Arabic Language Fantasy?

Why not start with Alf Layla Wa Layla? Every other fantasy novel does.

Besides Alf layla wa layla? (One thousand and one nights?) I'm not sure. I don't recall my instructors mentioning anything in that vein. Then again, we spent most of our time reading newspapers and military manuals.

I studied Arabic in 87-89, but unfortunately, I didn't retain much of it years later. It's too bad, it's a beautiful language and certainly the grammar was much simpler than Czech was.

I know there are things out there. Egypt has a thriving comic book industry (for one), but I'm not familiar with any current fantasy books. My Arabic is so rusty, I'd have a hard time making my way through an early reader these days. *sigh*

Sad thing is, I studied Czech in 84-85 and Arabic in 87-89 and I'm still reasonably familiar with Czech all these years later. Arabic slipped away after a few years of not using it.

Here's a possibility. David Ackert is an Iranian-born writer/actor who has written some SFF with Benjamin Rosenbaum. I read a short story of theirs recently in 'Year's Best Fantasy 8.' You might try contacting them and seeing if they have any ideas. Iranians don't typically speak Arabic, but he might have something to say on the subject.

Maybe something Algerian? Just figuring that there would be a cross-pollination between Western oriented (French) literature stylings, but written in Arabic, by an Algerian author?

I recall someone telling me once about a classic Sci-Fi story featuring distant-future Arab adventurers exploring the long-lost city of New York ... but I don't know if it was written IN Arabic, or just those were the characters. It seems like it was a non-American story though. Maybe French? I'm confused because I never read it myself, but he used to talk alot about non-American SF (being Swiss himself, but reading both French and German, and having travelled in North Africa ... so the story could be from any of those I guess)

I like djinns, myself.

I wonder why there might be less Fantasy in Arabic (if that's the case)?

Nothing against anyone's faith, here ... Maybe (just guessing here) did Islam put a kibosh on those "pagan" stories?

Christianity may have had similar influences on not telling tales of "pagan" or Fantasy natures ... but in Europe there were centuries of pagan cultures and tradition before Christianity reached them that survive (and even were absorbed into traditions as "acceptable" -- I mean, the roots of SANTA CLAUS are pretty pagan and sinister if we think about it! A Germanic pagan shaman with magical flying reindeer and traficking with ELVES?! Heck, we even have astrologers and star-worshippers as a respected part of our Christmas story! of course, King solomon trafficked with djinns too!)

I just wonder if ARABIC as it spread, didn't spread in the context of ISLAM to such an extent that the language didn't squelch the local (native language)Fantasy tales too?

So you'd have many local cultural fantasy tales and folklore, of course, but anything passing from the native languages to be written in Arabic might be going thru a filter of "well, is this something the FAITH would approve of?" It would be like Christian missionarys being the only folks who were teaching everyone English, they wouldn't approve of all the original culture's "fantasy" tales being written down per se?

Again, I'm just GUESSING, I'm totally ignorant of the language's history or spread. And I don't mean anything negative about Arabic, just that there might be a tendency to replace all the "pagan" tales and fantasy influences that survived in the West, with Koranic tales as Arabic spread across the world?

Obviously, we in the Americas sadly silenced entire cultures' fantasy folklore, as the invading Europeans destroyed indigenous peoples and societies, and replaced native languages with English and Spanish.

I'd hate to want to be interested in reading Fantasy tales in Nahuatl / Aztec. Not because some didn't survive (it did) but because we can fear that 90% was lost.

@small axe: Definitely, in traditional Islamic societies there is a strong bias against any "culture" that doesn't glorify God. So arts practiced in those societies will tend to be those that have some kind of religious intention. I'm not sure if there are any predominantly Arabic-speaking countries that aren't also predominantly Islamic, so this is probably the biggest reason why there wouldn't be as much fantasy going on in those historical places (post-Islam).

Whether it's French, Spanish, or Arabic, a fantasy book written in a foreign language wouldn't be considered its own genre. It's still "fantasy", just in a different language.

You'd probably have better luck asking this question in an Arabic-speaking community asking for books they recommend.

Christianity may have had similar influences on not telling tales of "pagan" or Fantasy natures

Click to expand...

Where in the Bible do you get this? It's true that SF/F is stigmatized in some hyper-conservative Christian circles, but there are plenty of Christians who are just fine with these genres. (Witness the existence and huge popularity of the Christian allegory Narnia series.) Within the Bible itself, the Apostle Paul quotes pagan poets (Acts 17:28) and a Cretan poet (Titus 1:12). Secular fiction isn't taboo in moderate or liberal Christian circles.

