Why is it? 1. Then theres this other man who has a much more straightforward life. Saudi Salary Racism- What is the Color of Your Passport? Which makes Jahiz unfashionable and he gets dumped and widely attacked by following generations of writers. You will want to take your time with this book and you will definitely enjoy it. So he and all his contemporaries in the same line of business end up in prison at one time or another. Losing it meant losing my ties to all those things too., 13. Did that transition towards a more orthodox system coincide with the end of the Golden Age? He read history at the University of Oxford and, while still an undergraduate, made regular trips to Sufi centres in Algeria and Paris. Never before was a book so powerfully close to home for me. How relevant to this novel is the very specific historical moment in which it was written and published? Thats until the day he comes face to face with the father he thought was dead. In fact, it goes the opposite way. Presumably each editor/translator shaped the work depending on his own specialisms and readership? But, no, from a fairly early age, around the age of 10 onwards, I got really interested in the Crusades and I read more and more So I decided I wanted to work in Crusade history, but all the work had been done and, I thought, theres no more to be said. Well, I suppose it wasnt, but everybody calls him Jahiz. Travel has always been my passion- so far Ive visited 75 countries and Im always on the lookout for new adventures inside and outside of Saudi Arabia! Ive recently discovered an American author of middle eastern descent, Nadia Hashimi. We need a good book to show us how they think and how they lived. Some of what Ibn Khaldun said is misinterpreted as suggesting that theres an eternal antagonism between Arab and Berber, and it all suits the French colonial enterprise quite nicely. You even get, particularly in India, Sufis fighting one another in these spiritual battles in which one Sufi will force another Sufi out of the village by performing miracles better. She chose to write in English, a guide to the Arabian Nights, without knowing any Arabic. The Pellat translation is quite difficult to use Ive tried to find things in it and really one can get very lost. Masudi doesnt unlike most of the historians who follow him, who write strictly Islamic history that perhaps give some nod to pre Islamic Arabia, but for whom history really only gets exciting at the coming of the prophet provide a history of the Islamic world and think job done, perhaps finishing off with whats known about how the worlds going to end. Yes, he provides an authoritative narrative. This book will answer your questions, speak for the troubles you might face and guide you towards your own faith. When I asked you to recommend classics of Arabic literature, you said it would be tricky because not many works are translated. It spans two eras in time the time of Rumi and Ellas story in present day England connected through the story of Shams of Tabriz. He tries his luck as a scholar and courtier, and he occupies high offices in various North African regimes as well as in the Court of Grenada and Muslim Spain. I loved this list and found so many great book recommendations I cant wait to get a hold of some of these gems. So one has to go to this English translation rather than the Arabic. Sumaiyya is a bookworm and reading enthusiast from Jeddah and Ive been following her awesomeSumaiyya books Instagram account for ages. It is perhaps an intent to systematise the perceived world. The Bastard of Istanbul is definitely a must read and a wonderful introduction into the world of Elif Shafak. He was also very interested in the history of the Israelites, and in what you could get from the Bible. He wrote on theology, he wrote on philosophy, he wrote at enormous length on animals and birds and fish. Now check your email to confirm your subscription. The booms have always been in Egypt and Syria Syria plus Lebanon, which might be seen as a part of Syria. Why is that? Its a kind of rationalist philosophy and, while there are many aspects to Mutazilism, part of it was the belief that the world is marvellous, a manifestation of Gods justice, and that man has free will. Given that things are so different now from how they were in, say, the time of Masudi, this calls for a new kind of history, he decides. Its wonderful to see how stories work in a very nuts-and-bolts way as you work through them: how tension is managed and how characters are introduced and so on. Ive met very nearly all of them. It takes the lid off what the Greek colonels were up to, or It shows what villains those communist were every novel thats proposed has some political subtext. There is no predestination, so one makes ones own fate, whether for salvation or not. Interestingly, there are whats known as orphan stories, a band of about 10 stories of which we have Gallands French but dont seem to have the