Middle Eastern Literature

[Mr.lucifer]

I was wondering who are the greats of Middle Eastern Literature.

[endgame]

unfortunately i don't know either :(

[ChicagoReader]

I've only read Housseni's (probably spelled wrong) Kite Runner which I highly enjoyed. I believe he has one or two other notable books as well.

[stlukesguild]

The giant figure is Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī Tūsī (حکیم ابوالقاسم فردوسی توسی) commonly transliterated as Ferdowsi. He composed the literary epic, the Shahnameh (or The Book of Kings). The book is a frame story (like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales) in which an over-arching narrative allows for the telling of an endless array of stories. The poem is considered a rival to Homer, the Bible, Dante's Comedia and other towering works of literature. The tales focus upon the establishment of the Persia and Persian culture told during a period of captivity, after Persia had been overthrown consecutively by the Arabs, Mongols, and the Turks. Ferdowsi's influence in the Persian culture is explained by the Encyclopaedia Britannica:

The Persians regard Ferdowsi as the greatest of their poets. For nearly a thousand years they have continued to read and to listen to recitations from his masterwork, the Shah-nameh, in which the Persian national epic found its final and enduring form. Though written about 1,000 years ago, this work is as intelligible to the average, modern Iranian as the King James version of the Bible is to a modern English-speaker.

After Firdowsi, major writers include:

Nezāmi-ye Ganjavi ( نظامی گنجوی )- Khamsa (or the Five Jewels)- a collection of five epic narrative poems including: Khosrow and Shirin, Layla and Majnun, The Book of Alexander, The Seven Beauties, and The Storehouse of Mysteries

Omar Khayyám- Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Abu Mansur Ali ibn Ahmad Asadi Tusi- Garshaspnama (The epic of Garshasp)

Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī- Divan-e Shams-e Tabrizi (the Great Work), Maṭnawīye Ma'nawī (Spiritual Couplets).

Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi- (Sanai)-The Walled garden of Truth

Abū Hamīd bin Abū Bakr Ibrāhīm (Attar)- The Conference of Birds

Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī (Saadi)- Bostan (The Orchard) Gulistan (The Rose garden)

Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muḥammad Hāfez-e Šhīrāzī (Hafez)- The Divan (Lyrical poetry)

Asad Gorgani- Vis and Ramin

anon.- One Thousand and One Nights All the above are Persian (not Arabic) writers. The Thousand and One Nights was rooted in a Persian text entitled Hazār Afsānah or the Thousand Myths. By the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. During this time, many of the stories that were originally folk stories are thought to have been collected orally over many years and later compiled into a single book. The compiler and ninth-century translator into Arabic is reputedly the storyteller Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar. The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the 14th century.

attributed to Mohammed- The Qur'an

Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi- The Perfumed Garden of Sensual Delight

Nizar Qabbani- On Entering the Sea

Adonis (Adunis)- Selected Poems

There are endless others, but one would probably do best to look into quality anthologies of Persian, Arabic, and Turkish poetry.

I haven't even included Indian literature, but probably should considering the Islamic rule of India during the Mughal Empire. One major narrative work would be Ghalib Lakhnavi and Abdullah Bilgrami's The Adventures of Amir Hamza.

Major Indian texts include:

attributed to Valmiki- The Ramayana

anon.- Mahabharata

Kālidāsa- Plays

Vātsyāyana- The Kama Sutra

Rabindranath Tagore- Poetry

Seriously, the Middle-East/Near East (India, Pakistan, etc...) produced a body of literature that quite likely rivals that of the West and would involve a lifetime of study to begin to master. These are but some of the towering figures... and those who have been the best served by Western translations.

[Annie Anthrax]

For poetry try Khalil Jibran.

Tayeb Saleh and Waguih Ghali have written decent post-colonialist literature.

For literary criticism, have a look at some of the essays of Edward Said. His writing completely changed the way I read Middle Easten literature.

[Panglossian]

Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat is quite a famous modern work of Middle Eastern literature. I haven't read it, though it's on my to-be-read list.

Written in Persian, The Blind Owl is predominantly a love story, an unconventional love story that elicits visions and nightmare reveries from the depths of the reader's subconscious. A young man, an old man and a beautiful young girl perform, as if framed within a Persian miniature, a ritual of destruction as gradually the narrator, and the reader, discover the meaning hidden within the dreams. This unforgettable story contains a unique blend of the mystery of the Arabian Nights and an acutely contemporary sense of panic and hallucination. The Blind Owl was written during the oppressive latter years of Reza Shah's rule (1925-1941). It was originally published in a limited edition in Bombay, during Hedayat's year-long stay there in 1937, stamped with "not for sale or publication in Iran." It first appeared in Tehran in 1941 (as a serial in the daily Iran), after Erza Shah's abdication, and had an immediate and forceful effect.

Sadegh Hedayat was born in Teheran in 1903, of an aristocratic family, and spent most of his life there. In 1951, during a stay in Paris, Hedayat committed suicide. Recognised as the outstanding Persian writer of the century, Hedayat is generally credited with having brought his country's language and literature into the mainstream of contemporary writing.

[Heteronym]

Just so we know what we're talking about, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_east) lists these countries as composing the Middle East: Bahrain, Cyprus, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Palestine), Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, Yemen.

So certainly Naguib Mahfouz, a great Eyptian novelist.

I've also heard that the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai and the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish were great contemporary poets in their countries. I'm very curious to read.

From Turkey we have Orhan Pamuk.

