Franco's Hajj: Moroccan Pilgrims, Spanish Fascism, and the Unexpected Journeys of Modern Arabic Literature

PMLA ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 132 (5) ◽  
pp. 1097-1116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Calderwood
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Legal Scholar ◽  
Francisco Franco ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
Modern Arabic

Journey to Mecca (; al-Rihla al-Makkiyya; 1941), by the distinguished Moroccan historian and legal scholar Ahmad al-Rahuni, recounts a hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, sponsored by the fascist Spanish dictator Francisco Franco in 1937. Franco's support for the hajj was part of a vast propaganda effort to cast Franco's Spain as a friend of Islam and a defender of the cultural heritage of al-Andalus (medieval Muslim Iberia). Al-Rahuni's travel narrative blurs the line between Mecca and Spain by casting Spain's Islamic heritage sites as a metaphoric Mecca to which Muslims should make pilgrimage. The account thus highlights the collaboration between Spanish fascists and Moroccan elites. It also complicates the dominant scholarly narratives about modern Arabic literature, which have tended to focus on Egypt, the novel, and secular epistemologies. Al-Rahuni's text speaks, instead, to the persistence of Arabic prose genres that do not conform to a Eurocentric notion of literature.

Stranger Fictions

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca C. Johnson
Keyword(s):  
World Literature ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Global Circulation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modern Arabic

Zaynab, first published in 1913, is widely cited as the first Arabic novel, yet the previous eight decades saw hundreds of novels translated into Arabic from English and French. This vast literary corpus influenced generations of Arab writers but has, until now, been considered a curious footnote in the genre's history. Incorporating these works into the history of the Arabic novel, this book offers a transformative new account of modern Arabic literature, world literature, and the novel. This book rewrites the history of the global circulation of the novel by moving Arabic literature from the margins of comparative literature to its center. Considering the wide range of nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century translation practices, the book argues that Arabic translators did far more than copy European works; they authored new versions of them, producing sophisticated theorizations of the genre. These translations and the reading practices they precipitated form the conceptual and practical foundations of Arab literary modernity, necessitating an overhaul of our notions of translation, cultural exchange, and the global. The book shows how translators theorized the Arab world not as Europe's periphery but as an alternative center in a globalized network. It affirms the central place of (mis)translation in both the history of the novel in Arabic and the novel as a transnational form itself.

A Thousand and One Nights and the Novel

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
Magical Realism ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Freedom Of Expression ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
The Novel ◽  
The West ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries ◽  
Modern Arabic

This chapter examines the influence of Alf layla wa layla (A Thousand and One Nights), the ingenious Arabic cycle of stories, on the development of the novel as a literary genre. It shows that the Nights helped shape the European novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The chapter first explains how the French translation of the Nights and its popularity in Europe led to its incorporation in world literature, creating an enduring taste for “Orientalism” in many forms. It then considers how the Nights became integrated in modern Arabic literature and how Arabic novels inspired by it were used to criticize social conditions, dictatorial authority, and the lack of freedom of expression. It also discusses the Nights as a source of innovation for the trend of magical realism, as well as its role in the interaction between the Arab world and the West.

scholarly journals Symbolism of Water in Classic and Modern Arabic Literature

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 258-265
Author(s):  
Mohammad Hamad
Keyword(s):  
Short Story ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Greek Mythology ◽  
Symbolic Meanings ◽  
Water Springs ◽  
Modern Arabic

Water in Arabic literature has literal and symbolic meanings. Water is one of the four elements in Greek mythology; life would be impossible without water and it is a synonym for life; life originated in water. Springs, wells, rain, seas, snow, and swamps are all associated with water. Each form of water may take on a different manifestation of the original from which it comes about. Arabic literature employs the element of water in poetry, the short story, and the novel. We find it in titles of poems: Unshudat al-matar (Hymn of the Rain) and Waj’ al-ma’ (The Pain of Water); and novels: Dhakirat al-ma’ (The Memory of Water); Taht al-matar (Under the Rain); Matar huzayran (June Rain); Al-Bahr khalf al-sata’ir (The Seas Behind the Curtains); Rahil al-bahr (Departure of the Sea); and many others. This study aims to answer the following questions: How does the element of water manifest in Arabic literature? What are the semantics and symbolism of the different forms of water in the literary imaginary? The study refers to six different significations for water in classical and modern Arabic literature: water as synonymous with life, purity and the revelation of truth, separation and death, fertility and sex, land and homeland, and talent and creativity.