Arabic. Kemal falls in love with a shop girl while hes engaged to be married. Yes, the narrator hes a big problem in this novel. Ten Amazing Places to Visit in Saudi-Arabia, How to Apply for the Saudi Driving License (for women), , Guide To The Edge Of The World in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, How Expats with Dependent Iqama can apply for Saudi Driving License, Top 13 Things To Do In Riyadhs Diplomatic Quarter In The Summer, Ten Things to do in Riyadhs Historical Diriyah. So we see the discontent of the agriculturalists with the bureaucrats in the centre. Yes, poetry is considered real, true literature. They get really interested in Ibn Khaldun and his presentation of the rise and fall of dynasties. He was very interested in the Slavs, he got a list of the French kings from somebody he met on the Abbasid frontier. Required fields are marked * *. One relied, apart from the strict performances of the rituals, on recitation of the dhikr, a formula in praise of God, often phrases from the Quran or elsewhere, which we would say again and again. Ibn Khaldun lost his parents and most of his teachers and a lot of his friends. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount. He took all the manuscripts that he had and translated it all. Robert Irwin was born in 1946. We won't send you spam. If it was once dismissed as rough and vulgar, has it since been rehabilitated? What about science fiction? You made a lot of money as an administrator in 14th-century North Africa but eventually people would turn against you, and torture you to extract that money. Possibly the main thing is the development of religious colleges, the madrasas, which placed religion in the centre. Can you tell us about that encounter? And every now and again someone will make some garbled noise and fall to the ground, with lots of screaming and tongue rolling and everything hes been seized, hes in a fit. Well now in fact weve got the New York University programme of translating Arab texts and publishing them in English and Arabic parallel translations, modelled on the Loeb translations of Latin and Greek texts. He loves these stories he didnt believe them, I dont think, but he loves to tell them. The plot that leads us to that point isslippery? Theres an awful lot to be said about the Arabian Nights references in it the Nights is one of the novels major sources but Id also point out echoes of The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Student of Prague, Jekyll and Hyde, fantasy literature. Theres a huge literature on him the oddity is that the best edition of the Muqaddimah is Rosenthals three-volume English translation. Elif Shafak. Toynbee presents Ibn Khaldun as a kind of demigod, and thereafter hes been picked up by one historian after another, and by sociologists and anthropologists and so on. In the US, Britain and France the importance of the intellectual diaspora is enormous, and theres a whole school of literature, the Mahjar school, founded by exiled Arabs living in South America. The number of people working on the Mediaeval or pre-modern stuff is minuscule. Theres not all that much in the way of description. Mariam and Laila will forever be the best female characters created by Hosseini. 1. Many Arabs do see it as a part of Syria. Its a mistake that some readers of Ibn Khaldun have made, theyve tried to present him as kind of would-be Aristotle who would advise Alexander. All the Latin and Greek sources had been covered but what about the Arabic? He wrote on mice, on the bum and the back and the belly. But the fact that he goes so much for comedy did rather count against him in the long run. The translation youre recommending is the 1989 one by Lund and Stone. Love in a HeadscarfbyShelna Zahra Janmohamed. What youre getting is a pure story; the Nights is kind of like an engine of stories. Gerhardt was a Dutch woman and she relied on Enno Littmans very accurate, very scholarly German translation of the Arabian Nights. Youve given us five classics to be getting on with, but what are the new developments in Arabic literature? What follows is Kemals obsession with collecting anything that reminds him of her and their time together. The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf: A Novelby Mohja Kahf. Eventually they are drawn, hideously, to one another and they marry and they hate each other. You get this sort of current of thought in the novel, that oh, the imperialist are pretty bad and they built railways in order to help their troops conquer us faster, and yetindependence is not what its cracked up to be either. There is a lot of discontent in the village with the way Khartoum is a fantasyland, cut off from and not caring about whats really happening in the villages. Im Laura, the founder of Blue Abaya- the first travel blog in Saudi Arabia, established in 2010. Apart from the dhikr and the dance theres an awful lot of teaching of parables and things like that. What drew you to