 14th century Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which covers one of the most important periods of Chinese history and left a lasting impact on Chinese culture.The...
s on Arabic subjects. Two important translators were Rifa'a el-Tahtawi
Rifa'a el-Tahtawi
Rifa'a al-Tahtawi was an Egyptian writer, teacher, translator, Egyptologist and renaissance intellectual...
and Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra
Jabra Ibrahim Jabra was a Palestinian author of Syriac-Orthodox origin born in Bethlehem at the time of the British Mandate...
.
Throughout the 20th century, Arabic writers in both poetry and prose have reflected the changing political and social circumstances of the Arab world in their work. Anti-colonial themes were prominent early in the 20th century, with writers continuing to explore the region's relationship with the West until the present day. Internal political upheaval has also been a challenge, with some writers suffering censorship and some such as There are many Arabic contemporary well known writes like Mahmoud saeed (Iraq) he wrought a very great novels: Bin Barka Ally, and I am the one who saw (Saddam City). And others Sonallah Ibrahim
Sonallah Ibrahim
Son'allah Ibrahim is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer and one of the "Sixties Generation" who is known for his leftist and nationalist views which are expressed rather directly in his work...
and Abdul Rahman Munif
Abdul Rahman Munif
Abdul Rahman Munif is one of the most important Arabic novelists of the 20th century.He is most noted for closely reflecting the political surroundings of his day.-Life:...
being imprisoned. At the same time, others who had written works supporting or praiseworthy of governments were promoted to positions of authority within cultural bodies. Non-fiction writers and academics have also produced political polemics and criticisms aiming to re-shape Arabic politics. Some of the best known are Taha Hussein's The Future of Culture in Egypt
The Future of Culture in Egypt
The Future of Culture in Egypt is a 1938 book by the Egyptian writer Taha Hussein.The book is a work of Egyptian nationalism advocating both independence and the adoption of various European modes of behaviour and institutions such as a strong military...
which was an important work of Egyptian nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
and the works of Nawal el-Saadawi who campaigns for women's rights.
Modern Arabic Poetry
See article Modern Arabic PoetryModern Arabic Poetry
By definition, Arabic poetry is poetry written in formal Arabic and follows one of the 16 rhymes . The structure follows an internal or/and external technique...
Beginning in the 19th century and early 20th centuries, as part of what is now called the renaissance or al-Nahda
Al-Nahda
Al-Nahda was a cultural renaissance that began in the late 19th century and early 20th century in Egypt, then later moving to Ottoman-ruled Arabic-speaking regions including Lebanon, Syria and others...
, poets like Ahmad Shawqi and Hafiz Ibrahim began to explore the possibility of developing the classical poetic forms. These earliest neoclassical poets were acquainted with Western literature, but mostly continued to write in the classical qasida style. Increasingly, however, poets such as Khalil Mutran began to feel the limitations of the genre.
The next generation of poets, the so-called romantic poets, had begun to a far greater extent to absorb the impact of developments in Western poetry, and felt constrained by neo-classical tradition which writers like Shawqi tried to uphold. The Mahjar poets, including Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān,Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, or Jibrān Xalīl Jibrān; Arabic , January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer...
and Mikha'il Na'ima
Mikha'il Na'ima
Mikha'il Na'ima was a Lebanese author and poet of the New York Pen League.-Biography:...
, were emigrants who mostly wrote in the Americas, but were similarly beginning to experiment further with the possibilities of Arabic poetry. This experimentation continued in the Middle East throughout the first half of the 20th century.
By the later part of the 20th century, Arab poets had begun to experiment with more modernist styles and themes. Perhaps one of the most well known, seen as being the originator of "free verse" in Arabic, is the Iraqi poet Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
Badr Shakir al-Sayyab
Badr Shakir al Sayyab is an Iraqi and Arab poet, born in Jekor, a town south of Basra in Iraq. The eldest child of a date grower and shepherd. He graduated from the Higher teachers training college of Baghdad in 1948...
. More recently, poets such as Adunis have pushed the boundaries of stylistic experimentation even further.
