Classical Arabic Stories

by Salma Khadra Jayyusi

  Al-Hamadhani’s work was destined to continue and thrive. This schema of his maqamat was adopted by later writers, with a change of the names of the two protagonists. The genre he established quickly traveled to North Africa and Muslim Spain, attracting several writers in Andalusia, such as the prominent poet Ibn Shuhayd. Al-Hamadhani’s most famous successor, however, was Abu Muhammad al-Qasim al-Hariri (446 / 1054–516 / 1122) in the east, who made the maqamat form the medium of a grand exercise in linguistic dexterity, filling his maqamat with embellishments and artful improvisations. His maqamat concentrate on a continuous experiment in stylistic magnificence and the inclusion of complex figures of speech. They are longer than those of al-Hamadhani and are masterpieces of linguistic virtuosity. Al-Hariri had the greatest influence on Arab writers after him, even up to the nineteenth century with the beginning of the Arabic literary renaissance, when some of the foremost pioneers of the reawakening, such as Nasif al-Yaziji (1800–1883) and Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq (1801–1887), wrote their share of maqamat.41

  The Epistle of Forgiveness

  The intricate and highly rhetorical Epistle of Forgiveness, by the famous poet Abu ʾl-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri, was a riposte to a letter sent to him by a writer called ʿAli ibn al-Qarih, whose questions of heresy and faith and reactionary attitude and seeming bias in his critical comments on some major literary figures provoked al-Maʿarri to write his Epistle. It is a narrative on an imaginary journey to the afterworld, in which al-Maʿarri sends Ibn al-Qarih to both Paradise and Hell, meeting and holding conversations with poets, men of letters, linguists, musicians, and narrators. Al-Maʿarri, irked and challenged by the pretentiousness of Ibn al-Qarih’s letter, improvised this trip to the afterworld to expose Ibn al-Qarih’s flagrantly less-commendable qualifications and to show off his own vast knowledge of Arabic culture, his mastery of the Arabic language, grammar, and rhetoric, his proficiency in religious knowledge, his expertise on the khabar collections and Arabic poetry of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, and his extensive general erudition. This major work, which was a great experiment in intellectual and linguistic virtuosity, was also a major literary venture in that it succeeded in transforming the epistle genre into a new, distinct literary form.

  The work is narrated in the voice of al-Maʿarri. The protagonist, Ibn al-Qarih, moves from Paradise to Hell, then returns to Paradise, and with every move, several fictional episodes, often of genuine interest to the reader, take place. The narrator follows the footsteps of the protagonist, watching every move he makes, and monitors his conversations with the inhabitants of the afterworld. The narrator knows everything that goes on in the minds of all the people concerned.

  This was a suitable opportunity for al-Maʿarri to voice many of his observations on the ideas and ideologies widespread in his period. In a sarcastic manner he attacks, among other things, several of the religious creeds as well as the Sufis in the person of al-Hallaj.

  A notable characteristic of this work is its inclusion of various episodes in each segment of the journey, each episode preserving its integrity, a great difference to the complex strategy of Kalila and Dimna and the Arabian Nights, where a single story often branches out before it ends. The narrative keeps an artistic balance between description and dialogue, and the dialogue unfolds in a way that exposes Ibn al-Qarih’s pedantry, pretentiousness, egotism, and attachment to sensuous pleasures but also reveals al-Maʿarri’s erudition and ironic bent. Despite the difficulty of the language of these episodes, they preserve their charm and interest even after so many centuries.

  Al-Maʿarri’s Epistle was followed by several more of the same genre by other writers, the most famous of which is the Risalat al-tawabiʿwa ʾl zawabiʿ (Epistle of Familiar Spirits and Demons) by Ibn Shuhayd in Muslim Spain. Ibn Shuhayd, who was younger than al-Maʿarri and died at a relatively young age, was clearly aware of the experiments in literature of the Arab east and quick to adopt them.

  The suggestion has often been made that The Epistle of Forgiveness may have formed the basis of Dante’s Divina Commedia. It is astonishing that most European literary historians in investigating the history of the various nascent literatures that developed in the second millennium around Muslim Spain and the shores of the Mediterranean, particularly Muslim Sicily, show no attempts whatsoever to examine the influences that must have existed in some of the literary works in these languages; the songs of the troubadours and the lyrical poetry in the south of Italy, especially in Sicily, where Arabs ruled for over two hundred years, until the end of the eleventh century, are two examples. It is beyond the scope of this essay to go into the details of these influences, but surely it cannot happen that a civilization should flourish for centuries in a certain place, achieving brilliant heights, and leave no influences.42 The apparent Arabic influences in Spanish and other languages have been acknowledged and studied, to an extent.43 The other influences of the culture have largely been overlooked by the old guard of Western literary history.

