Arabic Literature

Main

the body of written works produced in the Arabic language.

The tradition of Arabic literature stretches back some 16 centuries to unrecorded beginnings in the Arabian Peninsula. At certain points in the development of European civilization, the literary culture of Islam and its Arabic medium of expression came to be regarded not only as models for emulation but also, through vital conduits such as Moorish Spain and Norman Sicily, as direct sources of inspiration for the intellectual communities of Europe. The rapid spread of the Islamic faith brought the original literary tradition of the Arabian Peninsula into contact with many other cultural traditions—Byzantine, Persian, Indian, Amazigh (Berber), and Andalusian, to name just a few—transforming and being transformed by all of them. At the turn of the 21st century, the powerful influence of the West tended to give such contacts a more one-sided directionality, but Arab litterateurs were constantly striving to find ways of combining the generic models and critical approaches of the West with more indigenous sources of inspiration drawn from their own literary heritage.

Both terms in the title of this article are in need of elaboration. The use of the term literature in English to imply those writings that are susceptible to aesthetic analysis (as opposed to everything that is written) is of relatively recent vintage, and the development of a field of study devoted to it is yet more recent (with the study in the West of non-Western literary traditions being even more so). In Arabic the term for “literature” in the narrow English sense is adab, best translated by the French term belles-lettres (“beautiful letters”), which conveys the combination of the aesthetic and didactic elements found in adabmore effectively than does the English term literature. However, it is important to observe that, as is the case with many literary traditions, the origins of this Arabic term in the premodern period lie in the realms of correct behaviour (“polite letters”).

The English language, unlike many other European languages, uses several adjectives—Arab, Arabic, and Arabian—to depict phenomena of the particular region and people that are linked to the notion of “Arab,” a word that has the original sense of “nomad.” For the purposes of this article, the term Arabic will be used to refer only to the Arabic language. The sections that follow will be concerned only with literature that has been composed in Arabic; it thus excludes works written by Arabs in other languages.

The Arabic language in its earliest phases was relatively well protected from the forces of rapid change by the peninsular environment within which it developed. It is the best-preserved model of the Semitic languages. Its syntax and morphology—recorded and systematized as part of the massive research endeavour that followed the production of an authoritative version of the text of the Qurʾān in the 7th century (although this date is a matter of controversy)—provide evidence of early features of the Semitic languages. These features have since disappeared from sister languages, of which Hebrew is perhaps the most prominent. As the history of the revelation, memorization, and eventual recording in written form of the Qurʾān makes clear, the society of Arabia was one that relied to a large extent on human memory to preserve details of important events and principles and to pass on such information and artifacts to succeeding generations. That very reality makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint precise details regarding the earliest development of the Arabic language and its literary tradition. What has survived as the earliest examples of Arabic literary compositions consists of a highly elaborate system of poetic composition and a series of oratorical and often homiletic utterances, all couched in language of a variety and at a level that was to be later reflected in the style of the Qurʾānic revelations themselves. It is unclear, however, whether this apparently elevated language (perhaps reserved for special occasions, such as poetry competitions) was ever the means of spoken communication for any particular group.

Whatever may have been the linguistic environment of pre-Islamic Arabia, the rapid spread of the faith across Africa and into Asia soon created a situation in which written and spoken Arabic inhabited opposite ends of a linguistic spectrum. At one end was the language of written communication and Islamic scholarship, which regarded the language of the Qurʾān as its inimitable yardstick; from this belief developed the later critical doctrine of iʿjāz al-Qurʾān (the “inimitability of the Qurʾān”), which resulted in a written (literary) language that has undergone remarkably little change over the centuries. At the other end was the spoken language of Arabs, which from Spain (known as Al-Andalus during the Moorish period) and Morocco in the west to the Arabian Gulf and Iraq in the east displayed—and continues to display—enormous variety, hardly a surprising linguistic phenomenon in view of the great distances involved and the wide variety of cultures with which Islam came into contact.