Download PDF | A. F. L. Beeston, T. M. Johnstone, R. B. Serjeant, G. R. Smith - Arabic Literature to the End of the Umayyad Period (The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature) (2010).
566 Pages
EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
The standard English-language history of Arabic literature has long been The literary history of the Arabs by Reynold A. Nicholson, Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic in the University of Cambridge, first published as long ago as 1907, but reprinted several times. To this day it remains a sympathetic, and indeed a valuable, introduction to one of the world's great literatures, but much water has flowed under the bridge since it first appeared, and the only general survey in English to appear since then, H. A. R. Gibb's Arabic literature (Oxford, 1926, 2nd revised edn 1963), is very condensed and makes no pretence at covering the immense field of Arabic literature in depth. It was the need for a more extensive history, to take in new fields and survey the results of over half a century of research, that prompted the Cambridge University Press to establish, in several volumes, a new history of Arabic literature on a much larger scale. Since the beginning of the century, an enormous number of previously unknown manuscripts has been brought to light and catalogued, while a vast range of classical, medieval and later texts has been published in editions of varying quality.
The two small original volumes of Carl Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Literatur (1898—1902) may be compared with the three bulky volumes of its Supplement (the last appeared in 1942), and this, in turn, with the six large volumes of Fuat Sezgin's Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums in current production, yet covering only the literature up to 430/1039, in order to comprehend the tremendous developments that have taken place. Moreover, neither work takes account of Arabic literature in Malaysia, Nigeria or Indonesia, and only sparsely does either deal with that in India, East Africa and other places, both medieval and modern. From its slow renaissance and development in the nineteenth century, modern or contemporary Arabic literature assumed a faster tempo in the inter-war era, and mushroomed in the years after 1946.
The traditional madrasah religious-centred education has greatly declined, though not in the case of Cairo's al-Azhar University, especially after the reforms introduced there, which has succeeded in attracting vast numbers of students. The growth of secular education at secondary and university levels, and the more recent emergence of radio broadcasting, have created a whole new reading public in place of the relatively small elite which formerly constituted the "literary public". Contemporary Arabic writing owes much to European models, deriving especially from French and English literature, but it is gradually changing into a literature in its own right, rich in prose, verse (always highly appreciated by Arab speakers), and writing for the stage - the last generally regarded, though not quite accurately, as an entirely new literary form. Journals, magazines and newspapers all abound. In spite of this, however, the Arab world remains deeply committed to its heritage of "classical Arabic" literature.
While it was in the West that the first scientifically based editions of major Arabic works were made, Arab scholars have developed the techniques of editing and engage actively in the preparation of classical texts. Since the time of Nicholson the number of western scholars engaged in studies connected with Arabic literature has also enormously increased; moreover, western scholars are in much closer contact with their counterparts in Arab countries as well as frequently acquainted with those countries themselves in a way not possible in the early part of the century. Today there is an ever-increasing flow of critical studies and translations with which it is all but impossible to keep up - at least in the case of works in book format - though for articles in periodicals we are now fortunate in having Professor J. D. Pearson's Index islamicus (i 906—5 5, and appearing annually with quinquennial cumulations). On the subject of translations a word of warning must be voiced. It is vastly more difficult than in the case of European languages, sometimes well nigh impossible, to translate from Arabic classics in a way attractive to a reader unacquainted with the original tongue and civilization associated with it. Both idiom and culture often appear strange and remote. Professional scholars and amateurs have essayed many an effort, in the domains both of prose and of verse, at rendering Arabic into English, but if the results often appear unsatisfactory to the English reader it should certainly not be assumed that the original author is at fault.
The linguistic medium still most commonly employed by Arabic writers is basically the traditional language of the "classical" age, modified by neologisms and by idioms drawn from western languages — yet there is little direct borrowing of foreign vocabulary; indeed, the use of foreign words has actually diminished during the last few decades. The neo-classical form of Arabic is established as the language of literature and the press and is also basically the form used in broadcasting. The colloquial Arabics spoken in the regions are rejected by the educated for literary purposes, though the tendency to regard them as merely "vulgar" has diminished; but because it is felt in some quarters that they are "provincial" (iqlimi) and tend to encourage political divisiveness they are regarded, for political reasons, with disapproval. Yet there has long been a literature in the "colloquial" of each Arab country and the colloquial vocabulary and phraseology is drawn upon by novelists and playwrights, especially in Egypt but also in other Arab countries, though it is unlikely to supplant the high prestige of the "standard" form of the language.
