Then tienne Marc Quatremre, another scholar, chooses to translate the whole Muqaddimah, and he does it very badly because he doesnt have very good dictionaries and also hes a bit bonkers and ill by the time hes doing it. Thats the heart of darkness here. Why is that? A truth once seen by a single mind ends up by imposing itself on the totality of human consciousness., 10. In the heart of it all there is love, loss and the struggle of living with memories of the past. The Blue Between Sky and Waterby Susan Abulhawa, 2. So he starts out with this sort of gloomy grim perspective; as he looks around himself he sees deserted villages and ruins everywhere some of them recent ruins, some are ruins produced by Arab invasions of the 10th and 11th century. But its a split story in a sense, because the Arabian Nights is banned in Saudi Arabia, and there was a movement about 10 years ago to have it banned in Egypt, or at least to have the full, unexpurgated version banned. Yes, but for a while, now I think its not banned. In the early 90s I did a series of radio programmes on the Arabian Nights and I went to interview Salih on the Arabian Nights and what it meant to him, and what story telling was like in Sudan, and what was it like in the village he grew up in. We won't send you spam. 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. On the contrary, Masudi travelled widely, well beyond the frontiers of Islam, and was particularly interested in all the non-Islamic cultures he visited. In Ibn Khalduns day you were lucky to retire with your life. They get really interested in Ibn Khaldun and his presentation of the rise and fall of dynasties. 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. Please try again. What are people writing and reading now? Its now a Penguin Modern Classic. Its one hell of a great work. Whereas Ibn Khaldun believes in Islamic values alone, and would never transgress or do anything the Quran says is wrong. I should say these subsequent printed editions have far more stories in them than the Galland translation because the Galland was fairly restricted. 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. He won all sorts of awards in his lifetime and subsequently. Then hes aware of how the Almoravids, Almohads and the Marinids came to power in North Africa. Today, well be talking about Tayeb Salih, for instance, who is Sudanese. Pellat is much more complete. She chose to write in English, a guide to the Arabian Nights, without knowing any Arabic. Im always in awe (and admittedly a bit jealous too) of how she has the time to consume all the great books she posts about. Or the city of brass, which is somewhere in the North African desert and has no gates and is constructed only of brass and all the inhabitants inside it are dead. In another case, he presents himself as a kind of reincarnation of somebody who was alive in the days of Harun al-Rashid in old Baghdad. This is easily one of the best books Ive read, especially in terms of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. 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. You mentioned earlier that you met Salih. I imagine its all this discussion of how powers rise and fall that made Ibn Khaldun so appealing to the West didnt Ronald Reagan reference him in a speech when he was president? How is he seen back home in the Arab world now? He was born in Tunis early in the 14th century. Its intended as a prolegomenon an introduction to what he is going to write and the complexity starts there, really, because he started out with one idea of what he was going to write about.and then he broadens and broadens. In this case the actual heart of the darkness is not a compound with heads on stakes, its a little bricked room full of books. Im quite prejudiced. What was he praised for, and what was he criticised for? We won't send you spam. So we see the discontent of the agriculturalists with the bureaucrats in the centre. He wrote on mice, on the bum and the back and the belly. In fact, it goes the opposite way. These dont seem to have a top-heavy political agenda; they do seem to be genuine historical novels, so thats good. A mans heart is a wretched, wretched thing. 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. That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched., 2. So, the French are really following the Ottomans but they are the pioneers of promoting it. Its such an enormous field to get into dizzyingly so. Bastard of Istanbulby Elif Shafak. 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. A novelist Gamal El-Ghitani who was a close friend of Mahfouz oversaw the reproduction of whats known as the Bulaq edition of the Arabian Nights, and they were going to prosecute him and send him to prison for it. 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. He goes to London and London, of course, from the Sudanese perspective might be seen as a land of marvels and he presents himself in a very particular way. Never before was a book so powerfully close to home for me. The book begins with an old woman turning her hair blue after she overhears her neighbours commenting about the whiteness of her hair, and when it ends it leaves us deeply satisfied and wiser than we were before. We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview. 