The transformation of reality and the Arabic novel's aesthetic response

1994 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabry Hafez
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
The Social ◽  
Rapid Pace ◽  
Modern Arabic

The rapid pace of the change sweeping through the Arab world over the last few decades has profoundly affected both its various cultural products and its writers' perception of their national identity, social role and the nature of literature. The aim of this paper1 is to discuss the major changes in the sociopolitical reality of the Arab world, the cultural frame of reference and the responses of one of the major literary genres in modern Arabic literature: the novel. It is assumed here that there is a vital interaction between the novel and its socio-cultural context, in that novels encode within their very structure various elements of the social reality in which they appear and within whose constraints they aspire to play a role. Their generation of meaning is enmeshed in a variety of cultural, psychological and social processes, and their reception therefore brings into operation an array of experiences necessary for the interpretive act.

Homosexuality in the Shadow of War

2016 ◽  
Vol 96 (2) ◽  
pp. 253-270
Author(s):  
Fayyad Haibi ◽  
Yaseen Kittani
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Modern Arabic

This study deals with homosexuality in modern Arabic literature in the context of the civil war in Lebanon, as reflected in Hudā Barakāt’s novel Ḥaǧar al-ḍaḥk (The Laughter Stone). The study concludes that homosexual relations were a fundamental and direct result of the war and the twisted reality it engendered. This becomes clear in light of the three stages through which the figure of Ḫalīl the homosexual goes in the course of the novel: From absolute homosexuality, through uncertainty to transformation. The last of the three afore-mentioned stages highlights the totally masculine nature of war. The study also demonstrates that the fact that the author chose a homosexual figure as the novel’s protagonist to demonstrate her principled ideological opposition to war in any form.

scholarly journals Perwatakan Tokoh Pergerakan Feminisme dalam Novel Ahlâm Al-Nisâ Al-Harem Karya Fatima Mernissi (Sebuah Kajian Strukturalisme Genetik)

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Syarifuddin Syarifuddin
Keyword(s):  
Women Leaders ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Women's Movements ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Written Information ◽  
Fatima Mernissi ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Feminist Movements ◽  
Modern Arabic

This article describes the figures of feminist movements in the novel Ahlâm Al-Nisâ Al-Harem by Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist and writer, who has contributed and influenced the development of modern Arabic literature. Using Goldmann's genetic structuralism approach, the author is interested in researching this novel because it pictures women leaders who aggressively carried out feminist movements in order to break down the boundaries of custom that narrow women's movements. This research uses qualitative data in the form of facts, information, statements or images obtained from the primary source: Ahlâm Al-Nisâ Al-Harem by Fatima Mernissi. The data were analyzed using a descriptive qualitative method  focusing on content analysis, which is an in-depth analysis of the content of written information. 

Ziadeh, May (1886–1941)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayan Haddad
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Literary Figure ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Modern Arabic

May Ziadeh was a prominent literary figure and salonnière in the Arab world in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. A journalist, essayist, author and literary critic, she was also known for being a spellbinding orator and an unusually gifted stylist and translator. Ziadeh was best known for instituting a long running weekly salon (1911–1931) in her home that brought together leading men and women in the period when Egyptian anti-colonial nationalism was at its height. Ziadeh was also a strong advocate of the emancipation of women in the Arab society. Famous for being moderate, Ziadeh did not equate modernity with the denial of Arabic cultural heritage in blind imitation of the West. Many critics believe that modern Arabic literature has not produced a female writer of Ziadeh’s calibre and that her contribution to the feminist cause cannot be overlooked.

Egypt until 1959

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Allen
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Women Writers ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Travel Narrative ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Muhammad Husayn Haykal ◽  
Cultural Movement

This chapter examines the development of the novel in Egypt until 1959, focusing on its chronology and literary characteristics. It begins with an overview of the Egyptian novel genre and its narrative precedents, along with its connection to the cultural movement of the nineteenth century known as al-Nahḍa. After discussing al-Nahḍa’s two primary sources of inspiration, iqtibās (borrowing) and iḥyā’ (revival), the chapter considers the early periods in the development of modern Arabic narrative in Egypt. It also explores the emergence of the travel narrative and the historical novel, the rise of women writers, and the revival of the maqāma. Finally, it analyzes the novel Zaynab, published in 1913 by Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal, and novels published from the 1930s to the year 1959.

scholarly journals Migrazione alla ricerca di un’identità in La stagione della migrazione al nord di al-Ṭayyib Ṣāliḥ

2021 ◽  
pp. 319-341
Author(s):  
Paolo La Spisa
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Arabic Literature ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The North ◽  
External Point ◽  
Modern Arabic ◽  
Critical Literature

The novel by Al-Ṭayib Ṣāliḥ The Season of Migration to the North is a classic of the post-modern Arabic literature. The critical literature of the last century has privileged the post-colonial interpretation. One of the aims of this essay is to reveal the inner reality of the main characters, who are not seen from an external point of view, but within a closer relationship with the reader.

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