The growth of "popular literature" {al-adab al-sha'bi) in the colloquials over the last twenty years has given them a more respected place than formerly. The editors feel no apology is required for adopting a broad definition of " literature " to comprehend virtually everything that has been recorded in writing, apart from inscriptions and purely archival material. In contemporary usage it has become customary to restrict the term to verse and fictional or bellettrist prose, excluding scientific, historical, religious and other genres of writing. Such a restriction imposes itself in the case of contemporary writing because of the utterly unmanageable daily flood of print, but in an historical survey such as this it would make no sense. This volume of the Cambridge history of Arabic literature begins with the, initially orally transmitted, verse output of the sixth century A.D., together with a few scanty surviving remnants of prose (if, as is possible, a pre-Islamic prose literature of broader coverage existed in the Yemen, it has virtually disappeared) and it ends with the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in 132/750. As literary movements do not always coincide with political events, there is some overlap in appropriate cases into the era of the succeeding dynasty, the 'Abbasids. Within this period fall two major events: the founding of Islam by the Prophet Muhammad, though it does not make a break in the Arabian tradition, and the great Arab Islamic conquests of territories outside the Peninsula that began immediately after the Prophet's death in 11/632, bringing within the Islamic fold territories stretching from the Atlantic in the west across to Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent in the Far East.
The former event brought with it the revelation of the Qur'an; the second brought the Arabians into direct contact as overlords, with the Byzantine and Sasanian worlds. Both events were to shape the future course of development of the religion of Islam, and that of Arabic literature, which is the vehicle of it. Muhammad b. 'Abdullah, a member of the noble house of 'Abd Manaf of the Quraysh tribe, was born in the holy city of Mecca. The 'Abd Manaf family was closely associated with the Meccan sanctuary and its temple, the Ka'bah, of which, indeed, one of its branches kept the keys. About the year A.D. 6IO, Muhammad, then aged about forty, was inspired to commence his prophetic mission, to reject idolatry and insist on the worship of Allah alone. In Mecca his strict monotheism won him few influential converts, but on the contrary roused strong opposition. His followers, and eventually he himself, were obliged to seek the protection of the tribes of Yathrib, some 300 miles north of Mecca, a place later to become the "Prophet's Town" (Madinat al-Nabl or Medina). The Prophet's hijrah or migration in A.D. 622 marks the commencement of the Muslim era and its calendar.1 At Yathrib, later Medina, it took Muhammad some time to establish himself and his Islamic community in the face of internal opposition from certain factions, but he soon took the initiative against the lords of his native town of Mecca. Despite some early reverses he succeeded in entering Mecca virtually unopposed in the year 8/630, and henceforth was able to extend his control under the banner of the Islamic faith to other regions of the Peninsula.
Muhammad died in 11/632 and the leadership of the Islamic theocracy passed to his Companions and close associates, the so-called "Orthodox Caliphs" or successors, Abu Bakr, 'Umar, 'Uthman and 'All (at one and the same time Muhammad's cousin and son-in-law) (10—40/632—61). Abu Bakr weathered the political crisis at Muhammad's death, and under him, but, mainly under the next two caliphs, the new theocratic state enlisted the Arab tribes to launch on great territorial conquests which were to turn it into an Islamic empire. When the third caliph 'Uthman was murdered by disaffected tribesmen, 'All (who was married to the Prophet's daughter Fatimah) was elected to the caliphate at Medina. This led to a confrontation between the house of Hashim, to which the Prophet and 'AH belonged, and the house of Umayyah (both being branches of 'Abd Manaf) in the person of Mu'awiyah, the powerful governor of Syria whose father had till late in the day been a staunch opponent of Muhammad. 'Uthman also belonged to the Umayyad house in the male line and Mu'awiyah demanded retaliation for him on the murderers of his kinsman.
This 'All was powerless to achieve and the two drifted into war, 'All meanwhile having left Medina to establish himself the more securely in Iraq. The failure of an attempt at arbitration between the two after the battle of Siffln left 'All's position much weaker, and in 40/661 he was murdered by a group hostile to both parties alike. Mu'awiyah became caliph and the Umayyad dynasty headed the empire till 132/750, when it was overthrown by another branch of the house of Hashim, the 'Abbasids, in consequence of which the capital province of the empire shifted from Syria to Iraq. However, 'All's descendants never ceased to claim they were the legitimate heirs to the Prophet and no others. The early dispute gave rise to the first, greatest and most enduring schism in Islam, known as the " Dissension " (al-Fitnah), which has affected its politics, religion and, of course, Arabic literature. A short survey of the economic and social situation in Arabia about the close of the sixth century A.D. should set the scene of the Prophet's mission, the conquests and the development of a literature in Arabic which followed.