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. What its for is a possible question, but its not that. Elif Shafak. It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didnt know it. The English figures like Arberry and Nicholson tended to be a bit grand, looking for difficult texts that would make ones reputation. Heres Sumaiyyahs tip for finding these books for readers living in Saudi Arabia: Some of the books are available in Jarir bookstore and Virgin (usually), but its best to order them from Amazon (they ship to Saudi post where people can pick it up) or Book Depository (free shipping). Palestine owns us and we belong to her., 5. The Forty Rules of Love: A Novel of Rumi 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. You were already an adherent by this point of Sufi Islam? And the asabiyya declines and theyre vulnerable to the next wave of hungry tribesmen coming in from the hinterlands. Ive recently discovered an American author of middle eastern descent, Nadia Hashimi. In a way, she owns us. How does it if it does cohere as a literature? In one case while hes doing a seduction, he seems to be wilfully acting like Othello talking to Desdemona about the land with the men with no heads, and all the rest of it hes doing that kind of selling talk to seduce her. There is an actual Museum of Innocence curated by the writer which contains every item that is mentioned in the book. When one gets to the crunch theres not much resemblance between the two of them in terms of what they write: Machiavelli believes that sometimes the ruler must do for the good of the state all sorts of dodgy things; he values virtu (martial spirit and leadership qualities) and honour and cunning and so on. Unsubscribe at any time. 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. I loved this list and found so many great book recommendations I cant wait to get a hold of some of these gems. 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. The writing of a cultured man should alternate, you see, it shouldnt just be boringly serious all the time, and Jahiz was brilliant at that. This book will answer your questions, speak for the troubles you might face and guide you towards your own faith. Mornings in Jenin:A Novelby Susan Abulhawa. Unsubscribe at any time. Sumaiyya is a bookworm and reading enthusiast from Jeddah and Ive been following her awesomeSumaiyya books Instagram account for ages. If youre talking about Arabic literature youre talking about a literature that expands from Mauritania to Iraq and everywhere in between and above and below. They cant knock him in talent because he is so good, but he is rather discounted nonetheless You dont want to pay much attention to this buffoon, this joker, this liar, and so on. The number of people working on the Mediaeval or pre-modern stuff is minuscule. The French still predominate in most of the secondary scholarship, too. 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. It was for a time the dominant orthodoxy. 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. Theyre street stories. So he writes for entertainment and, like Jahiz, hes great at digression. Really, as far as a lot of Arab writers are concerned, theyre not really published until theyve been translated into to German or French or English thats the target, and that has a slightly deforming effect on whats being written. Its a wonderful book in which the writer puts difficult feelings into simple words and showcases the reality of life. Perhaps it was too complicated for Reagan to get his head around. An awful lot of them are working on modern novels and I suppose an even larger number will be working on commercial documents. Youve given us five classics to be getting on with, but what are the new developments in Arabic literature? It isnt like a mothers womb. See any of your favourites?! All that did a lot of damage to literary culture, indirectly. The award-winning Cameroonian novelist Mutt-Lon selects five of the best recent novels from Francophone Africa, including Mohamed Mbougar Sarr's Prix Goncourt-winning La plus secrte mmoire des hommes. And then it gets translated into Persian and Hebrew and on and on. Youssef Al Makki lives in a one-room house with his Mom. He starts by saying what counts as good evidence and what counts as bad evidence, and he gets rid of the whole business of chains of transmission (isnads), and tries to establish logical ways of assessing the truth of things. He has some similarities with Machiavelli, who was also a scholar and a politician, and whose life was probably also endangered sometimes. 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. 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. Lets end on the literature. Oh, hes a great man. Its conceivable he went to China although probably not but he did at least try to find out about China, and he was in Madagascar. The International Booker Prize celebrates the best fiction in translation published over the previous year. That new genre must be there, only that subcultures are so much harder to tap into than the academic circles. 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. 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. And so thats the motor of change. Its the reverse of dull. Because the past claws its way out., 15. 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. Was he seen as elevating prose? It was his focus on the literature rather than the history, say, that set him apart, really. So they think, Well, weve just invaded Algeria, were probably going to do Morocco, and if were lucky well get to Tunisia we must study! Which makes Jahiz unfashionable and he gets dumped and widely attacked by following generations of writers. It was printed in India because the Arabic being colloquially and quite simple it was a good way of teaching people Arabic. Its quite frightening; from the outside, its quite like a war dance. The sweetest things in life were not necessarily what one strove for and grabbed.

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