- Middle Period: the rise of Persian and Turkish poetry
Poetry of Fuzuli of Baghdad
- Key People:
- Abū al-Faraj al-Iṣbahānī
- Owen Jones
- Related Topics:
- the arts
- Islamic architecture
- Islamic literature
Much greater than most of these minor poets, however, was a writer living outside the capital, Fuzuli of Baghdad (died 1556), who wrote in Arabic, Persian, and Azeri Turkish. Apart from his lyrics, his Turkish mas̄navī on the traditional subject of the lovers Majnūn and Laylā is admirable. From earliest times, Turkish poets had emulated the classical Persian romantic mas̄navīs, sometimes surpassing their models in expressiveness. Fuzuli’s diction is taut, his command of imagery masterful. His style unfortunately defies poetical translation, and his complicated fabric of plain and inverted images, of hidden and overt allusions, is well-nigh impossible for all but the initiated Muslim reader to disentangle. Fuzuli, moreover, like his fellow poets, would blend Arabic, Persian, and Azeri Turkish constructions and words to make up a multifaceted unit. The same difficulty is found in Turkish prose literature of the same period. It is a major task to unravel the long trailing sentences of a writer such as Evliya Çelebi (died c. 1684), who, in an account of his travels (Seyahatname), has left extremely valuable information about the cultural climate in different parts of the Ottoman Empire.
Later developments
Growing interest in the Indo-Persian style, particularly in ʿUrfī’s qaṣīdahs, led the 17th-century Ottoman poets to a new integrated style and precision of diction. An outstanding representative was Nefʾi, whose bent for merciless satire made him dreaded in the capital and eventually led to his assassination. At the start of the 18th century, a marked but short-lived movement in Turkish art known as the “Tulip Period” was the Ottoman counterpart of European Rococo. The musical poems and smooth ghazals of Ahmed Nedim (died 1730) reflect the manners and style of the slightly decadent, relaxed, and at times licentious high society of Istanbul and complement the miniatures of his contemporary Abdülcelil Levnî (died 1732). Good Turkish poetry is characterized by an easy grace, to be found even in such mystically tinged poems (thousands of which were written throughout the centuries) as those of Niyazî Misrî (died 1697). The Mevlevî (Mawlawī) poet Gâlib Dede (died 1799) was already standing at the threshold of what can now be recognized as modern poetical expression in some of the lyrical parts of his mas̄navī, called Hüsn ü aşk (“Beauty and Love”), which brought fresh treatment to a well-worn subject of Iran’s philosophical and secular literature. His work cannot be properly understood, however, without a thorough knowledge of mystical psychology, expressed in multivalent images.
Folk poetry
One branch of literature, however, was totally neglected by the sophisticated inhabitants of the Ottoman capital. Nobody thought much of the folk poets who wandered through the forgotten villages of Anatolia singing in simple syllable-counting verses of love, longing, and separation. The poems of the mid-17th-century figure Karacaoğlan, one of the few historically datable folk poets, give a vivid picture of village life, of the plight of girls and boys in remote Anatolian settlements. This kind of poetry was rediscovered only after the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 and then became an important influence on modern lyric poetry.
European and colonial influences: emergence of Western forms
The rise of nationalism
For the Islamic countries, the 19th century marks the beginning of a new epoch. Napoleon’s conquest of Egypt, as well as British colonialism, brought the Muslims into contact with a world whose technology was far in advance of their own. The West had experienced the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Enlightenment, whereas the once-flourishing Muslim civilization had for a long while been at a near stagnation point despite its remarkable artistic achievements. The introduction of Muslim intellectuals to Western literature and scholarship—the Egyptian al-Ṭahṭāwī (died 1873), for example, studied in France—ushered in a new literary era the chief characteristic of which was to be “more matter, less art.” The literatures from this time onward are far less “Islamic” than those of the previous 1,000 years, but new intellectual experiences also led to “the liberation of the whole creative impulse within the Islamic peoples” (James Kritzeck). The introduction of the printing press and the expansion of newspapers helped to shape a new literary style, more in line with the requirements of modern times, when, as one scholar put it, “the patron prince has been replaced by a middle-class reading public.”
Translations from Western languages provided writers with the model examples of genres previously unknown to them, including the novel, the short story, and dramatic literature. Of those authors whose books were translated, Guy de Maupassant, Sir Walter Scott, and Anton Chekhov were most influential in the development of the novel and the novella. Important also was the ideological platform derived from Leo Tolstoy, whose criticism of Western Christianity was gratefully adopted by writers from Egypt to Muslim India. Western influences can further be observed in the gradual discarding of the time-hallowed static (and turgid) style of both poetry and prose, in the tendency toward simplification of diction, and in the adaptation of syntax and vocabulary to meet the technical demands of emulating Western models.