  An Early Novel in Arabic

  The philosophical novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan, by the Andalusi philosopher Ibn Tufail, is one of the treasures of classical Arabic literature. A mixture of philosophical reflection and storytelling, it has preserved its literary and intellectual excellence throughout the centuries.

  “Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the tale of a man who grows up on an uninhabited island and attains the highest degree of insight, both philosophical and religious, by dint of his inborn capacities, by his experiences, perceptions and reflections.”44 J.C. Burgel regards this novel as a turning point in Arabic philosophical writings.45

  The story begins with Hayy’s birth by spontaneous generation from the mud on the shore and upbringing by a gazelle, a story already known about the founders of Rome. His gazelle mother dies before he reaches puberty. Having grown up in nature, he imitates the animals but spends his time studying nature.

  Absal, the second protagonist in the novel, is from another island. He teaches Hayy human speech, and when he explains his own religion to Hayy, they discover they share the same convictions. Hayy then visits Absal’s island, where he finds the people there to be superficial believers attached to physical pleasures. “He tries to open their eyes to the higher realities of their world, but in vain. He and Absal thereupon leave them and decide to retire to the lonely island and spend the rest of their lives in devotions there.”46

  It is a unique novel, authentically Arabic in origin, a story that is at once philosophy, vision, and literature, representing a way of some philosophers to explain their philosophical ideas through stories, tales, and symbolic visions. Through symbols mystics express their passionate feelings and show how a mystic can say what cannot be said in ordinary language and describe what cannot be described. They rely on sensuous and concrete representations from the outside world, often images from mundane love poetry and the pleasures of life on earth, and use them by elevating them to spiritual experience.

  This is because love is its own goal. But the Sufi lover is elevated. His love is pregnant with ideas, meanings, and flavor and is directed toward a unique purpose. It is stronger and loftier than all other loves. The Sufis are certainly the masters of love and truth in love, having given the most fantastic examples of the most wonderful spiritual aspirations. Islamic mysticism met a lot of rejection because of these sensuous expressions and images. We can describe the novel as “the story of human life in nature, or the adventure of the human mind in the universe.” Ibn Tufail depicts, most skillfully, some of the stages through which human life or the mind passes.

  The meeting of Hayy with Absal, who appears on Hayy’s island when Hayy has matured in thought, and their eventual harmony symbolize the meeting of the philosophic mind and the canons of law brought forth by the prophets. His failure with the inhabitants of the second island symbolizes the failure of the masses to realize the aims of philosophers and their abstractions.

  Ibn Tufail wanted to intimate his understanding of life and resurrection and the nature
of recompense and punishment, and express his wish to criticize the society he lived in.

  Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a well-written, well-organized novel, but it did not inspire other Arabic writers to write novels.47 The reason seems obvious. A novel, written by a literary philosopher, as in this case, was not meant for public dissemination but to be read as a philosophical reflection. The eleventh century could not sustain the production of long fictional narratives on a popular level.48

  The Folk Epic

  The incorporation of mythology into the story and of episodes of marvels and wonders side by side with stories of superheroic action or penetrating wisdom was fully revived later, particularly with the rise of folk epics. As a genre, the folk epic was not an early fruit of the Arabic creative imagination, although some features can be found in Ayyam al-ʿArab (Battles of the Arabs) and in Kitab al-Tijan (Book of Crowns). However, the Arabic folk epic proper arose mainly during the Mamluk and Ottoman periods, when life was plagued by political instability and non-Arab hegemony.49

  Arabic folk epics are original and individual, with marked variations in theme and resolutions, although keeping the general epic features common to all. Adventure and love are the main topics, but there are also wars and great feats of courage, physical prowess and moral integrity, often meshed with magic and superhuman events.

  These epics have preserved their attraction in the Arabic world to the present time: they are still narrated in the cafés of some old Arabian cities, such as Damascus, and in villages and in the less-modernized habitats of the Arabic world. They are also found in many of the libraries housing Oriental manuscripts. Many printings of them are available in various Arab cities, and there are scholars of Arabic literature specializing in them and teaching them at Arab universities.