Poetry retains a very important status in the Arab world. Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish
Mahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet...
was regarded as the Palestinian national poet, and his funeral was attended by thousands of mourners. Nizar Qabbani
Nizar Qabbani
Nizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet and publisher. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, feminism, religion, and Arab nationalism...
, the Syrian poet, addressed less political themes, but was regarded as a cultural icon, and his poems provide the lyrics for many popular songs.
Modern Arabic novels
Characteristic of the nahda period of revival were two distinct trends. The Neo-Classical movement sought to rediscover the literary traditions of the past, and was influenced by traditional literary genres such as the maqamaMaqama
Maqāma are an Arabic literary genre of rhymed prose with intervals of poetry in which rhetorical extravagance is conspicuous. The 10th century author Badī' al-Zaman al-Hamadhāni is said to have invented the form, which was extended by al-Hariri of Basra in the next century...
and the Thousand and One Nights. In contrast, the Modernist movement began by translating Western works, primarily novels, into Arabic.
Individual authors in Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
, Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
, and Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
created original works by imitating the classical maqama. The most prominent of these was al-Muwaylihi, whose book, The Hadith of Issa ibn Hisham (حديث عيسى بن هشام), critiqued Egyptian society in the period of Ismail. This work constitutes the first stage in the development of the modern Arabic novel. This trend was furthered by Georgy Zeidan, a Lebanese Christian writer who immigrated with his family to Egypt following the Damascus
Damascus
Damascus , commonly known in Syria as Al Sham , and as the City of Jasmine , is the capital and the second largest city of Syria after Aleppo, both are part of the country's 14 governorates. In addition to being one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, Damascus is a major...
riots of 1860. In the early twentieth century, Zeidan serialized his historical novels in the Egyptian newspaper al-Hilal. These novels were extremely popular because of their clarity of language, simple structure, and the author's vivid imagination. Two other important writers from this period were Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran
Khalil Gibran Jubrān Khalīl Jubrān,Jibrān Khalīl Jibrān, or Jibrān Xalīl Jibrān; Arabic , January 6, 1883 – April 10, 1931) also known as Kahlil Gibran, was a Lebanese American artist, poet, and writer...
and Mikha'il Na'ima
Mikha'il Na'ima
Mikha'il Na'ima was a Lebanese author and poet of the New York Pen League.-Biography:...
, both of whom incorporated philosophical musings into their works.
Nevertheless, literary critics do not consider the works of these four authors to be true novels, but rather indications of the form that the modern novel would assume. Many of these critics point to Zaynab
Zaynab (novel)
Husayn Haykal's Zaynab is the first modern Egyptian novel published in 1913. The book depicts life in the Egyptian countryside and delves into the relationships between men and women.-Plot introduction:...
, a novel by Muhammad Husayn Haykal
Muhammad Husayn Haykal
Muhammad Hussein Haekal was an Egyptian writer, journalist, politician and Minister of Education in Egypt.- Life :...
as the first true Arabic-language novel, while others point to Adraa Denshawi by Muhammad Tahir Haqqi.
A common theme in the modern Arabic novel is the study of family life with obvious resonances with the wider family of the Arabic world. Many of the novels have been unable to avoid the politics and conflicts of the region with war often acting as background to small scale family dramas. The works of Naguib Mahfuz depict life in Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, and his Cairo Trilogy
Cairo Trilogy
The Cairo Trilogy or ) is a trilogy of novels written by the Egyptian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Naguib Mahfouz.The three novels are, in order:* Palace Walk...
, describing the struggles of a modern Cairene family across three generations, won him a Nobel prize for literature in 1988. He was the first Arabic writer to win the prize.
