ARABIC LITERATURE

The literature of Arabic-speaking peoples, and one of the chief vehicles of Islamic civilization. It originated among the Arabs in Arabia but eventually was produced and appreciated from Spain to China.

While classical Arabic literature was dominated by religious and scholarly concerns, its intrinsic literary and artistic value is great. The poems are forceful, dynamic, realistic, and vivid, in tune with the poets' harsh environment; and the richness of the Arabic language imparts variety and color to obligatory, almost stereotyped, motifs. Arabic prose too is vivid in style. To the ancient Arab, language was the chief medium of art, and both poetry and prose were meant to be heard. To this day, poetry and oratory can rouse passion and enthusiasm in an Arab crowd.

Medieval Period.

The most outstanding example of Arabic literature is the Koran, which Muslims consider to have been revealed by God to his Prophet, Muhammad, in the Arabian Desert in the 7th century. It is the Islamic counterpart of the Jewish Torah or the Christian Gospels. Its literary style, regarded as inimitable by Muslims, is derived from that of the pre-Islamic Arab soothsayers whose utterances were in the form of brief phrases having rhyme and rhythm but no meter. In its earliest suras, or chapters, the Koran expresses religious concepts with a beauty and passion that can be fully appreciated only in the original Arabic text.

The Koran, although the greatest, is not the earliest example of Arabic literary creativity. Hundreds of odes and poems composed about a century before the Prophet's time still exist, some available in European translation. This poetry deals with the life of the Bedouins, their loves, travels through the desert, fights, rivalries, ambitions, and hatreds. The poets praise their tribes, the sheiks, and often themselves. They bitterly taunt their enemies, provoking them to fight back with the sword or with equally cutting satire. The most distinguished poets were al-Asha (c. 570–629), Amr ibn-Kulthum (d. 600), and Imru-al-Qays (d. 540?). The last two had their finest odes included among the seven prize poems called the Muallaqat “(Suspended”), the poems allegedly having been suspended inside the great mosque at Mecca). Among other famous collections of pre-Islamic poetry are the Hamasa (Fortitude) of abu-Tammam (807–45?); the Mufaddaliyat, named for its compiler, al-Mufaddal (fl. 760–84); and the Kitab al-Aghani (The Book of Songs).

In the courtly atmosphere of Mecca after Muhammad's death, Umar ibn Abi Rabia (c. 643–719) composed love poems disapproved of by the pious. Poetry continued to flourish under the Ommiad dynasty (Arab. Umayyad, 661–750) but tended to become artificial, perpetuating forms that represented a vanishing type of life. The outstanding poets of that period were al-Farazdaq (c. 641–c. 728) and Jarir (c. 650–c. 729), whose long poetic feud with each other was famous. The 10th–century poet al-Mutanabbi (915–65) is considered the last of the great Arab poets. During the succeeding centuries didactic poets, including Abul-Ala al-Maarri (973–1057), dealt with philosophical and political problems.

Arabic prose, like poetry, flourished from early times. The oldest surviving works deal with pre-Islamic Aiyam al-Arab, stories commemorating tribal warfare. They too were written down long after the Prophet's death. Following the spread of Islam, research into the history of the Prophet and of the Islamic conquests dominated Arab and Muslim literature. The Arab historian Ibn-Ishaq (c. 704–67) wrote a biography of the Prophet. Another Arabian commentator, al-Tabari (839–923), produced the Annals, an account of the world from the creation to ad 914 and the most comprehensive history of early Islam. The search for norms in the conduct of religious, personal, and legal affairs inaugurated the literature of Hadith (Traditions) and Fiqh (Canon Law). Commentaries on these matters and voluminous biographical dictionaries on the authorities from which laws and customs were derived form the major part of medieval Arabic literature.

