The Unprinted Indigenous Arabic Literature of Northern Nigeria

1943 ◽  
Vol 75 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 20-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. E. J. Whitting
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Original Compositions ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Northern Nigeria ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Literary Education ◽  
Original Works ◽  
Classical Arabic

It is uncertain when Islam began to penetrate the “western Sudan”: for a review of the evidence, reference may be made to the earlier chapters of Bovill's Caravans of the old Sahara. That the age-old north to south and west to east trade routes (carrying outwards gold and slaves, inwards cloth and manufactured articles, internally dates and salt as the main articles of commerce), provided the vehicle can be in little doubt, as also that, by the fourth century a.h. if not earlier, appreciable Moslem influence had begun to work in the area shown on modern maps as northern Nigeria. In this area Arabic is not a tongue spoken, save in dialect by the numerically insignificant tribe of Shuwas in the northeast. But with the spread and pre-eminence at first cultural and later political of Islam, written “classical” Arabic, which provided the only means of a literary education became the medium of diplomacy, commerce, and correspondence. This position it maintained until a few years ago, suggesting a parallel to the use of Latin in medieval Western Europe. Yet, so far as is known, although original works were produced farther north in the Sahara proper, until the “reforming” Fulani jihad at the end of the eighteenth century a.d. (active operations began 21.2.1804), few original compositions in Arabic emerged. The stimulus of this jihad appears, among other results, to have evoked the nucleus of an original indigenous Arabic literature, none of which has been printed or translated, save a few historical documents.

Towards the Reappraisal of Classical Arabic Literature and History: Some Aspects of Tāhā Husayn's Use of Modern western Criteria

1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed Al-Nowaihi
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Classical Literature ◽  
Fellow Citizen ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Classical Arabic

In modern Arabic scholarship, it would be difficult to find a hypothesis more implausible than that advanced by Tāhā Husayn in his fī‘l-’adab al-jāhilī. Yet it may be wondered whether any other book, written by a contemporary Arab, has had a comparable influence in changing the fundamental attitude of the Arab intelligentsia towards their classical literature and history. The unsoundness of the book's central assertion—that the bulk of pre-Islamic poetry was fabricated by Muslims, and portrays Islamic, rather than pre-Islamic, conditions and conceits—has been exposed by several critics, both native, in varying degrees of wrathful condemnation, and orientalist, with different approaches to conclusiveness. Of the latter, one at least, the late A. J. Arberry, had some pretty strong words to say, not of the Arab propagator of the fallacy, but of D. S. Margoliouth, who, in the same year 1926, had, as it happened, published identical views, supported by largely similar arguments. Said Arberry, introducing his stern refutation, “The sophistry — I hesitate to say dishonesty — of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent, quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest erudites of his generation.” He went on to castigate Margoliouth's disregard of certain Qur'anic meanings and intentions of which “he must have been very well aware,” his “shocking misapplication of scholarship,” his “immodesty”, and the rest. Quite restrained criticism when compared to the diatribe which the Arab debaters poured on the heads of their fellow citizen and his presumed infidel mentor, but rather unusual in the serene Arcady of orientalism.

Across the Western Sea (1783-1845)

1962 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 91-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Kraus
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Native Land ◽  
Freedom Of Movement ◽  
The World ◽  
The One

In ancient Greece the priests of Apollo asserted that freedom of movement was one of the essentials of human freedom. Many hundreds of years later, toward the end of the eighteenth century, people in the Atlantic world again talked of emigration as one of man's natural rights. It was in northern and western Europe that easier mobility was first achieved within the various states. The next step was to use that mobility to leap local boundaries to reach the lands across the western sea. From the “unsettlement of Europe” (Lewis Mumford's phrase) came the settlement of America.Americans and those who wished to become Americans felt at home in the geographical realm conceived by Oscar Wilde. “A map of the world that does not include Utopia,” he said, “is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. Progress is the realization of Utopias.” It was the belief that Utopias were being realized in America that caused millions to leave Europe for homes overseas.IA Scottish observer, Alexander Irvine, inquiring into the causes and effects of emigration from his native land (1802), remarked that there were “few emigrations from despotic countries,” as “their inhabitants bore their chains in tranquility”; “despotism has made them afraid to think.” Nevertheless, though proud of the freedom his countrymen enjoyed, Irvine was critical of their irrational expectations in setting forth to America. There were few individuals or none in the Highlands, he said, “who have not some expectation of being some time great or affluent.