Modern plays
Modern Arabic drama began to be written in the 19th century chiefly in Egypt and mainly influenced and in imitation of French works. It was not until the 20th century that it began to develop a distinctly Arab flavour and be seen elsewhere. The most important Arab playwright was Tawfiq al-Hakim whose first play was a re-telling of the Qur'anic story of the Seven sleepersSeven Sleepers
The Seven Sleepers, commonly called the "Seven Sleepers of Ephesus", refers to a group of Christian youths who hid inside a cave outside the city of Ephesus around 250 AD, to escape a persecution of Christians being conducted during the reign of the Roman emperor Decius...
and the second an epilogue for the Thousand and One Nights. Other important dramatists of the region include Yusuf al'Ani of Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
and Saadallah Wannous
Saadallah Wannous
Saadallah Wannous , Syrian playwright. He was born in the village of Hussein al-Bahr, near Tartous from the Alawites sect , where he received his early education. He studied journalism in Cairo, Egypt and later served as editor of the art and cultural sections of the Syrian paper Al-Baath and the...
of Syria
Syria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
.
Women in Arabic literature
Whilst not playing a major part in Arabic literature women have had a continuing role. The earliest poetesses were al-KhansaAl-Khansa
Tumāḍir bint ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥarth ibn al-Sharīd al-Sulamīyah , usually simply referred to as al-Khansā’ was a 7th century Arabic poet. She was born and raised in the Najd region...
and Layla al-Akhyaliyyah of the 7th century. Their concentration on the ritha' or elegy suggests that this was a form designated for women to work in. A later poetess Walladah, Umawi princess of al-Andulus wrote Sufi poetry and was the lover of fellow poet ibn Zaydun
Ibn Zaydún
Abu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi known as Ibn Zaydún was a famous Arab poet of Cordoba and Seville. His romantic and literary life was dominated by his relations with the poetess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, the daughter of the Ummayad Caliph Muhammad III of Cordoba...
. These and other minor women writers suggest a hidden world of female literature. Women still played an important part as characters in Arabic literature with Sirat al-amirah Dhat al-Himmah an Arabic epic
Arabic epic literature
Arabic epic literature encompasses epic poetry and epic fantasy in Arabic literature. Virtually all societies have developed folk tales encompassing tales of heroes...
with a female warrior as the chief protagonist and Scheherazade
Scheherazade
Scheherazade , sometimes Scheherazadea, Persian transliteration Shahrazad or Shahrzād is a legendary Persian queen and the storyteller of One Thousand and One Nights.-Narration :...
cunningly telling stories in the Thousand and One Nights to save her life.
Modern Arabic literature has allowed a greater number of female writers' works to be published: May Ziade
May Ziade
May Ziade , was a prolific Christian Lebanese-Palestinian poet, essayist and translator....
, Fadwa Touqan, Suhayr al-Qalamawi, Ulfat Idlibi, Layla Ba'albakki, Zuhrabi Mattummal, Hoda Barakat
Hoda Barakat
Hoda Barakat is an acclaimed Lebanese novelist who lived much of her life in Beirut and later moved to Paris, where she now resides...
and Alifa Rifaat
Alifa Rifaat
Fatimah Rifaat better known by her pen name Alifa Rifaat, was an Egyptian author whose controversial short stories are renowned for their depictions of the dynamics of female sexuality, relationships, and loss in rural Egyptian culture...
are just some of the novelists and short story writers. There has also be a number of significant female academics such as Zaynab al-Ghazali, Nawal el-Saadawi and Fatema Mernissi
Fatema Mernissi
Fatema or Fatima Mernissi is a Moroccan feminist writer and sociologist.-Biography:Mernissi was born into a middle-class family in Fes in 1940. She received her primary education in a school established by the nationalist movement, and secondary level education in an all-girls school funded by the...
who amongst other subject wrote of the place of women in Muslim society. Women writers also courted controversy with Layla Ba'albakki charged with insulting public decency with her short story Spaceships of Tenderness to the Moon.