The Arabian Peninsula, though much of it is difficult terrain, was none the less far from isolated from the major civilizations around it. Through the two Arab buffer states of the north, Ghassan (located in present-day eastern Syria), and al-Hirah (on the western confines of Mesopotamia), the Arabians were in touch respectively with Byzantium and the Sasanid empire. Both these Arab states were largely Christian, and Christianity had in fact penetrated the pagan communities as far as the extreme south of the Peninsula. Jewish colonies flourished in the west and south. The rulers of al-Hlrah were noted as patrons of the Arabian poets, and no doubt their courts were centres of diffusion of Aramaean and Sasanian culture. Under a system guaranteeing security which had been established by Quraysh of Mecca, caravans were able to ply between the Yemen and Hadramawt through the Hijaz, past Byzantine frontier posts in present-day Jordan to the terminus at Gaza in southern Palestine; another route ran from east to west linking Iraq with the Hijaz, and thence to the western bank of the Red Sea and Ethiopia.
The India-Mediterranean trade had been established for centuries via the Gulf and Red Sea: there was indeed a seasonal movement of merchants from south of present-day Jordan, Greek traders being included among them, to the Gulf and around Arabia to the Red Sea and the Hijaz. Egypt was also in relatively close contact with the Hijaz. So communication within and without the Arabian Peninsula — if slow — was regular, and both Byzantines and Sasanians were keenly interested in maintaining their spheres of influence there. The high level of achievement native to western Arabia is already known to us from the splendid dam at Marib, and from many a site in the Yemen. The influence of Greece and Rome is to be seen not only in the rock architecture of Petra and Mada'in Salih but also in Yemeni stone carving, coinage and bronzes, and even in the mural paintings recently brought to light at al-Faw in Saudi Arabia. Al-Faw has also yielded objects and utensils of an astonishingly high level of culture. Christian Najran was incontact with Byzantium, as pagan Arab notables also are known to have been. Sixth-century Arabia was not a country of rude barbarians. The population of the Peninsula considered as a whole, with its sedentary or sedenterized communities on its northern fringes, in the heavily populated Yemen mountains, Oman, the Najd plains, and oases such as Yathrib (later Medina), far outnumbered the nomadic groups. It was the noble arms-bearing tribes and their chiefs, secular or religious, who formed the class politically and socially dominant in the settled agricultural areas containing the bulk of the inhabitants.
The arms-bearing tribes may have been sedentary, sometimes even farmers, or nomadic, or have had both settled and nomadic sections. However, were they sedentary or nomadic, the noble arms-bearing tribes shared a common social code with its concepts of high chivalry; they formed, and indeed continue to form, the upper stratum in the social system, second today only to certain categories of men of religion. After the great conquests beyond the confines of Arabia it would not seem strange to these sedentary tribes to take up residence in the new territories. During the Umayyad period the tribal structure of society seems to have continued to flourish relatively unchanged; but, after the 'Abbasid take-over, although the Arab society in its tribal form did not disappear, it progressively lost its dominant position and importance. Assimilation of Arabians with the local inhabitants took place particularly in the urban centres, although well on into the 'Abbasid period the Nabat or Aramaeans were despised by society.
The nomadic tribal groups, when they no longer played a role as warriors of Islam, sank into insignificance and their contribution to literature was nil. From the period of the rise and expansion of Islam, through the Umayyad age, the noble tribes of Arabian society, sedentary or nomadic, who formed the ruling class, extended the principle of "clientship" which they followed in the Peninsula and applied it to the situation created by the entry of large numbers of non-Arabs into the Islamic faith. From ancient times it had been the practice of tribal society for a strong, and therefore noble and honourable, tribe to consent to undertake the protection of a weaker group, the latter contracting an alliance with the more powerful group which bound it to support it. In itself the contracting of such an alliance brought with it a certain lowering of status. There were, however, clients belonging to groups engaged in occupations regarded as socially demeaning by the noble tribes and whose position was lower in the social scale than the status of subordinated allies. In the situation obtaining during the early conquests non-Arab Muslims were integrated into the structure of the society dominated by the noble tribes by being given the status of clients {mawdli) under tribal protection.
Towards the end of the Umayyad regime, non-Arab Muslims grew openly resentful of the Arab hegemony. This was to give rise to the Shu'ubiyyah movement, largely Iranian in composition, though with elements among circles in Syria and the Yemen. These aimed at reasserting national cultures and political influence against Arab tribal dominance. This, then, is a brief sketch of the background to the rise of Arabic literature in its first stages. For genealogical trees showing the relationships of Muhammad and the descent of the Umayyad caliphs, see tables i and II (from The Cambridge history of Islam, vol. i).
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