In such centers of Islamic life as Basra, Kufah, and Baghdad, as well as in the non-Arab lands of Iran and Spain, academies were founded for the study of philology, theology, law, and philosophy. Islamic philosophical thought had been stimulated by the study of the ancient Greek philosophers, whose works had been translated by Arab, Syrian, and Hebrew scholars into their respective languages. Neoplatonic philosophy found its way into Arabic thought, most impressively in the writings of al-Farabi (c. 878–c. 950). One of the most outstanding works, The Ideal City, deals with a theory of statecraft presented in Neoplatonic terms. In contrast to this work, which idealizes the state as an emanation from the All-One (God) with the Prophet as its ideal leader, other works on statecraft, such as Principles of Government by al-Mawardi (974?–1058), deal with practical political and legal problems of the Muslim state. Conflicting ideas on the essence of God and on free will and the eternal nature of the Koran stimulated philosophical discussion and created dissenting schools of thought. In the 12th and 13th centuries Islamic Sufism, or mysticism, found literary expression in the poetry of Ibn al-Farid (1181–1235) and Ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240) and in the Writings of the Brethren of Purity. Some of the greatest medieval philosophers wrote in Arabic; their work was studied in the West and greatly influenced the development of Scholasticism. The most outstanding among these Arab philosophers were Averroës (Ibn Rushd), Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and Al-Ghazali.

Side by side with the works of the learned, a folk literature developed. It consisted of the narratives recited by storytellers in the bazaars of the old Near East and formed an oral tradition still vital in that part of the world. Heroes of antiquity and the famous 8th-century caliph Harun ar-Rashid became the center of romantic and imaginative tales in the Romance of Antar and the well-known Arabian Nights. Because these romances were entertainment for the masses, they spurned classical style and language and were therefore considered unworthy of notice by the learned. More to the taste of the scholar and the well-born were the celebrated Maqamat (Assemblies) of the poet al-Hamadhani (969–1008) and the Maqamat of the writer al-Hariri (1054–1122), which were meant to instruct as well as to amuse. Every line of al-Hariri's work was judged by the grammarian al-Zamakhshari (1074?–1143) to deserve “being written in gold.”

After the brilliant intellectual life of the Middle Ages a long period of stagnation followed. For some six centuries scholarly activity was almost exclusively devoted to commentaries on the works of the earlier masters; to digests of their historical, theological, and legal studies; and to anthologies of earlier books.

Modern Period.

Only toward the end of the 19th century, and largely under the influence of the West, did a revival of Arabic literature begin. Egypt had long been the intellectual center, but other Arabic-speaking countries soon began to contribute their share. Scholarly, literary, and political topics became popular subjects for discussion by contemporary Arab writers, and creative writings appeared in all forms from the late 19th century onward. One of the most acclaimed modern writers in Arabic was the Egyptian novelist, playwright, and screenwriter Naguib Mahfouz, who was the first writer in Arabic to win the Nobel Prize for literature (1988); notable among his novels are those in the “Cairo Trilogy” (1956–57)—Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, and Sugar Street. The novel is also represented by Zainab, an outstanding work by M. Hussain Heikal (1888–1956); poetry, by Shauqi (1868–1932) and A. Z. Abushady (1892–1955); the short story, by Mahmud Taimur (1894–1973); and the literary and philosophical essay, by Taha Hussein (1889–1973).

Among the modern writers, Hussein most consciously uses the rich cadences of classical Arabic. Other modern writers, under Western influence, have curbed the traditional tendency toward florid language. The social life of the Egyptian countryside is vividly and wittily depicted in the Diary of a Country Judge by Tawfiq al-Hakim (1898–1976), and modern political and socioreligious problems were critically discussed by the Coptic writer Salama Musa (1886–1958). Qasim Emin (1865–1908), in his sociological study The Liberation of Women, opened a way toward the emancipation of Muslim women. Ahmad Amin (1886–1954) wrote a widely acclaimed History of Islam.

Western scholarship merged with Arabic intellectual endeavor at the American University of Beirut, long maintained for the training of intellectual leaders in the Arab world. Arab immigration to the New World produced an outstanding poet, Kahlil Gibran (1883–1931), whose mystical verse, such as in The Prophet, is widely read. I.Li., ILSE LICHTENSTADTER, Ph.D., D.Phil., Oxon.