Varieties of adab: compilations, anthologies, and manuals
- Key People:
- Mahmoud Darwish
- al-Ghazālī
- Ibn al-ʿArabī
- Ameen Rihani
- Alaa al-Aswany
- Related Topics:
- hijāʾ
- shahr-āshūb
- ḥubb ʿudhrī
- ḥabsīyah
- mubālaghah
While al-Jāḥiẓ and al-Tawḥīdī represent the higher achievements of those who practiced the arts and subgenres of adab, many other court officials, bureaucrats, and arbiters of public discourse contributed to a continuing process whereby information, opinion, and entertainment were placed at the disposal of the educated elite of the courts within the Islamic dominions. Ibn Qutaybah followed the early example of ʿAbd al-Ḥamīd and Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ in preparing manuals on scribal practice and etiquette, but he also played a major role in laying the groundwork for further research in a number of fields, including the meaning of the Qurʾān, orthodoxy, and the principles of historical writing. In the context of compilation, his most notable achievement is the multivolume work Kitāb ʿuyūn al-akhbār (“Book of Springs of Information,” or “Book of Choice Narratives”), which, as its title implies, intended to make available to its readers information and anecdote on a wide variety of topics (eloquence, for example, as well as friendship, asceticism, and a final section on women). This large anthology is one of the earliest examples of compilations of the curious yet engaging variety of materials that was characteristic of the literary salons (majālis) gracing the life of the court. It is an apt reflection of the enormous demand for enlightening and entertaining information that was a feature of the lifestyle of the educated elite within the urban communities of the Muslim world. Through the ensuing centuries, such works continued to constitute a primary activity for the community of litterateurs. Among the major contributors to the genre were al-Thaʿālibī, al-Rāghib al-Iṣfahānī, and Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmud ibn ʿUmar al-Zamakhsharī. Another major contributor, al-Tanūkhī, also compiled a collection that is an example of the al-faraj baʿd al-shiddah (“escape from hardship”) genre, which involves sequences of anecdotes in which people find release from difficult situations, often at the very last minute and as a result of the generosity of others. A still later work by al-Qalqashandī, the 15th-century Ṣubḥ al-aʿshā (“The Dawn of the Blind”), approaches Ibn Qutaybah’s in its compendiousness, but its practical bent makes it a kind of comprehensive summary of the secretarial manual genre.
The same instinct for compilation can be seen in a number of famous collections that focus in particular on the “literary” genres of poetry and anecdotal narrative. An early example is the Andalusian Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih’s Al-ʿIqd al-Farīd (“The Unique Necklace”), in which each section is named after a precious jewel, and, most celebrated of all, the Kitāb al-aghānī (“Books of Songs”) of Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī (al-Iṣfahānī), a major source on Arabic poetry and poets as well as performance practice.
There were also rasāʾil (essays) devoted to particular topics. In addition to his works on animals and misers, for example, al-Jāḥiẓ also took singing girls as his topic in Risālat al-qiyān (The Epistle on Singing-Girls of Jāḥiẓ). Other topics ranged from complex discussions of theology and philosophy to the ethics of begging and gate-crashing social events. The theme of love was especially popular, and a wide variety of intellectuals focused their attention on it. The Andalusian jurist and poet Ibn Ḥazm, for example, wrote his Ṭawq al-ḥamāmah (“Dove’s Neckring”), a charmingly intimate portrait of social intercourse within the Islamic community of the 11th century, while Ibn al-Jawzī contributed his Dhamm al-hawā (“Condemnation of Passion”), a preacher’s warning concerning the perils of passion. Sheikh al-Nafzāwī’s Al-Rawḍ al-ʿāṭir fī nuzhat al-khāṭir (“The Perfumed Garden Concerning the Heart’s Delights”) is, thanks to the interest of Sir Richard Burton (who translated it under the title The Perfumed Garden of the Cheikh Nefzaoui), widely known in the English-speaking world as a classic among sex manuals.
As is the case within the Western literary traditions, the category of “literature” in the premodern period of the Arabic heritage was not restricted to belles lettres alone; it also included such genres as biography and history. Indeed, the presence of such “nonliterary” genres is a distinct characteristic of the phenomenon of adab. At the turn of the 21st century, research into the textual functions of narratives increasingly subjected these genres to types of analysis that had traditionally been reserved for literary works. Some categories of historical and geographical writing (particularly annalistic versions of the former, for example, and urban topographies within the latter) remained beyond the attention of narratologists, but they too are works that clearly fall within the boundaries of adab. Especially notable among historical writing is al-Masʿūdī’s Murūj al-dhahab wa maʿādin al-jawāhir (“The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems”), in which he traces the history of the world up to his own time and shows remarkable knowledge of myth, geography, and history. The tradition of writing histories of enormous scope continued throughout the ensuing centuries, with famous contributions by Ibn Miskawayh, Ibn al-Athīr, Ibn Kathīr, and the world-renowned Ibn Khaldūn, whose introduction to his history Al-Muqaddimah is generally acknowledged as a major milestone in the theorization of historical studies. His geographical works range from the listing of postal routes to detailed descriptions of countries and, at a later stage, cities.
The institution of the journey is, thanks to the institution of the pilgrimage (hajj) that is enjoined upon all healthy Muslims at least once in their lifetime, the inspiration for a school of travel narrative, a genre for which the Arabs are well known (and of which the series of tales recounted by Sindbad the Sailor, a late addition to The Thousand and One Nights, is an apt reflection). In 921 Ibn Faḍlān was dispatched by the caliph in Baghdad to visit the peoples of the Volga River region, but the records of two travelers from the Maghrib best reveal the hardships of such lengthy travels. Ibn Jubayr traveled from Granada to Mecca to perform the pilgrimage; his Riḥlah (“Travels”; Eng. trans. The Travels of Ibn Jubayr) is a somewhat hyperbolic account of the curiosities he encountered. Ibn Baṭṭūṭah initially traveled from Tangier to Mecca for the same purposes but, after spending a period in Mecca, decided to continue on. He traveled all the way to China before making his way back to his native city. His Tuḥfat al-nuẓẓār fī gharāʾib al-amṣār wa ʿajāʾib al-asfār (“Beholder’s Delight Concerning Strange Cities and Incredible Travels”), commonly known by the title Riḥlah, is thus not merely a treasure trove of information and insight but a thoroughly engaging narrative.