it in the first place? And from the beginning it was a catastrophe: Tunis was invaded by forces from Marrakesh; the Black Death struck, sweeping across North Africa on its way to Spain. Who is he? So he spent most of his life outside the Arab world, but he was often at conferences and so on. I thoroughly enjoyed her two books namely The pearl that broke its shell and When the moon is low. Several have been winners of major prizes in the Arab world and successfully translated into English, for which theyve won further prizes. Several of his rivals were murdered or executed. He wrote on round things and square things, he wrote on stranglers. So he looks at the rise and fall of dynasties, and hes particularly aware of, firstly, the rise of the caliphate, of the prophet and the first four rightful Caliphs. Theres no way of summarising its plot in an ordinary way because any summary will elide whats actually going on. The British, French, Germans and Austrians began to play a really serious role in Arabic literature in the 1800s, didnt they? Its very clear that hes writing in a tradition that goes back to Lebanese and Egyptian writers, so his writing is revered by people in Lebanon and Egypt, and throughout the Arabic reading world. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. Youssef suddenly has everything he ever wanted but he is forced to choose between the comfort of luxury and the life that was once completely his. They fight and she lures him into killing her. So that was in the back of my mind when I went to Oxford University to read history. Guest post by book addict, literary consultant and blogger Sumaiyya Naseem! They immigrated in the ways particularly Christians migrated to South America, after massacres or major clashes between the Jews and Christians in the 19th century. Then, theres a great suspicion of the learning of other cultures, of ancient cultures; a suspicion of what might be picked up thats heretical or just not Islamic, from the Greeks, the Indians and Persians. So Sunni historians tended to say Oh no, hes not really good, just simply because he was Shia and so he was seen as untrustworthy, and a promoter of the Alid cause. You were already an adherent by this point of Sufi Islam? The children got so scared of him because of his goggle eyes. It was extraordinary apart from the sheer weirdness and the magic of it all, it is very odd for someone who is studying the Middle Ages to find oneself walking through the door into the Middle Ages, where the miraculous exists in everything. Now and again someone will make some garbled noise and fall to the ground, with lots of screaming and tongue rolling hes been seized. Female solidarity, surviving under abusive patriarchy and an unstable political scene give this novel its voice. Promise! In the middle of Read More Books by People of Color what is often overshadowed is remarkable works by Arab or Middle Eastern authors. The problem with being this kind of scholar-administrator is that its not like being a civil servant in Britain, where you retire with a pension. His father is dead and he daydreams about leaving struggles behind by entering the world of acting and films. Once in a while there are readers who realise they have limited themselves to a particular genre or literary comfort zone. I know its a hotly contested matter, but when do you think the Golden Age finished? Weve only got a fragmentary translation in English, very well done by Lund and Stone. Now he is pulled into the world of the rich where his father is a powerful businessman. Pellat is much more complete. What youre getting is a pure story; the Nights is kind of like an engine of stories. Which is really quite an unusual situation. There is really only a handful. Rumi lovers this is the book for you. Theres a case for making the twin capitals of Arabic literary fiction and poetry Paris and London because there are so many major writers who have lived there, or still are living there, in exile, and have chosen to become academics or intellectuals. The Map of Love: A Novelby Ahdaf Soueif. Any age that can support Masudi, who comes in the next century, is still pretty golden. Particularly from hanging around a mosque. And at the end of it hell say, well, thats it and now were on to the next topic. So history becomes a huge unsorted information dump. While I was working on the guide I had to think a lot about fate and destiny, and that fed into another of my novels, which was set in Britain in 1930s. He is a serious writer, but all the time he breaks it up with jokes and digressions brilliant digressions that remain in fashion until well into the 10th century, maybe later. There was an error submitting your subscription. Tell us about the author first, please. Hes made chief qadi, but he wont wear the qadis robes, hell wears only North African clothes; hes absolutely rigorous in his interpretation of the law and wont take any bribes. I know you feel strongly about this