  The most famous of these folk epics are:50

  1. The Epic of ʿAntara ibn Shaddad (around 4,000 pages)

  2. The Epic of Hamza al-Bahlawan (around 2,000 pages)

  3. The famous Hilali epic, Sirat Bani Hilal, which has two major renditions: a prose rendition of about two thousand pages, and a poetry rendition collected and recorded by the poet ʿAbd al-Rahman al-Abnudi and constituting a quarter of a million poetry quartets

  4. The Epic of Princess Dhat al-Himma, the Loafer and Her Son, Prince ʿAbdul Wahhab (around 5,000 pages)

  5. The Epic of al-Dhahir Baibars (around 5,000 pages)

  6. The Epic of ʿAli ʾl-Zeibaq, which resembles the story of Robin Hood

  7. The fourteenth-century epic The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan, which reflects the domination of mythological and superstitious thought above reality

  An excerpt from the latter is included in this anthology. Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan was a historical figure, a pre-Islamic Yemeni king with quite a few recorded exploits to his name. In the fourteenth century his story was transformed into a folk romance of great fascination, a folk epic offering a full range of stories of wonders and miracles, mythic events, superhuman feats, as well as all-too-human experiences, with all the necessary ingredients of a magical account of heroism, in which this epic surpasses all others. It depicts Sayf’s prodigious exploits, mainly for love, and his intricate personal life. In this epic, he is presented as a Muslim.51

  Notes

  1. S. Leder has edited a substantial book of studies on Story-Telling in the Framework of Non-fictional Arabic Literature (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1998). In addition to the present anthology, PROTA plans to prepare an anthology of nonfictional prose genres in English translation.

  2. I say “story” here rather than “fiction” because some narrations were not perceived as fictive accounts but as factual stories.

  3. In addition to the book of studies I have edited on the old Arabic story, tentatively titled The Classical Arabic Story: Genres, History and Influences, forthcoming from Brill, I also offer a brief account of the emergence and development of this story in my introduction to Modern Arabic Fiction: An Anthology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), where I briefly describe the rich and varied vista of the classical Arabic story.

  4. The short era from the first Hijri year (1 / 622) to the end of the Orthodox Caliphate in the year 40 / 660 marked a strong rupture in the development of poetry, an art that, during this short period, was stigmatized and discouraged in religious circles. The direct relationship with pre-Islamic poetry, with few exceptions, such as that of Dhu ʾl-Rumma (77/697–117/735), was weakened and sometimes lost, and poets, even great poets such as al-Farazdaq, lost touch in part with some pre-Islamic conventions. On this, see my chapter, “Umayyad Poetry,” in Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period, ed. E. F. L. Beeston et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 390 et seq. (on al-Farazdaq, see p. 405); see also the account in that chapter of Dhu ʾl-Rumma’s firm relationship with the inherited poetic traditions and his further development of their symbolic significance (430–31).

  5. See, for a single example, The Misers, by the renowned scholar al-Jahiz (159 / 775–254 / 868).

  6. H. T. Norris, “Fables and Legends in Pre-Islamic and Early Islamic Times,” in Beeston, Arabic Literature, 1:374–86.

  7. See the translated excerpt from this tale in this anthology.

  8. For a summary of these attempts, see my Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 1:74–78, where the experiments of Shafiq al-Maʿluf are discussed, and 2:720–21 n. These efforts culminated in the fifties and early sixties with the employment of the Phoenician fertility myths of Tammuz, Ishtar, and similar deities, a commendable effort describing the vision of a resurrection after death to coincide with the situation of Arab life after the Palestine debacle of 1948 and hope of its rebirth. However, these myths cannot be included under the symbolic reference of myths alive in people’s consciousness, which would trigger a telling experience of the past to symbolize the present. Even educated Arab readers had to study these myths in order to understand the poems that incorporated them.