History in Adab Context: “The Book on Caliphal Histories” by Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (246/860-328/940)

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Toral-Niehoff
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Classical Arabic

In classical Arabic literature,adaband history are closely related. Collections such as al-Masʿūdī’sMurūj al-dhahab, Ibn Qutayba’sKitāb al-Maʿārifor theMuʿjam al-buldānby Yāqūt are proper hybrids of history andadab: History often includesadabapproaches, andadabregularly incorporates historicalakhbār. The multivolume encyclopediaal-ʿIqd al-farīd, “the Unique Necklace,” composed by the Andalusī Ibn ʿAbd Rabbih (246/860-328/940) fits very well into theadabideal of cultural broadness. In addition to numerous historical anecdotes, theʿIqd al-farīdincorporates a lengthy and very peculiar monographic section on caliphal history, an early example of history inadab. These passages have received little attention in the study of early Arabic historiography so far; however, they definitely deserve a closer investigation.

Introduction to Classical Arabic Literature

1977 ◽  
Vol 97 (4) ◽  
pp. 609
Author(s):  
Sieglinde Kadhim ◽  
Ilse Lichtenstadter
Keyword(s):  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Classical Arabic

scholarly journals Growing Up Burney

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorna Clark
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Original Compositions ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Frances Burney ◽  
Family Identity ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Family

The pressure of family identity and politics affected more than one generation of Burneys. Beyond Frances Burney, and her intense relationship with her father Charles Burney, were other family members who also felt the pressure to “write & read & be literary.” These tendencies can be seen most clearly in the works of juvenilia preserved in the family archive. A commonplace book bound in vellum has been discovered that preserves more than one hundred poems, mostly original compositions written by family and friends. The activity of commonplacing reflects a community in which reading and writing are valued. Collected by the youngest sister of Frances Burney, they seem to have been copied after she married. The juvenile writings of her nieces and nephews preponderate, whose talents were encouraged, as they give versified expression to their deepest feelings and fears. Literary influences of the Romantic poets can be traced, as the young authors define themselves in relation to these materials. Reflecting a kind of self-fashioning, the commonplace book helps these young writers explore their sense of family identity through literary form. This compilation represents a collective expression of authorship which can inform us about reading and writing practices of women and their families in the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Some Information About The History Of The Formation Of Historical-Geographical Views About Central Asia In Europe

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (9) ◽  
pp. 250-253
Author(s):  
A.A.Erkuziev
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Silk Road ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Trade Routes ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
Political Economic

Central Asia has played an important role in the political, economic and cultural relations of different nations and countries since ancient times as one of the centers of the world civilization. The Great Silk Road, which passed through this region, brought together the countries on the trade routes, the peoples living in them, and served to spread information about their traditions, lifestyles, location, historical events. These data, in turn, brought different peoples closer and served as the basis for the establishment of mutual economic and cultural relationships between them. One of the important scientific issues here is the study of the spread of information about the Central Asian region, where most of the Great Silk Road passed, to Western Europe through other countries.

Sovereignty in a Minor Key

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Thomas Blom Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The World ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Theories Of Sovereignty ◽  
A Minor ◽  
State Form

Abstract Theories of sovereignty in the twentieth century are generally based on a teleological “out-of-Europe” narrative where the modern, centralized nation-state form gradually spread across the world to be the foundation of the international order. In this article, the author reflects on how the conceptualization of sovereignty may change if one begins a global account of modern sovereignty not from the heart of Western Europe but from the complex arrangements of “distributed sovereignty” that emerged in the Indian Ocean and other colonized territories from the eighteenth century onward. These arrangements were organized as multiple layers of dependency and provisional domination, captured well by Eric Beverley's term minor sovereignty. Thinking through sovereignty in a minor key allows us to see sovereignty less as a foundation of states and societies and more as a performative category, emerging in a dialectic between promises of order, prosperity, and law, and the realities of violent domination and occupation.

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