Narratives of the imagination
A number of prominent Arab litterateurs composed narratives involving travel into the worlds of the imagination. The 11th-century Andalusian poet Ibn Shuhayd, for example, utilized his Risālat al-tawābiʿ wa al-zawābiʿ (“Epistle on Familiar Spirits and Demons”) to converse with the spirits of his poetic forebears, and his contemporary al-Maʿarrī adopted the same narrative strategy in the Risālat al-ghufrān. On a more philosophical and mystical plane, another Andalusian writer, Ibn Ṭufayl, followed the lead of his illustrious predecessor Ibn Sīnā (known in the West as Avicenna) by writing the allegory of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive, Son of Wakeful”; Eng. trans. Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓan by Ibn Ṭufayl), concerning a man who is born on an island by spontaneous generation, learns to appreciate the natural world he lives in, and, having traveled to another island where he encounters other humans and their various systems of living and believing, decides to return to a life of contemplation on his own island.
One narrative genre that is specific to the Arabic literary tradition is the maqāmah, a form of narrative that emerged out of several already existing trends. Following the works of al-Jāḥiẓ, one strand in Arabic prose style, influenced by the same aesthetic principles as had driven the badīʿ trend in poetry, relished elaboration and its concomitant patterns of repetition and assonance. During the 10th century, at the court of Rayy, in Iran, the celebrated minister and arbiter of taste al-Ṣāḥib ibn ʿAbbād gathered around him a remarkable cluster of great writers in numerous fields; the prolific and versatile al-Tawḥīdī could manage only the lowly rank of scribe in such a coterie. A notable practitioner of this new trend was Abū al-Faḍl ibn al-ʿAmīd, but it was another visitor to this court, al-Hamadhānī, who managed to combine the new aesthetics of style—especially the adoption of sajʿ, the ancient form of rhyming prose—with attractive vignettes of social and intellectual life into a totally new genre, the maqāmah, earning for himself the title of “Badīʿ al-Zamān” (“Wonder of the Age”). Developed by his great successor al-Ḥarīrī into a vehicle for tremendous feats of stylistic virtuosity, the maqāmah genre was a much-favoured mode of prose expression for the intellectual elite of the Arabic-speaking world until the latter half of the 20th century.
Popular narratives
To a Western world for which The Thousand and One Nights has long since become a classic of world narrative, it is something of a surprise to learn that attitudes within Arab societies toward appropriateness of language use and performance mode have excluded that collection and a host of other huge compilations of narrative from the Arabic literary canon. Intense Western interest in the collection followed its translation into French by Antoine Galland (published between 1704 and 1717) and resulted in the addition of numerous tales to the original collection, which includes fewer than 170, and in the subsequent publication of “complete” versions. But it was only in the late 20th century that the advent of social-scientific modes of research moved beyond questions of “sources” and engaged in serious investigation of the narrative features of these collections.
Until the advent of broadcast media, the ḥakawātī (storyteller) remained a major fixture of Arabic-speaking countries, choosing a select spot either in the open air of evening or in a café from which to recite episodes from some of the great sagas of Arab lore (in Arabic, siyar shaʿbiyyah). These include the exploits of the legendary poet-cavalier ʿAntar (see Romance of ʿAntar), the much-traveled tribal confederacy of the Banū Hilāl, the warrior-princess Dhāt al-Himmah, and the wily ʿAlī Zaybaq. In the context of such a public tradition of multi-episodic storytelling, the status of The Thousand and One Nights within Arabic literature is difficult to assess, since it seems to have started as a much shorter contribution to the “mirror for princes” genre—collections of exemplary fables intended to illustrate the principles of proper kingship—before Western interest led to its rapid expansion into its current form.
Whatever attitudes may prevail regarding the canonical status of these enormous collections of narrative, they have served as inspiration and as models not only for writers of modern fiction but also for numerous experiments in drama. While the public function of the storytellers may have disappeared from most countries of the Arabic-speaking world, the collections of tales that they performed remain as a remarkable treasure trove of world narrative.
Modern fiction
The development of modern Arabic fiction took place within a cultural context in which two major forces were in play and sometimes in confrontation. The first of them is what has been termed “the rediscovery of the West”—more particularly, an interest in the products and critical methods of Western literary traditions. The second is a search for inspiration in the Arabic literary heritage. At different phases of the long process generally referred to as al-nahḍah (“the renaissance”; see Arabic literary renaissance), which began at different times within the large area that is the Arab world, the relative importance of these two forces shifted, but both were (and remain) constants.
During the earliest phases, the influence of Europe and its literary heritage was very strong, with Arab writers impelled by the need to address the realities of European colonization in large portions of the Middle East. Inhabitants of the region initiated or renewed contacts with the countries to the north and west: Italy first and then France. Missions of students sent to study language and technology returned and commenced the process of translating texts into Arabic. At first those texts were mostly of a practical nature (such as military and engineering manuals), but the proclivities of many of the translators insured that works of literature were soon added to the repertoire of available texts. The process of introducing these new genres to an Arab world readership from the outset relied to a substantial extent on publication opportunities afforded by the press: daily newspapers (especially the Friday edition) and specialized weekly and monthly journals.