Contact with the West also encouraged a tendency toward retrospection. Writers concentrated their attention on their own country and particular heritage, such as the “pharaonic myth” of Egypt, the Indo-European roots of Iran, and the Central Asian past of Turkey. In short, there was an emphasis on differentiation, inevitably leading to the rise of nationalism, instead of an emphasis on the unifying spirit and heritage of Islam.
Arab literatures
Characteristically, therefore, given this situation, the heralds of Arab nationalism (as reflected in literature) were Christians. The historical novels of Jurjī Zaydān (died 1914), a Lebanese living in Egypt, made a deep impression on younger writers by glorifying the lionhearted national heroes of past times. Henceforth, the historical novel was to be a favourite genre in all Islamic countries, including Muslim India. The inherited tradition of the heroic or romantic epic and folktale was blended with novelistic techniques learned from Sir Walter Scott. Two writers in the front rank of Arab intellectuals were Amīr Shakīb Arslān (died 1946), of Druze origin, and Muḥammad Kurd ʿAlī (died 1953), the founder of the Arab Academy of Damascus, each of whom, by encouraging a new degree of awareness, made an important contribution to the education of modern historians and persons of letters. An inclination toward Romanticism can be detected in prose writing but not, surprisingly, in poetry; thus, the Egyptian Muṣṭafā Luṭfī al-Manfalūṭī (died 1924) poured out his feelings in a number of novels that touch on Islamic as well as national issues.
Poetry
It is fair to say of this transition period that the poetry being written was not as interesting as the prose. The qaṣīdahs of the “Prince of Poets,” Aḥmad Shawqī (died 1932), are for the most part ornate imitations of classical models. Even the “Poet of the Nile,” Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm (died 1932), who was more interested in the real problems of the day, was nonetheless content to follow conventional patterns. In his poems, Khalīl Muṭrān (died 1949) attempted to achieve a unity of structure hitherto almost unknown, and he also adopted a more subjective approach to expressive lyricism. Thus, he can be said to have inaugurated an era of “Romantic” poetry, staunchly defended by those writers and scholars who had come under English rather than French influence. These included the poet and essayist Ibrāhīm al-Māzinī (died 1949) and the prolific writer of poetry and prose ʿAbbās Maḥmūd al-ʿAqqād (died 1964).
Prose
A major contribution to the development of modern prose in the Arabic language was made by a number of writers born between 1889 and 1902. One of them, the “humanist” Taha Hussein, became well known in the West as a literary critic who attacked the historical authenticity of pre-Islamic poetry and stressed the importance of Greek and Latin for the literatures of the modern Middle East. He was also the author of a successful novel called The Tree of Misery, but his best creative writing is in his fictionalized autobiography, Al-Ayyām (1929–67; The Days), the three parts of which describe in simple language the life of a blind Egyptian village boy. Taha Hussein’s generation became more and more absorbed by the problems of the middle classes (to which most of them belonged), and this led them to realism in fiction. Some turned to fierce social criticism, depicting in their writings the dark side of everyday life in Egypt and elsewhere. The leading writer of this group was Maḥmūd Taymūr, who wrote short stories, a genre developed in Arabic by a Lebanese Christian who settled in the United States, the noted and versatile poet Khalil Gibran (died 1931). Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal (died 1956), a leading figure of Egyptian cultural and political life and the author of numerous historical studies, touched on the difficulties of Egyptian villagers for the first time, in his novel Zaynab (1913). This subject became fashionable quickly afterward, although not all the writers had firsthand knowledge of the feelings and problems of the fellahin. The most fertile author of this group was al-ʿAqqād, who tirelessly produced biographies, literary criticism, and romantic poetry. The Islamic reform movement led by Muḥammad ʿAbduh (died 1905) and his disciples, which centred on the journal Al-Manār (“The Lighthouse”), influenced Arabic prose style across the 20th century and was important in shaping the religious outlook of many authors writing in the 1920s and ’30s.
The diaspora
A considerable amount of Arabic literature was produced during the 20th century by numerous writers who settled in non-Islamic countries, especially in the United States and Brazil. Most of these writers came from Christian Lebanese families. A feeling of nostalgia often led them to form literary circles or launch magazines or newspapers. (The Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hudā [or Al-Hoda, “The Guidance”], established in 1898, was published in New York City as Al-Hudā al-jadīdah [Al-Hoda Aljadidah; “The New Al-Hoda,” or “The New Guidance”].) It was largely because of their work that the techniques of modern fiction and modern free verse entered Arabic literature and became a decisive factor in it.