Literary criticism
Criticism has been inherent in Arabic literature from the start. The poetry festivals of the pre-Islamic period often pitched two poets against each other in a war of verse in which one would be deemed to have won by the audience. The subject adopted a more official status with Islamic study of the Qur'an. Although nothing which might be termed 'literary criticism', in the modern sense, was applied to a work held to be i'jaz or inimitable and divinely inspired, analysis was permitted. This study allowed for better understanding of the message and facilitated interpretation for practical use, all of which help the development of a critical method important for later work on other literature. A clear distinction regularly drawn between works in literary language and popular works has meant that only part of the literature in Arabic was usually considered worthy of study and criticism.Some of the first studies of the poetry are Qawa'id al-shi'r or The Rules of Poetry by Tha'lab and Naqd al-shi'r Poetic Criticism by Qudamah ibn Ja'far. Other works tended to continue the tradition of contrasting two poets in order to determine which one best follows the rule of classical poetic structure. Plagiarism also became a significant idea exercising the critics' concerns. The works of al-Mutanabbi were particularly studied with this concern. He was considered by many the greatest of all Arab poets but his own arrogant self-regard for his abilities did not endear him to other writers and they looked for a source for his verse. Just as there were collections of facts written about many different subjects, numerous collections detailing every possible rhetorical figure used in literature emerged as well as how to write guides.
Modern criticism at first compared the new works unfavourably with the classical ideals of the past but these standards were soon rejected as too artificial. The adoption of the forms of European romantic poetry
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
dictated the introduction of corresponding critical standards. Taha Hussayn, himself keen on European thought, would even dare to challenge the Qur'an with modern critical analysis in which he pointed out the ideas and stories borrowed from pre-Islamic poetry.
Outside views of Arabic literature
Literature in Arabic has been largely unknown outside the Islamic world. Arabic has frequently acted as a time capsule, preserving literature form ancient civilisations to be re-discovered in RenaissanceRenaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
Europe and as a conduit for transmitting literature from distant regions. In this role though it is rarely read but simply re-translated into another standard language like Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
. One of the first important translations of Arabic literature was Robert of Ketton
Robert of Ketton
Robert of Ketton was an English medieval theologian, astronomer and Arabist.Ketton, where Robert was either born or perhaps first took holy orders, is a small village in Rutland, a few miles from Stamford.Robert is believed to have been educated at the Cathedral School of Paris...
's translation of the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
in the 12th century but it would not be until the early 18th century that much of Arabic's diverse literature would be recognised, largely due to Arabist
Arabist
This is an article about the western scholars known as Arabists, not the political movement Pan-Arabism.An Arabist is someone normally from outside the Arab World who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, and often Arabic literature.-Origins:Arabists began in medieval...
s such as Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot
Forster Fitzgerald Arbuthnot was a notable British Orientalist and translator. His early career was spent as a civil servant in India; his last post was as Collector for the Bombay government. He was named after his grandfather, Field Marshal Sir John FitzGerald...
and his books such as Arabic Authors: A Manual of Arabian History and Literature.
Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland
Antoine Galland was a French orientalist and archaeologist, most famous as the first European translator of The Thousand and One Nights...
's translation of the Thousand and One Nights was the first major work in Arabic which found great success outside the Muslim world. Other significant translators were Friedrich Rückert
Friedrich Rückert
Friedrich Rückert was a German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages.-Biography:Rückert was born at Schweinfurt and was the eldest son of a lawyer. He was educated at the local Gymnasium and at the universities of Würzburg and Heidelberg. From 1816-1817, he worked on the editorial...
and Richard Burton
Richard Francis Burton
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton KCMG FRGS was a British geographer, explorer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, linguist, poet, fencer and diplomat. He was known for his travels and explorations within Asia, Africa and the Americas as well as his...
, along with many working at Fort William, India
Fort William, India
Fort William is a fort built in Calcutta on the Eastern banks of the River Hooghly, the major distributary of the River Ganges, during the early years of the Bengal Presidency of British India. It was named after King William III of England...
. The Arabic works and many more in other eastern languages fuelled a fascination in Orientalism
Orientalism
Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...
within Europe. Works of dubious 'foreign' morals were particularly popular but even these were censored for content, such as homosexual references, which were not permitted in Victorian society
Victorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
. Most of the works chosen for translation helped confirm the stereotypes of the audiences with many more still untranslated. Few modern Arabic works have been translated into other languages.
