'What Has Been Written Upon the Forehead, the Eye Must See': An Arabic-Jewish Author Between Baghdad and an Israeli Transit Camp

As an integral part of Arab society since the pre-Islamic period, Jews participated in the making of Arabic literature. We know of prominent Jewish poets such as al-Samawʾal ibn ʿᾹdiyāʾ in the sixth century A.D. and Ibrāhīm ibn Sahl in al-Andalus in the thirteenth century. During the first half of the twentieth century, Arabic literature in fuṣḥā (standard Arabic) written by Jews witnessed a great revival, especially in Iraq and Egypt, but this revival was cut short as a casualty of Zionism and Arab nationalism and the conflict between them. We are currently witnessing the demise of Arabic literature written by Jews; the Arabic language among Jews will probably remain mostly a tool of the military establishment and the intelligence systems as encapsulated in the dictum 'know your enemy' instead of being a medium for coexistence and knowing the Other. The article concentrates on the literary activities of one of the most talented Iraqi-Jewish authors, Shalom Darwīsh (1913-1997), whose promising anticipated literary future in Arabic literature encountered a deadlock following the aforementioned exclusion of Jews from 'Arabness'.

Race and Racism in Historical Fiction: The Case of Jurji Zaydan’s Novels

This paper analyzes the conceptualization of ideas of race in three historical novels in the fictional work of Jurji Zaydan (1861–1914), a Syrian Christian intellectual who wrote on the Golden Ages of Islamic History through serialized, popular works of historical fiction. In the novels analyzed, Fath al-Andalus (Conquest of Andalusia), Abbasa Ukht al-Rashid (The Caliph’s Sister), and al-Amin wa al-Ma’mun (The Caliph’s Heirs), Zaydan depicts hierarchies of race that are delineated by certain features and categories, especially within the Abbasid among household slaves, and also centers the conflict within the novels around issues of differences in race and lineage. Zaydān shows the importance of rifts in Islamic history stemming from categorizations and distinctions between Arab and non-Arab, or Arab and Persian, or mawāli. The novels also reflect the self-conceptualization of Egyptians in relation to their perceptions of the Sudanese, at a time of the rise of Arab nationalism, in late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Religious Minorities in the Ideology and Politics of Syria

Although the Middle East is widely associated with Islam, it is diverse in terms of religion. Syria is an example where two religious groups dominate, i.e. Muslims and Christians, which are internally diverse. The purpose of this article is to examine the position of religious minorities in the ideology and politics of Syria. Syria is not chosen by accident as the authors believe that the failure to recognize the existence of minorities and to respect their rights was one of the reasons for the civil war in Syria. The article consists of three parts. The first discusses the theoretical issues related to the definition and understanding of the notions of what constitutes a religious minority and of pan-Arabism in Syria. The next presents the complex religious pattern in country, and the last concerns the policy of the Syrian authorities, who are influenced by Arab nationalism, towards various religious groups.

The Poetry of Darwish in the 1960s: Homeland and Exile

The early poetry of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) is characterised by its overt resistance and confrontational tone against the Israeli forces. This research paper explores the themes of homeland and exile in Darwish’s poetry during the 1960s, tracing how the 1967 defeat has changed his poetic tone from the highly confrontational to the articulate conversational. It, therefore, contributes to the fields of literary criticism and Arab literary studies focusing on modern poetry of resistance. Although Darwish was still living on Palestinian lands during this period, he never felt at home, expressing his feelings of strangeness and suffering in a usurped land by force. The theoretical framework of Edward Said (1935-2003) is employed in this paper to question whether the themes of exile and homeland shape and reshape the Darwish’s understanding of resistance. Based on the analyses of this paper, Darwish’s poetry of resistance has dramatically changed due to his severe disappointment by the 1967 defeat, marking the collapse of Arab nationalism and its propaganda of the Arab homeland. Still, this shift does not affect Darwish’s rejection of the Israeli existence in Palestine. Instead, his poetry by the end of this decade still questions the violent and aggressive nature of the Israeli soldier despite Darwish’s intimate and human conversational style of his poems, thereby adding to the controversial analyses of Darwish’s poetics.

The Poetry of Darwish in the 1960s: Homeland and Exile

The early poetry of Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008) is characterised by its overt resistance and confrontational tone against the Israeli forces. This research paper explores the themes of homeland and exile in Darwish’s poetry during the 1960s, tracing how the 1967 defeat has changed his poetic tone from the highly confrontational to the articulate conversational. It, therefore, contributes to the fields of literary criticism and Arab literary studies focusing on modern poetry of resistance. Although Darwish was still living on Palestinian lands during this period, he never felt at home, expressing his feelings of strangeness and suffering in a usurped land by force. The theoretical framework of Edward Said (1935-2003) is employed in this paper to question whether the themes of exile and homeland shape and reshape the Darwish’s understanding of resistance. Based on the analyses of this paper, Darwish’s poetry of resistance has dramatically changed due to his severe disappointment by the 1967 defeat, marking the collapse of Arab nationalism and its propaganda of the Arab homeland. Still, this shift does not affect Darwish’s rejection of the Israeli existence in Palestine. Instead, his poetry by the end of this decade still questions the violent and aggressive nature of the Israeli soldier despite Darwish’s intimate and human conversational style of his poems, thereby adding to the controversial analyses of Darwish’s poetics.