One of the best-known authors in this group was Ameen Rihani (died 1941), whose descriptions of his journeys through the Arab world are informative and make agreeable reading. The fact that so many Lebanese emigrated led to the creation of a standard theme in Lebanese fiction: emigrants returning to their villages. Modern Iraqi literature is best represented by “the poet of freedom” Maʿrūf al-Ruṣāfī (died 1945), and Jamīl Sidqī al-Zahāwī (died 1936), whose satire “Thawrah fī al-Jaḥīm” (“Rebellion in Hell”) incurred the wrath of the traditionalists.
Turkish literatures
The same changing attitude toward the function of literature and the same shift toward realism can be observed in Turkey. After 1839, Western ideas and forms were taken up by a group of modernists. Ziya Paşa (died 1880), the translator of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Émile (which became a popular textbook for 19th-century Muslim intellectuals), was among the first to write in a less traditional idiom and to complain in his poetry—just as Ḥālī was to do in India a few years later—about the pitiable conditions of Muslims under the victorious Christians. Ziya Paşa, together with İbrahim Şinasi (died 1871) and Namık Kemal (died 1888), founded an influential Turkish journal, Tasvir-i Efkâr (“Picture of Ideas”). The essential theme of the articles, novels, poems, and dramas composed by these authors is their fatherland (vatan), and they dared to advocate freedom of thought, democracy, and constitutionalism. Abdülhak Hâmid (died 1935), though considerably their junior, shared in their activities. In 1879 he published his epoch-making Sahra (“The Country”), a collection of 10 Turkish poems that were the first to be composed in Western verse forms and style. Later he turned to unusual and often morbid subject matter in his poetic dramas. He, like his colleagues, had to endure political restrictions on writing, imposed as part of the harsh measures taken by Sultan Abdülhamid II against the least sign of liberal thought. Influenced by his work, later writers aimed to simplify literary language: Ziya Gökalp (died 1924) laid the philosophical foundations of Turkish nationalism; and Mehmed Emin, a fisherman’s son, sang artless Turkish verses of his pride in being a Turk, throwing out the heavy rhetorical ballast of Arabo-Persian prosody and instead turning to the language of the people, unadulterated by any foreign vocabulary. The stirrings of social criticism could be discerned after 1907. Mehmed Akif (died 1936), in his masterly narrative poems, gave a vivid critical picture of conditions in Turkey before World War I. His powerful and dramatic style, though still expressed in traditional metres, is a testimony to his deep concern for the people’s sorrows. It was he who composed the Turkish national anthem after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s victory, but soon afterward he left the country, disappointed with the religious policies of the Kemalists.
Atatürk’s struggle for freedom also marks the real beginning of modern Turkish literature. The mainstream of novels, stories, and poems written during the 19th century had been replete with tears, world-weariness, and pessimism, but a postwar novel, Ateşten gömlek (“The Fire Shirt”), written by a woman, Halide Edib Adıvar (died 1964), reflected the brave new self-awareness of the Turkish nation. Some successful short stories about village life came from the pen of Ömer Seyfeddin (died 1920). The most-gifted interpreter and harshest critic of Turkey’s social structure was Sabahattin Ali, who was murdered during a flight to Bulgaria in 1948. His major theme was the tragedy of the lower classes, and his writing is characterized by the same merciless realism that was later to be a feature of stories by many left-wing writers throughout the Islamic world. The “great old man of Turkish prose,” Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (died 1974), displayed profound psychological insight, whether ironically describing the lascivious life in a Bektashi (Muslim mystic order) centre or a stranger’s tragedy in an Anatolian village. Most of the Turkish novelists of the 1920s and ’30s concentrated on the problems of becoming a modern nation, and in particular they reinterpreted the role of women in a liberated society.
Literary energies were set completely free when Atatürk introduced the Latin alphabet in 1928, hoping that his people would forget their Islamic past along with the Arabic letters. From this time onward, especially after the language reform that was meant to rediscover the pre-Islamic roots of the Turkish language, Turkish literature followed the pattern of Western literature in all major respects, though with local overtones. Poets experimented with new forms and new topics. They discovered the significance of the Anatolian village, neglected—even forgotten—during the Ottoman period. Freeing themselves from the traditional rules of Persian poetry, they adopted simpler forms from Europe. In some cases the skillful blending of inherited Ottoman grace and borrowed French lyricism produced outstandingly beautiful poems, such as those of Ahmed Haşim (died 1933) and of Yahya Kemal Beyatlı (died 1958), in which the twilight world of old Istanbul is mirrored in soft evocative hues and melodious words. At the same time, the figure of Nazım Hikmet (died 1963) looms large in Turkish poetry. Expressing his progressive social attitude in truly poetical form, he used free rhythmical patterns quite brilliantly to enrapture his readers. His style, as well as his powerful, unforgettable images, has deeply influenced not only Turkish verse but also progressive Urdu and Persian poetry from the 1930s onward.