However, towards the end of the twentieth century, there was an increase of translations of Arabic books into other languages, and Arabic authors began to receive acclaim. Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz
Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
has most if not all of his works translated after he won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. Several other writers, including Abdul Rahman Munif
Abdul Rahman Munif
Abdul Rahman Munif is one of the most important Arabic novelists of the 20th century.He is most noted for closely reflecting the political surroundings of his day.-Life:...
and Tayeb Salih
Tayeb Salih
-Early life:Born in Karmakol, near the village of Al Dabbah in the Northern Province of Sudan, he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in...
have been taken quite seriously by Western scholars, and both Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa al-Aswany is an Egyptian writer, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya.-Biography:Alaa Al Aswany studied to be a dentist, first in Egypt, and then later Chicago....
's The Yacoubian Building
The Yacoubian Building
The Yacoubian Building is a novel by Egyptian author Alaa-Al-Aswany. The book was made into a film of the same name in 2006 and into a TV series in 2007....
and Rajaa al-Sanea
Rajaa al-Sanea
Rajaa al-Sanea is a Saudi writer who became famous through her novel Girls of Riyadh, or Banat al-Riyadh. The book was first published in Lebanon in 2005 and in English in 2007. The book was long-listed for the Dublin Literary Award in 2009...
's Girls of Riyadh
Girls of Riyadh
Girls of Riyadh, or Banat al-Riyadh, is a novel by Rajaa Alsanea. The book, written in the form of e-mails, recounts the personal lives of four young Saudi girls, Lamees, Michelle , Gamrah, and Sadeem.-Plot summary:...
attracted significant Western media attention in the first decade of the 21st century.
The Abu Dhabi International Book Fair
Taking place in March/April, Abu Dhabi International Book Fair brings internationality into the PublishingPublishing
Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...
: As since 2007 KITAB (arabic for „book“) organises the fair - a Joint Venture
Joint venture
A joint venture is a business agreement in which parties agree to develop, for a finite time, a new entity and new assets by contributing equity. They exercise control over the enterprise and consequently share revenues, expenses and assets...
of the Authority for Culture and Heritage and the Frankfurt Book Fair
Frankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. As to the number of visitors, the Turin Book Fair attracts about as many visitors, viz. some 300,000....
.
In 1987 the Authority for Culture and Heritage had founded the fair. Traditionally, the bookfairs in the area are public fairs to sell to everyone. Now the new Abu Dhabi International Book Fair organisation provides workshops, also over the whole year, to the arabic bookmarkets. The Fair is no to trade booklicences. There is little distribution system in the countries around, censorship, small numbers of printed copies per book... There is an up and coming English-speaking education system.
In 2009-numbers: The Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi , literally Father of Gazelle, is the capital and the second largest city of the United Arab Emirates in terms of population and the largest of the seven member emirates of the United Arab Emirates. Abu Dhabi lies on a T-shaped island jutting into the Persian Gulf from the central western...
International Book Fair had 200.000 visitors, 637 exhibitors from 52 countries, most Arabian.
External links
- www.adbookfair.com
- In Flight Arabic
- An Nuur
- Al Ahram
- Cairo Press Review
- Cairo Times
- Daily News (Egypt)
Poetry
- Ahmad ibn-al-Husayn al-MutanabbiAhmad ibn-al-Husayn al-MutanabbiAbu at-Tayyib Ahmad ibn al-Husayn al-Mutanabbi was an Arab poet. He is considered as one of the greatest poets in the Arabic language. Most of his poetry revolves around praising the kings he visited during his lifetime. Some consider his 326 poems to be a great representation of his life...
, (915–965) - Abu TammamAbu TammamAbu Tammam was an Abbasid era Arab poet and Muslim convert born to Christian parents.- Biography :...
- Abu NuwasAbu NuwasAbu-Nuwas al-Hasan ben Hani Al-Hakami ,a known as Abū-Nuwās , was one of the greatest of classical Arabic poets, who also composed in Persian on occasion. Born in the city of Ahvaz in Persia, of an Arab father and a Persian mother, he became a master of all the contemporary genres of Arabic poetry...
, (756–815) - Al-KhansaAl-KhansaTumāḍir bint ʿAmr ibn al-Ḥarth ibn al-Sharīd al-Sulamīyah , usually simply referred to as al-Khansā’ was a 7th century Arabic poet. She was born and raised in the Najd region...