Ardent Kat said:

Where in the Bible do you get this? It's true that SF/F is stigmatized in some hyper-conservative Christian circles, but there are plenty of Christians who are just fine with these genres. (Witness the existence and huge popularity of the Christian allegory Narnia series.) Within the Bible itself, the Apostle Paul quotes pagan poets (Acts 17:28) and a Cretan poet (Titus 1:12). Secular fiction isn't taboo in moderate or liberal Christian circles.

Click to expand...

No, I certainly didn't mean to say anything in the BIBLE would be "anti" Fantasy literature.

In fact, my point above was that in the West, as Christianity spread into pagan areas, MANY elements of formerly-pagan culture and folklore were absorbed into "Christian" cultures (which I meant to keep separate from the religion of Christianity itself, of course)

Hence my comments about Santa Claus, and Elves, (and countless other characters and stories which all provide a WEALTH of fantasy inspiration in the West)

I was just meaning to suggest (while confessing a mere guess) that as Christianity spread, native languages and thus native cultures remained (Germans still speaking German, French speaking French, etc) and so their native fantasy elements survived well also.

But perhaps as ARABIC spread, it traveled in very tight relationship with ISLAM ... and so the NEW language might tend to erase the old fantasy stories (where in the West that happened less)

Again, I mean no disrespect to RELIGIONS ... I was just suggesting that in the Western cultures native languages and cultures (and thus native FANTASY tales) may have fared better and survived better, than under the spread of Islam/Arabic.

Generally speaking: because I was watching THE STORY OF INDIA the other night, and they made the point that when the Moguls (Muslims) ruled INDIA for centuries, there was very fruitful and tolerant co-existence of Religions and cultures. Historically, Islam was often more tolerant of other religions than Christianity was.

(I get it too that many, if not most, Muslims don't speak Arabic as their native language!)

But to YOUR point: I agree, Christianity shouldn't rule out the admiration of "fantasy" genre tales. I went to a church highschool, and there wasn't any hesitation at all to immerse us in great tales. Even the "religious" approach was open-minded: other cultures have their tales of adventure, legend, and the supernatural because the pre-Christian world was rampant with demons and fallen angels!

There's something epic and even open-minded about that approach: you can believe a great Faerie story because fairies may be real, they're just ... pre-Christian.

Showing respect where respect is due, giving the Faeries and the Fallens their due cultural value (for good and bad, but remembering that the REAL Fairy tales were stuff of scary supernatural weight) ...

I'd rather have a Fantasy tale that speaks to true human Imagination, than some dumbed-down, cleaned-up-for-the-five-year-olds cartoon !!!

PS

I agree too with the comment above that the "problem" isn't Islam but repressive governments of flawed power-hungry Man. Probably why so many have a dim view of Christianity too is because most of what you hear about it is from the yarping of mere cultural squares and political conservatives, at least around here! But such generalizations are unfair to everyone. In every human realm and endevour there are the shallow and the deep, the thoughtful and the thoughtless. Sometimes the worst speak loudest.

Bookewyrme said:

Actually, from what I've been coming across, it isn't Islam itself that has a problem with fantasy. It is in fact the high level of government censorship and repression of freedom of expression that is to blame. So, there's writers from places like Egypt which speaks primarily Arabic, and doesn't have a very repressive government, and they write fiction, and some of it is even Fantasy (though I think not much). But then there are places like Saudi Arabia that are much more oppressive, so there's less Literature native to the area.

Click to expand...

I gotta disagree with you on some points here, as someone who spent more time studying Islam than any other subject in college. Islam itself has a problem with anything that doesn't put God first, as revealed by the Qur'an and the prophet Muhammad. Islam per se would certainly have a problem with people in Islamic cultures being too entertained by stories of magic--or anything, really, if it draws more attention than God and the Qur'an. The person wondering if Islamic cultures stamped out previous influences is right for the most part.

Talking about repressive governments, keep in mind with your example of Saudi Arabia that they've declared their constitution to be the Qur'an itself, which makes Islamic law (sharia) the basis of law. Also consider a highly repressive place like Iran which is really run by religious figures. In the truest form of Islam, there is no separation between religion and state. So Islam itself is at the root of this--not just the governments. And its the influence of Islam that typically gives the most restrictive governments their justification.

It's the Muslim countries that have governments that are more secular that allow more freedoms and which are more open to things that are popular in the west.

a such thing? well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh

third person said:

a such thing? well... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Click to expand...

I had to look this up, but the early versions of Gilgamesh are in the Sumerian and Akkadian languages.

Bookewyrme said:

As for the argument about Islam, I don't know a huge amount, mostly what I've gotten from studying the language. However, I still would not agree that it is Islam itself which is suppressing the literature. From all I've ever seen/heard the religion is intended to be quite open and liberal, but it has been twisted to some extent by time and evolution (rather like Christianity, actually. Judaism has the same, but oddly enough the twists of Judaism have generally made it more liberal, not less.) and thus have become a tool of totalitarianism, not its cause.