book because it was the first title you fired off, without missing a beat, when I asked you to do this interview. Join over 6000 Subscribers and get our latest content and updates from Saudi Arabia directly to your inbox. There really are a lot of Arabs in Cuba and other parts of that world. He was born in Tunis early in the 14th century. Buddhism was a more obvious thing to get interested in, I think. He continues to work on Muqaddimah there, and he behaves with enormous arrogance. Whats yours? But Jahiz was seen in that way, I think, yes; its fair to say he was recognised as the first great prose stylist. Whereas Egyptian creative writers and scholars of the first rank saw the importance of the Arabian Nights and its inventiveness, not many other Arabic scholars did. A somewhat random, but very interesting, selection has appeared so far. The other thing to be said is that theyre awful at doing it on their own. After him, Andr Miquel worked in a similar vein. Im making no connection between all that and Guilford in the 1940s, where you grew up, but can you, as an aside, tell me what drew you to Arabic stories and culture? The most famous example is Tabari, a generation before Masudi, who finds information about, say, a battle and provides you with three different accounts of it, two of which contradict each other completely. So its a dodgy business and after a while he retires to a remote castle in western Algeria a tribe lends it to him. Theres a constant crossing of currents in my work even my latest novel, Wonders Will Never Cease (2017), has concealed bits of the Arabian Nights in it, even though it is set in 15th-century England. Theres a famous book by one of the Annales historians, Lucien Febvre, about the impossibility of atheism in the age of Rabelais, and I think its true it never would have occurred to Masudi to move beyond Islam. What its for is a possible question, but its not that. But it has established itself in the culture, cropping up in all sorts of plays and poems actually, Mahfouz wrote, in my opinion, a very poor novel, which plays around with the characters in the Arabian Nights. How is he seen back home in the Arab world now? Its such an enormous field to get into dizzyingly so. The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy: A Novel by Francis Khirallah Noble. Presumably the sex alone accounts for its being banned on publication in Sudan? Of all the people weve talked about so far, especially perhaps the Golden Age thinkers, does anyone come close to questioning the centrality of Islam? He knows that his audience isnt going to believe him, either, but he knows his audience is going to enjoy reading and hearing about it nonetheless. One more thing about Masudi, actually: Masudi, like Jahiz, became rather unfashionable after his death, but his problem was, not that he was a Mutazilite but rather that he was a Shiite. The Rock of Tanios is a great insight into the region and its history and well as a compelling read. As I was thinking about what sort of things we would be talking about today, I suddenly realised for the first time that four of the texts Ive chosen the Arabian Nights, Masudi, Jahiz and Ibn Khaldun were first brought to us in the West by the French. Ive read most and, as you say, they are must reads however, Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak are Turkish and Marjan Satrapi is Persian, not Arab. Publication runs are very small, copyright is poorly enforced, book production quality is very poor, too, and even someone like Naguib Mahfouz couldnt make a living writing novels. The order I was in relied on regular performances of prayer, all very strictly orthodox, and one got up not only for dawn prayer but an earlier one too. On the contrary, Masudi travelled widely, well beyond the frontiers of Islam, and was particularly interested in all the non-Islamic cultures he visited. And mine too, again and again I find myself banging my head against him hes not easy. Thats the heart of darkness here. Unsubscribe at any time. But Ive been too hard on Arab fiction. Yes, the story concerns a man who goes to England and who successfully seduces three women. When and where were the boom times? Thats another thing actually Jahizs thing, you could say there a lot of jokes in his work. Yes, very much so. But things move on and by the time youve plotted your position the world around you has changed and you are running -panting- to catch up.. It wont bleed. And then he passes it on to Silvestre de Sacy, the minence grise of French orientalism in the early 19th century. 