(7th century female poet) - Al-FarazdaqAl-FarazdaqHammam ibn Ghalib Abu Firas, commonly known as al-Farazdaq was an Arab poet....
- Asma bint MarwanAsma bint MarwanʻAṣmāʼ bint Marwān was a female member of the Ummayad clan who lived in Medina in 7th century Arabia.The story of her death by command of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, after she bitterly opposed him with poetry and provoked other pagans to commit violence against him, can be found in the sīra...
- Jarir ibn Atiyah
- Ibn ZaydunIbn ZaydúnAbu al-Waleed Ahmad Ibn Zaydún al-Makhzumi known as Ibn Zaydún was a famous Arab poet of Cordoba and Seville. His romantic and literary life was dominated by his relations with the poetess Wallada bint al-Mustakfi, the daughter of the Ummayad Caliph Muhammad III of Cordoba...
- Taghribat Bani HilalTaghribat Bani HilalTaghribat Bani Hilal is an Arabic epic recounting the Banu Hilal's journey from Najd to Tunisia via Egypt and conquest of the latter. It is built around historical events that took place in the 11th century...
forms part of the epicEpic poetryAn epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...
tradition. - Mohamed GhozziMohamed GhozziMohamed Ghozzi , born on the 24th February 1949 in Kairouan, is a Tunisian poet and critic, known for his poems with rich allusions for soufism and childhood.He has also written many tales and several plays.- Poetry Books :...
Historical
- Antara Ibn Shaddad al-'Absi, pre-Islamic Arab hero and poet (fl.FloruitFloruit , abbreviated fl. , is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something was active...
580 CE). - Muhammad al-Qasim al-HaririAl-Hariri of BasraMuhammad al-Qasim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad ibn Uthman al-Hariri , popularly known as al-Hariri of Basra was an Arab poet, scholar of the Arabic language and a high government official of the Seljuk Empire...
(1054–1122) - Al-JahizAl-JahizAl-Jāḥiẓ was an Arabic prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics.In biology, Al-Jahiz introduced the concept of food chains and also proposed a scheme of animal evolution that entailed...
(776–869) - Muhammad al-Nawaji bin Hasan bin Ali bin Othman, Cairene mystic, Sufi and poet (1383?–1455)
- Ibn TufailIbn TufailIbn Tufail was an Andalusian Muslim polymath: an Arabic writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, vizier,...
, also philosopher
Modern
- Nizar QabbaniNizar QabbaniNizar Tawfiq Qabbani was a Syrian diplomat, poet and publisher. His poetic style combines simplicity and elegance in exploring themes of love, eroticism, feminism, religion, and Arab nationalism...
,Syrian poet - Mahmoud SaeedMahmoud SaeedMahmoud Saeed is an Iraqi-born American award-winning novelist.Born in Mosul, Saeed has written more than twenty novels and short story collections, and hundreds of articles. He started writing short stories at an early age. He wrote an award-winning short story in the Newspaper “Fatal Iraq,...
,Iraqi novelist - Naguib MahfouzNaguib MahfouzNaguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism. He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie...
, (1911–2006) Nobel Prize for Literature (19881988 in literatureThe year 1988 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Margaret Atwood - Cat's Eye*J.G. Ballard - Memories of the Space Age*Iain M...
), famous for the Cairo Trilogy about life in the sprawling inner city - Mahmoud DarwishMahmoud DarwishMahmoud Darwish was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet...
, prominent Palestinian poet, considered the best contemporary poet in the Arab literature. - 'Abbas Mahmud Al-Aqqad, notable Egyptian author and thinker
- Zakaria Tamer, Syrian writer, noted for his short stories
- Tayeb SalihTayeb Salih-Early life:Born in Karmakol, near the village of Al Dabbah in the Northern Province of Sudan, he studied at the University of Khartoum before leaving for the University of London in England. Coming from a background of small farmers and religious teachers, his original intention was to work in...
, Sudanese writer - Abdul Rahman MunifAbdul Rahman MunifAbdul Rahman Munif is one of the most important Arabic novelists of the 20th century.He is most noted for closely reflecting the political surroundings of his day.-Life:...