Click to expand...

Islam is not really an open or liberal type of religion, although it is true that at the time it came to be it actually was sort of liberal for the time. In that era, Islam actually gave women many more rights than they already had, for example (in divorce is one example of that, if memory serves).

The big problem with that is that there is little to no "mechanism" for allowing change within Islam. Even though Islam was in some ways progressive when it came about, its principles and laws were set forth in the Qur'an and around the time of Muhammad, and so there's nothing within it that lets it easily adapt to a modern culture.

Muslims are very proud of their traditions, and in many ways they should be imo, but that makes change more difficult. It's sort of built to be a dinosaur, as if the one truth was laid out 1,400 years ago and that's pretty much the only way it is. Since God's word, the Qur'an, is the final gospel truth, you have to go with what's there. This is one of the reasons so many Muslim countries have been slow to "modernize."

As far as Islam not suppressing literature, look at what happened to Salman Rushdie not long ago. Granted, he was challenging Islam in some ways (or at least that's how some Muslims took it), but traditional Muslims are strict about what they think belongs in a bonafide Islamic culture.

I said it before, but I'll say it again because it's the truth. If something is so entertaining that it detracts people's attention from God and the Qur'an, then the nature of Islam is typically not to embrace those things, or to suppress or discourage those things. As I said, that's why even visual art and music in traditional Muslim cultures are supposed to honor God. Pretty much everything is supposed to honor God. There are some more modern Muslim countries where you don't see that, but that's because those governments are less religious and less Islamic. The places where the governments are more religious and Islamic are generally the more repressive places.

From Salmon Rushdie:

Between religion and literature, as between politics and literature, there is a linguistically based dispute. But it is not a dispute of simple opposites. Because whereas religion seeks to privilege one language above all others, the novel has always been about the way in which different languages, values and narratives quarrel, and about the shifting relations between them, which are relations of power. The novel does not seek to establish a privileged language, but it insists upon the freedom to portray and analyse the struggle between the different contestants for such privileges.

Carlos Fuentes has called the novel "a privileged arena". By this he does not mean that it is the kind of holy space which one must put off one's shoes to enter; it is not an arena to revere; it claims no special rights except the right to be the stage upon which the great debates of society can be conducted.

. . . while the novel answers our need for wonderment and understanding, it brings us harsh and unpalatable news as well.

It tells us there are no rules. It hands down no commandments. We have to make up our own rules as best we can, make them up as we go along.

And it tells us there are no answers; or rather, it tells us that answers are easier to come by, and less reliable, than questions. If religion is an answer, if political ideology is an answer, then literature is an inquiry; great literature, by asking extraordinary questions, opens new doors in our minds.

. . . literature is, of all the arts, the one best suited to challenging absolutes of all kinds; and, because it is in its origin the schismatic Other of the sacred (and authorless) text, so it is also the art most likely to fill our god-shaped holes.

Click to expand...

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/anglophone/satanic_verses/intro.html

There's more. It's about the context of the Fatwa, and very interesting, imho.

And it tells us there are no answers; or rather, it tells us that answers are easier to come by, and less reliable, than questions.

If religion is an answer, if political ideology is an answer, then literature is an inquiry; great literature, by asking extraordinary questions, opens new doors in our minds.

Click to expand...

Amazing quote.

But ... in its own way, it actually DOES explain (well, to me, in one of my moods or mindsets) how a Religion or an Ideology could sincerely say "Let's just stop telling our kids the stories about the clever pagan fox who tricks his way into the hen house and eats all the chickens ... and tell them the story about the brave fox who defends the defenseless chickens from the big bad wolf pack."

Asking QUESTIONS is open-minded and good, but mostly because it's by asking questions that we arrive at the ANSWERS.

Once you have the ANSWERS ... constant questions and dispute thereafter (however open-minded) becomes a distraction which detracts from the Answers.

Now: I suggest some here will recoil from that comment.

We in our secular, science-based culture would like to believe that we "never stop challenging Answers" (especially when confronted by someone else's "religious" Answers.)

But ... how annoyed are we by those who wish to continue to CHALLENGE and QUESTION our own pet ideologies?

Many here are weary of the dispute against GLOBAL WARMING.

Or the theory of evolution.

Or the "equality" of women ...

The list goes on.

It's a list, of course, of some of the bright points of our culture!

But how patient would WE be with an author (a Rushdie, let's say) who not only wrote novels AGAINST our cherished ideals ... but actually was gaining ideological ground against our ideals?

I know MOST of us would NEVER choose to silence another, even radically conflicting viewpoint or ideology!