Persian literatures
In Iran the situation resembled that in Turkey to a certain extent. While the last “classical” poet, Qāʾānī (died 1854), had been displaying the traditional glamorous artistry, his contemporary, the satirist Yaghmā (died 1859), had been using popular and comprehensible language to make coarse criticisms of contemporary society. As in the other Islamic countries, a move toward simplicity is discernible during the last decades of the 19th century. The members of the polytechnic college Dār ol-Fonūn (founded 1851), led by its erudite principal Reẕā Qolī Khān Hedāyat, helped to shape the “new” style by making translations from European languages. Nāṣer al-Dīn Shāh described his journeys to Europe in the late 1870s in a simple, unassuming style and in so doing set an example for future prose writers.
At the turn of the century, literature became for many younger writers an instrument of modernization and of revolution in the largest sense of the word. No longer did they want to complain, in inherited fixed forms, of some boy whose face was like the moon. Instead, the feelings and situation of women were stated and interpreted. Their oppression, their problems, and their grievances are a major theme of literature in this transition period of the first decades of the 20th century. The “King of Poets,” Muḥammad Taqī Bahār (died 1951), who had been actively working before World War I for democracy, now devoted himself to a variety of cultural activities, but his poems, though highly classical in form, were of great influence; they dealt with contemporary events and appealed to a wide public.
One branch of modern Persian literature is closely connected with a group of Persian authors who lived in Berlin after World War I. There they established the Kaviani Press (named after a mythical blacksmith called Kaveh, who had saved the Iranian kingdom), and among the poems they printed were several by ʿĀref Qazvīnī (died 1934), one of the first truly modern writers. They also published the first short stories of Muhammad ʿAli Jamalzadah (died 1997), whose outspoken social criticism and complete break with the traditional inflated and pompous prose style inaugurated a new era of modern Persian prose. Many young writers adopted this new form, among them Sadeq Hedayat (died 1951), whose stories—written entirely in a direct everyday language with a purity of expression that was an artistic achievement—have been translated into many languages. They reflect the sufferings of living individuals; instead of dealing in literary clichés, they describe the distress and anxiety of a hopeless youth. The influence of Franz Kafka (some of whose work Hedayat translated) is perceptible in his writing, and he has a tendency toward psychological probing shared by many Persian writers.
As in neighbouring countries, women played a considerable role in the development of modern Persian literature. The lyrics of Parvīn Eʿteṣāmī (died 1940) are regarded as near classics, despite a trace of sentimentality in their sympathetic treatment of the poor. Some Persian writers whose left-wing political ideas brought them into conflict with the government left for what is now Tajikistan. Of these, the gifted poet Abū al-Qāsim Lāhūtī (died 1957) is their most important representative.
India: Urdu and Persian
Persian literature in the Indian subcontinent did not have such importance as in earlier centuries, for English replaced Persian as the official language in 1835. Nevertheless, there were some outstanding poets who excelled in Urdu. One of them was Mīrzā Asadullāh Khān Ghālib (died 1869), the undisputed master of Urdu lyrics. He regarded himself, however, as the leading authority on high Persian style and was an accomplished writer of Persian prose and poetry. But much more important was a later poet, Sir Muḥammad Iqbāl (died 1938), who chose Persian to convey his message not only to the peoples of Muslim India but also to Afghans and Persians. Reinterpreting many of the old mystical ideas in the light of modern teachings, he taught the quiescent Muslim peoples self-awareness, urging them to develop their personalities to achieve true individualism. His first mas̄navī, called “Asrār-e khudī” (1915; “Secrets of the Self”), deeply shocked all those who enjoyed the dreamlike sweetness of most traditional Persian poetry. One of his later Persian works, Payām-e Mashriq (1923; “Message of the East”), is an effective answer to Goethe’s Poems of the East and West (1819). In the Jāvīd-nāmeh (1932; “The Song of Eternity”) he poetically elaborated the old topic of the “heavenly journey,” discussing with the inhabitants of the spheres a variety of political, social, and religious problems. Iqbāl’s approach is unique. Although he used the conventional literary forms and leaned heavily on the inspiration of Jalāl al-Dīn al-Rūmī, he must be considered one of the select few poets of modern Islam who, because of their honesty and their capacity for expressing their message in memorable poetic form, appeal to many readers outside the Muslim world.