2017 Blue Abaya www.blueabaya.com All rights reserved. All that did a lot of damage to literary culture, indirectly. Most novels that get published follow a route described to me by one Beirut publisher like so: some person publishes a novel with a print run of 500, and he will sell 50 of them to his relatives, and 50 to his friends, and so on. How does it if it does cohere as a literature? Frank Wynne, acclaimed translator and chair of the 2022 judging panel, tells Five Books about the six novels that made the shortlist, and reminds readers that world literature need not be tough, consumed only in the interests of self-improvementbut is often joyful, surprising and full of feeling. I think it does cohere in an odd way. He spends about two and a half years writing the first draft of the Muqaddimah, which he will work on for the rest of his life. There is a lineage and particularly if ones looking at literature as it evolves in the 19th and 20th centuries. Orhan Pamuk wrote this masterpiece after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. When eventually its forced open after his death, its full of English books, just full of western culture. He has some similarities with Machiavelli, who was also a scholar and a politician, and whose life was probably also endangered sometimes. There was a man that was working on it, but he died and as far as I know its never been finished or printed. A truth once seen by a single mind ends up by imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness., 10. Must Read Books By Arab/Middle-Eastern Authors. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhoodby Marjane Satrapi, 11. Readership is small in the Arab world theres still a high rate of illiteracy and then even those who are literate arent necessarily so literate that they take great pleasure in reading novels. Heres another must-read for young Muslims, especially those growing up in the West and those who are unable to define their identity. Unsubscribe at any time. Sufism isnt something that you can practise or believe in outside Islam; Sufism is the very heart of Islam. He won all sorts of awards in his lifetime and subsequently. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, The New Belly Dancer of the Galaxy: A Novel, Filthy Rich Arabs Doing Forest Work in Finland, 5 Things You Didnt Know about Saudi Aramco, Expats Guide to Grocery Shopping in Saudi Arabia, My First Ebook Guide- The Secret Lake Riyadhs Hidden Gem, Wanderlust in Saudi Arabia: Ancient Well of Haddaj, Tayma, The Mysterious Ancient City of Hegra (Madain Saleh) in AlUla, Saudi Arabia. The Bastard of Istanbul Thanks. Im not really a political person. In this case the actual heart of the darkness is not a compound with heads on stakes and a man whos dying and whispering horrors, its a little bricked room in this house kept by one of two men returned from England. Its a great book that will introduce you to Sudanese history and culture, told through the love story of Nur and Soraya. Poetry is designed to inspire love, and islam is about falling in love with the creator of the universe.. As far as the villagers are concerned, its an utterly amazing land where a woman will want to have sex with you at the drop of a hat, and all that kind of thing the novel is very frank about sex. Sometimes they are murdered Ibn Khalduns brother, who himself held high office, was murdered. There, I fell in with a disreputable company, but also an interesting company, and I was led through them to go and look for miracles and spiritual truth in North Africa in the Sufi monastery. 9. And they have a reason for doing so, because Ibn Khaldun, apart from the Muqqadimah, did this history of the North African dynasties of the Berbers and Arabs and the French are busy invading that part of the world. Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases. It does seem to have a purifying effect. This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. Hes a perfect example of the scholar-politician, a figure in short supply these days. Jahiz wrote on everything: theology, philosophy, he wrote at enormous length on animals and birds and fish. It was his focus on the literature rather than the history, say, that set him apart, really. It spans four generations and five countries and it captures the suddenshift in the lives of the people of Palestinian and how it affected the generations to come. So thats how I first became involved with the Nights, but it has continued to feed into my fiction. That is a major sub school of Arabic literature. A seventh novel, Wonders Will Never Cease, appeared in 2016, andIbn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, in 2018. Perhaps even more than English language literature, which extends from the United States, through Britain and on to Australia, with all sorts of people choosing to write in English who arent English. So its kind of an encyclopaedia, but primarily and originally its to understand the underlying principles of history. The Cairo one was because a man called Tahtawi, a great Arab-Egyptian scholar who studied in France and who saw it the Nights as one of Arabic cultures glories. The distinguished Arabist, novelist and historian Robert Irwin selects five classics of Arabic literature, from the Life and Work of Jahiz (aka goggle eyes) to a strange and complex Sudanese masterpiece.