But in light of Rushdie's powerful quote (which again, I find inspiring) ... Perhaps we can imagine a culture and culture's language that, as it spread across the world and came into contact with some radically different stories and worldviews (in this context, NATIVE FANTASY and FOLKLORE tales) centuries ago, might have been tempted to squelch down the "transmission static" of existing Fantasy (what Rushdie might praise as QUESTIONS), and replace it with your own culture's ANSWERS.

One of the historical tidbits I've heard about ISLAM coming to authority, was the Prophet demanding that the pagans STOP murdering their girl babies.

If there was a native "fantasy folklore" that involved the happy parents who decided it was a GOOD thing to sacrifice their newborn daughter ... I can imagine early muslims deciding "Y'know, we HAVE an ANSWER to that, we really don't need to let the pro-infanticide Questions (or native folklore Stories) be passed on as stories. STOP."

No one here would throw a rock at Rushdie for raising that terrible issue in a book and telling us that infanticide was a good choice, I suppose.

At some point though, someone might say "Let that story fade. We won't translate that one into our shiny new language, Arabic. Here's a Koran full of happier ideas. It's got djinns, the kids will love it!"

Bookewyrme said:

Alright, all of your previous statements may be true, I don't know. I think there's a basic logical flaw, but this isn't really my area of history. And goodness knows there's other areas of history that are totally illogical. But this I have to disagree with, not on the basic principle, but on the extension of the argument to be "there is repression on these grounds, ergo there can't be fantasy". There are plenty of books in english which are not only entertaining, but even fantasy(!) which also celebrate and even in some ways teach about God. Well, look at C.S. Lewis.

So, to be back on topic (*grin*), why hasn't Arabic thrown up a C.S. Lewis? And if it has, what is their name so I can read him?

Click to expand...

I think you're right, in that if there was much fantasy literature in Muslim countries over the centuries, that it would likely have a very religious meaning to it. I'm not sure if that existed, though. I've written and asked my old major professor in Islamic studies to see if he knows of any.

As for Arabic =/= Islamic, all of the Arabic-speaking countries are predominantly Muslim. There are probably at least four million Christian Arabs, though, and as you said other Arabs who are not religious, or who practice some other religion. It is certainly possible that there is fantasy lit written by Arabs who are not also Muslims, but overwhelmingly the Arabic language is spoken by Muslims. So, the issue of Islam will almost always come up if we talk about Arab culture over the last thousand-plus years.

My old professor wrote back:

"1001 Nights (alf layla wa-layla) is the original Arabic book of fantasy literature. Beyond that, I am not aware of anything in that genre."

This has also been called "Arabian Nights."

One Thousand and One Nights (Arabic: كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة‎ Kitāb 'alf layla wa-layla; Persian: هزار و یک شب Hezār-o yek šab) is a collection of Middle Eastern and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first English language edition (1706), which rendered the title as The Arabian Nights' Entertainment.[1]

The original concept is most likely derived from an ancient Sassanid Persian prototype that relied partly on Indian elements,[2] but the work as we have it was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators and scholars across the Middle East and North Africa. The tales themselves trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian, Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and literature. In particular, many tales were originally folk stories from the Caliphate era, while others, especially the frame story, are most probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work Hazār Afsān (Persian: هزار افسان, lit. Thousand Tales). Though the oldest Arabic manuscript dates from the 14th century, scholarship generally dates the collection's genesis to around the 9th century.

Click to expand...

This is the summary of a book on the subject, The Islamic Context of The Thousand and One Nights, which echoes some things we've said aboe:

In this fascinating study, Muhsin J. al-Musawi shows how deeply Islamic heritage and culture is embedded in the tales of The Thousand and One Nights (known to many as the Arabian Nights) and how this integration invites readers to make an Islamic milieu. Conservative Islam dismisses The Thousand and One Nights as facile popular literature, and liberal views disregard the rich Islamic context of the text. Approaching the text with a fresh and unbiased eye, al-Musawi reads the tales against Islamic schools of thought and theology and recovers persuasive historical evidence to reveal the cultural and religious struggle over Islam that drives the book's narrative tension and binds its seemingly fragmented stories.

Written by a number of authors over a stretch of centuries, The Thousand and One Nights depicts a burgeoning, urban Islamic culture in all its variety and complexity. As al-Musawi demonstrates, the tales document their own places and periods of production, reflecting the Islamic individual's growing exposure to a number of entertainments and temptations and their conflict with the obligations of faith. Aimed at a diverse audience, these stories follow a narrative arc that begins with corruption and ends with redemption, conforming to a paradigm that concurs with the sociological and religious concerns of Islam and the Islamic state. By emphasizing Islam in his analysis of these entertaining and instructional tales, al-Musawi not only illuminates the work's consistent equation between art and life, but he also sheds light on its underlying narrative power. His study offers a brilliant portrait of medieval Islam as well, especially its social, political, and economic institutions and its unique practices of storytelling.

Click to expand...