  9. See Mahmoud al-Hoot, Fi tariq al-mythologia ʿind al-ʿArab: Bahth mushab fiʾl-muʿtaqadat wa ʾl-asatir al-ʿArabiyya qabla ʾl-Islam (A Detailed Introduction to Arabic Mythology and Beliefs About Islam) (1953); Shukri ʿAyyad, Al-batal fi ʾl-adab wa ʾl-asatir (The Hero in Literature and Mythology) (Cairo: Dar al-Maʿrifa, 1959); ʿAbd al-Muʾid Khan, Al-asatir al-ʿArabiyya qabl al-Islam (Arabic Myths Before Islam) (N.p.: Lajnat al-Taʾlif, 1937); Firas Suwwah, Mughamarat al-ʿaql al-ula: dirasa fi ʾl-ustura (Suriya-Ard al-Rafidain) (The Mind’s First Adventure: A Study in Myths [Syria–Iraq]) (Damascus: Ittihad al-Kuttab al-ʿArab, 1976); Mustafa al-Jozo, Min al-asatir al-ʿArabiyya w ʾl-khurafat (Of Arab Myths and Fables) (Beirut: Dar al-Taliʿa, 1977); and the comprehensive, two-volume work by Muhammad ʿAjina, Mawsuʿat asatir al-ʿArab ʿan al-jahiliyya, wa dalalatuha (Encyclopedia of Arabic Myths of Pre-Islamic Times, and Their Significance) (Beirut: Dar al-Farabi, 1994).

  10. See the discussion by Jamal Barout and Saʿd al-Din Kulaib, “On Fantastic Arabic Narrative,” in my forthcoming book of studies, The Classical Arabic Story: Genres, History, and Influences.

  11. For an analysis of the Ayyam al-ʿArab tales, see Peter Heath, “Ayyam al-ʿArab,” ibid.

  12. The notion, generally asserted in modern times, that the devotion and purity of Umayyad lovers was due to the influence of Islam is discredited by the fact that such stories, of which the Midad and Mai story and that of al-Muraqqash al-Akbar and Asmaʾ are but two, existed in pre-Islamic times, pointing to other reasons behind the development of this genre.

  13. Apart from such pre-Islamic cities as Damascus, Mecca, Medina, and Taʾif, the new Muslims early founded Basra (14 / 636) and Kufa (17 / 139), which became great centers of literary and linguistic exchange during the Umayyad period and later.

  14. Suicide is against Islamic strictures.

  15. There has been wide speculation regarding the existence of Qais ibn al-Mulawwah and several other such poets who had romantic stories knit around their lives. Nonetheless, the poetry ascribed to Qais ibn al-M
ulawwah and Qais ibn Dharih, two of the most famous ʿUdhri poets of the period, rings most genuine. The anguish in it is too real, the tenderness, the fervor, the yearning too strong to believe it was invented by poetry reciters. This question is in any case outside the scope of this introduction. Whether the protagonists were real people or invented is irrelevant to the fact that the story existed, and we are interested here in the stuff of fiction, not in the actual identity of its protagonists.

  16. Jamil ibn Maʿmar (or Jamil Buthaina, after his beloved) was one of those famous poet lovers. He was denied marriage to her and spent the rest of his life caught in the grip of that early love. In the following verses, they have met in middle age, and, seeing his hair colored with henna to cover the white, she taunts him with having grown old: “You’ve grown old, Jamil, your youth is spent!” He reminds her of their youth, how he swathed his raven hair with perfume and walked dragging his train behind him, ending in these lines:

  All this was changed by fickle time. But you

  like the Marzuban’s* pearl, still in the sap of youth,

  We were neighbors once, shared the same playground

  How is it I grew old

  and you did not?

  *Marzuban is the name of a Persian chief, signifying, in this instance, a very wealthy person.

  17. The greater concentration on love and suffering was also in vogue in other ancient fiction. Margaret Doody shows how “ ‘fate’, ‘suffering’, and ‘love’ were played out in the ancient Greek, Roman and other novelistic literatures and where the heroes and heroines undergo ordeals” (The True Story of the Novel [New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997], 33).

  18. See Jaʿfar al-Sarraj, Masariʿ al-ʿushshaq (The Tragic End of Lovers) (Beirut: Dar Sadir, ca. 1958), 2:186.

  19. Islam did not repress love, only illicit relationships. A famous tradition alludes to the Prophet’s having said: “He who loves and hides his passion, then dies, dies a martyr.” This is repeated in several of the less-famous collections of the Prophet’s traditions and is therefore not regarded as a bona fide saying. However, the fact that it found currency and was preserved shows at least the sympathy that Islam had for love and lovers so long as chastity was observed.