[Honest]

For poetry try Khalil Jibran.

Tayeb Saleh and Waguih Ghali have written decent post-colonialist literature.

For literary criticism, have a look at some of the essays of Edward Said. His writing completely changed the way I read Middle Easten literature.

Annie: could you please tell how Edward Said did change your views? I'm interested in such topics!! I know he is famous for his book Orientalism where he critiqued the way West read the East!

[Syd A]

In Israel, Abraham B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz and Meir Shalev are the leading contemporary authors. Nothing in Israel can be described as truly classic since the country is so young. Shmuel Yosef Agnon won the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature for his work, but I personally think he sucks. Some (or perhaps many) of their works will not appeal to those unfamiliar with the Israeli culture, or at least such readers will not get the most of these authors.

While we're doing this, I'll recommend one of the best short stories I've ever read: The Yatir Evening Express By Abraham B. Yehoshua. An English translation (http://tinyurl.com/6ettlew) is out there, but may be hard to find.

[JBI]

In Israel, Abraham B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz and Meir Shalev are the leading contemporary authors. Nothing in Israel can be described as truly classic since the country is so young. Shmuel Yosef Agnon won the 1966 Nobel Prize in Literature for his work, but I personally think he sucks. Some (or perhaps many) of their works will not appeal to those unfamiliar with the Israeli culture, or at least such readers will not get the most of these authors.

While we're doing this, I'll recommend one of the best short stories I've ever read: The Yatir Evening Express By Abraham B. Yehoshua. An English translation (http://tinyurl.com/6ettlew) is out there, but may be hard to find.
I kind of liked Agnon, he is very interesting as a contrast to modern Israeli society which has changed so drastically since t'mol Shilshom and other works.

[Babak Movahed]

Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat is quite a famous modern work of Middle Eastern literature. I haven't read it, though it's on my to-be-read list.

Written in Persian, The Blind Owl is predominantly a love story, an unconventional love story that elicits visions and nightmare reveries from the depths of the reader's subconscious. A young man, an old man and a beautiful young girl perform, as if framed within a Persian miniature, a ritual of destruction as gradually the narrator, and the reader, discover the meaning hidden within the dreams. This unforgettable story contains a unique blend of the mystery of the Arabian Nights and an acutely contemporary sense of panic and hallucination. The Blind Owl was written during the oppressive latter years of Reza Shah's rule (1925-1941). It was originally published in a limited edition in Bombay, during Hedayat's year-long stay there in 1937, stamped with "not for sale or publication in Iran." It first appeared in Tehran in 1941 (as a serial in the daily Iran), after Erza Shah's abdication, and had an immediate and forceful effect.

Sadegh Hedayat was born in Teheran in 1903, of an aristocratic family, and spent most of his life there. In 1951, during a stay in Paris, Hedayat committed suicide. Recognised as the outstanding Persian writer of the century, Hedayat is generally credited with having brought his country's language and literature into the mainstream of contemporary writing.

Yes! This short novel is fantastic! Such a brilliant example of narration, form creating contextual meaning, and modernism. I highly recommend it!

[libernaut]

Rumi is a great poet. Farid-Ud in Attar has a great epic novel called The Conference of the Birds. I've heard great things about Hafiz. Idries Shah has some interesting books.

[Kafka's Crow]

The earliest known pieces of written literature date back from 2600 BC when some fragments were 'written' at Nippur, modern Iraq. Throughout the Bronze and Iron ages, literature was regularly created and recorded in Iraq and Egypt. Homeric epics were written much later, in the 8th century BC. This makes the Middle-Eastern cannon almost twice as old as the Western cannon. Moreover, Indians and the Middle Eastern cultures had a sort of monoply over the written word for almost 2000 years from the Sumerian texts all the way to the Torah which was written shortly before Homer.

As far as poetry is concerned, Iran seems to have the most glorious history among these nations. The Persian empire was a cultural, political and military powerhouse which challenged the Greeks, quickly recovered from destruction at the hands of Alexander the Great to resume this challenge and take it to the Roman empire, hastening a mutual destruction with its centuries of warfare against them. Classical Persian poetry finds itself rejuvenated regularly through diverse historical forces: nationalism in Firdausi, mysticism in Rumi and Saadi, classical love poetry in hundreds of majestic figures in both Iran and Afghanistan as well as the Mughal India (Mughals spoke Persian which was the language of the ruling classes when the British arrived) and Central Asian nations where the Mughals were originated from.

The death of Prophet Mohammed's grandson created a whole genre of elegiac poetry that required the grandest of language for the purpose of mourning. This is continuing the use of language at its highest among the Persian-speaking shia muslims and has passed into the Urdu poetry of India and Pakistan, reviving the ties this language has with classical Persian.

Poetry is a part of everyday life in these cultures. Everybody respects and quotes poetry in their conversations and the social or educational standards of a person are not judged by the presence or absence of poetry in their speech but by the standard of the poetry they quote.

I am no big fan of Arabic culture and poetry but it has been there for thousands of years and Arabs take great pride in their language which has a huge vocabulary and a very complex sentence structure.

Middle Eastern cultures have long history of written literature. They might not have produced great works of more commercial forms of literature, ie. novel and drama but poetry as pure literature enjoys not only utmost respect but is part of everyday parlance. This focus on poetry has kept this literature relatively unknown in the West because poetry is more difficult to translate than novels or plays.

[AjaxAscendant]

Well, I only know Rumi and Gibran in poetry, and Alberuni in travel prose.