- Hanna MinaHanna MinaHanna Mina is a Syrian writer, described as "Syria's most prominent novelist".His early novels belong to the movement of social realism, and focus on class conflict; his later works contain "a more symbolic analysis of class differences"...
, Syria's foremost novelist - May Ziadeh, pioneer female writer
- Ahlam MosteghanemiAhlam MosteghanemiAhlam Mosteghanemi is a notable Algerian writer born in Tunis, the daughter of revolutionary leader Mohammed Chérif. She is the first female Algerian author of Arabic-language works to be translated into English . Thus far, the first two of a trilogy have been translated...
, notable for being the first Algerian woman published in English - Hanan al-ShaykhHanan al-ShaykhHanan al-Shaykh is a Lebanese author of contemporary Arab women's literature.- Biography :Hanan al-Shaykh's family background is that of a strict Shi'a...
, controversial female Lebanese writer. Author of "The Story of Zahra" - Ghassan KanafaniGhassan KanafaniGhassan Kanafani was a Palestinian writer and a leading member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He was assassinated by car bomb in Beirut, allegedly by the Mossad.- Early years :Ghassan Fayiz Kanafani was born in 1936 in the then Acre , British Mandate of Palestine...
, Palestinian writer and political activist - Elias KhouryElias Khoury (writer)Elias Khoury is a Lebanese novelist, playwright, critic and a prominent public intellectual. He has published ten novels, which have been translated into several foreign languages, as well as several works of literary criticism. He has also written three plays...
, Lebanese novelist - Sonallah IbrahimSonallah IbrahimSon'allah Ibrahim is an Egyptian novelist and short story writer and one of the "Sixties Generation" who is known for his leftist and nationalist views which are expressed rather directly in his work...
, leftist Egyptian novelist - Gibran Khalil Gibran, (1883–1931) Lebanese poet and philosopher
See also
- Arabic epic literatureArabic epic literatureArabic epic literature encompasses epic poetry and epic fantasy in Arabic literature. Virtually all societies have developed folk tales encompassing tales of heroes...
- Arabian mythologyArabian mythologyArabian mythology comprises the ancient, pre-Islamic beliefs of the Arabs. Prior to Islam the Kaaba of Mecca was covered in symbols representing the myriad demons, djinn, demigods, or simply tribal gods and other assorted deities which represented the polytheistic culture of pre-Islamic Arabia...
- Literary ArabicLiterary ArabicModern Standard Arabic , Standard Arabic, or Literary Arabic is the standard and literary variety of Arabic used in writing and in most formal speech....
- ArabistArabistThis is an article about the western scholars known as Arabists, not the political movement Pan-Arabism.An Arabist is someone normally from outside the Arab World who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and Arab culture, and often Arabic literature.-Origins:Arabists began in medieval...
- List of Islamic texts
- School of SalamancaSchool of SalamancaThe School of Salamanca is the renaissance of thought in diverse intellectual areas by Spanish and Portuguese theologians, rooted in the intellectual and pedagogical work of Francisco de Vitoria...
- Resalat Al-Ghufran
- Islamic scienceIslamic scienceScience in the medieval Islamic world, also known as Islamic science or Arabic science, is the science developed and practised in the Islamic world during the Islamic Golden Age . During this time, Indian, Iranian and especially Greek knowledge was translated into Arabic...
- Islamic Golden AgeIslamic Golden AgeDuring the Islamic Golden Age philosophers, scientists and engineers of the Islamic world contributed enormously to technology and culture, both by preserving earlier traditions and by adding their own inventions and innovations...
- Muhsin al-RamliMuhsin al-RamliMuhsin Al-Ramli is an expatriate Iraqi writer living in Madrid, Spain since 1995. Doctorate in Philosophy and Letters, Spanish Philology. Universidad Autónoma of Madrid 2003, thesis topic: The Imprint of Islamic Culture in Don Quixote. Translator of several Spanish classics to Arabic. Where he...
, co-founder of Alwah, a journal of Arabic literature