Academic literature on the topic 'Political poetry, Arabic'

This paper examines some tenets in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry and shows how poets such as Ibrahim Ibn Khafāja (1058-1138) and William Wordsworth (1770 –1850) used nature as a motif in their poetry. Relying on a historical approach, this paper links smaller features such as themes and literary devices in the Andalusian and Romantic poetry with larger features, including genre, traditions, and cultural system. I argue that the emphasis on both the larger and smaller features of poetry creates what Franco Moretti calls “distant reading.” Comparing and contrasting Ibn Khafāja’s “the Mountain” and Wordsworth’s “the Daffodils,” for instance, introduces nature as a recurrent theme in both Andalusian and Romantic literary traditions, reinforcing Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s description of poetry as a common possession of humanity” (Goethe 229). In addition to that, comparing the images and themes in both the Andalusian and Romantic poetry not only shows internally linked meanings, but it creates what Cesar Domínguez, et al, call “a space for polyglottism, multidisciplinarity, scholarly collaboration” (75). Reading these works and movements closely and distantly serves as a cross-cultural dialogue between the Arabic and English poetic conventions. While Ibn Khafāja and Wordsworth lived in different places and times, wrote in different languages, and did not have the same socio-political circumstances, their poems show the richness and multiplicity of the historical experience of world literature.

In his book, The Hunt in Arabic Poetry: from Heroic to Lyric to Metapoet- ic, Jaroslav Stetkevych traces the evolution of Arabic hunt poetry from its origins as an integral part of the heroic ode (qaṣῑda) to becoming a genre by itself (ṭardiyya) during the Islamic era, and then evolving into a meta- poetic self-conscious expression of poets in our modern time. The book is a collection of a revised book chapter and a number of revised articles that Stetkevych published between 1996 and 2013 discussing Arabic hunt poet- ry at different periods spanning from the pre-Islamic age, known in Arabic as “al-‘Aṣr al-jāhiliyya” (Age of Ignorance), to the contemporary era. This does not diminish the coherence of the book nor detract from Stetkevych’s welcomed thematic approach and his contribution to literary criticism on Arabic poetry and the socio-political and linguistic factors that influenced its development and evolution. Stetkevych divides his 256-page book into three parts. The first part, entitled “The Heroic and the Anti-Heroic in the Early Arabic Ode: The Qaṣῑdah,” consists of three chapters and discusses the evolution of the qa- ṣῑda (ode) during the Age of Ignorance. Stetkevych dissects the structure of the ode and shows how hunt poetry was an integral part of it (not an independent genre). In doing so, Stetkevych draws a vivid picture of the life and geosocial terrain of the period spanning from pre-Islamic to the mid-Umayyad eras. In the first chapter, “The Hunt in the Pre-Islamic Ode”, Stetkevych uses examples mainly from the Mu‘allaqāt of Rabī‘ah ibn Maqrum, Labād Ibn Rabī‘ah, and the famous Imru’ al-Qays to illustrate the different roles hunt poetry played based on where it fell in the structure of the ode. He further establishes that the hunt section of the ode served as the origin for what later became a genre in its own right, known as ṭardiyya. In the second and third chapters, “The Hunt in the Ode at the Close of the Archaic Peri- od” and “Sacrifice and Redemption: The Transformation of Archaic Theme in al-Ḥuṭay’ah”, Stetkevych distinguishes between the different terms for “hunt” and the ṭard that would be the “chivalrous hunt” that takes place from the back of a horse. Parsing these distinctions with poems from ‘Ab- dah Ibn al-Ṭabῑb, al-Shamardal, and ‘Amr Ibn Qamῑ’ah, among others, the author sketches how hunt poetry began taking its own shape as a freestand- ing genre during the Umayyad period: when hunt poetry “is no longer ex- plicitly ‘chivalrous’… we are now in the realm of falconry” (55). The second part of the book, “The Hunt Poem as Lyric Genre in Classi- cal Arabic Poetry: The Ṭardiyyah”, is made up of four chapters that discuss the maturation of the hunt poem under ‘Abbasid rule. During that period, the cultural, economic, scientific, and social renaissance left its impact on poets and poetry. Hunt poetry became a genre of its own, taking an inde- pendent form made of hunt-specialized shorter lyrics. Stetkevych begins this section in chapter 4, “The Discreet Pleasures of the Courtly Hunt: Abū Nuwās and the ‘Abbasid Ṭardiyyah”. He shows how the move of hunt po- etry from subjective to objective description was utterly distinctive under “Abu Nuwas, the master of archaic formulas, who is capable of employing those formulas in conceits that are no longer archaic” (102). Chapter 5, “From Description to Imagism: ‘Alῑ Ibn al-Jahm’s ‘We Walked over Saffron Meadows’,” shows how Ibn al-Jahm and other Abbasid poets such as Ibn al-Mu‘tazz and Abū Firās al-Ḥamdānī “exercise considerable stylistic freedom in developing their own markedly varied but distinctive ṭardiyyah-po- ems from the broadly imagist to the highly lyrical to the fully narrative” (131). Stetkevych shows how the rhythm of hunt poetry was liberated as the Abbasid poets moved from the rajaz meter used in pre-Islamic hunt poetry to modifying and modulating “the ṭawῑl meter to create the unique rhythmic qualities” (131). In chapter 6, “Breakthrough into Lyricism: The Ṭardiyyahs of Ibn al-Mu‘tazz,” the author uses multiple examples to show how “the ṭardiyyah not only found that new lyrical voice but also allowed it … to become a closely integrated and even more broadly formative part of that poet’s multi-genre ‘project’ of a ‘new lyricism’ of Arabic poetry” (183). Chapter 7, “From Lyric to Narrative: The Ṭardiyyah of Abu Firas al-Ḥam- danῑ,” demonstrates how the prince poet “abandons the short lyric mono- rhyme for the sprawling narrative rhymed couplets (urjuzah muzdawijah)” (9). Stetkevych notes that although this “shift did not result (yet) in the achievement of a separate narrative genre, it can …be rightfully viewed as a step in the exploration of the possibility of a large narrative form” (187). The third and final section, “Modernism and Metapoesis: the Pursuit of the Poem,” discusses the revival of hunt poetry by modernist poets after being neglected for centuries. Chapter 8, “The Modernist Hunt Poem in ‘Abd al-Wahhab al Bayatῑ and Aḥmad ‘Abd al Mu‘ṭῑ Ḥijazῑ,” examines two poems of the two poets, both entitled Ṭardiyyah. Stetkevych argues that the Iraqi free-verse poet, al-Bayatῑ, transformed the “genre-and form-bound, rhymed and metered lyric… into a formally free exploration of the dra- matic and tragic image of the hunted hare as a metaphor for the political and cultural predicament of modern man” (9). Meanwhile, Hijazi’s Ṭardi- yyah transforms “the poignant lyricism of the traditional hunt poem into an expression of the poet’s personal experience of political exile and poetic restlessness and frustration” (10). The author concludes that the two poets’ explorations into ṭardiyyah “helped not only to preserve and activate the classical metaphor of hunt/ṭardiyyah into modernity, but in equal measure to validate and enrich the achievements of modern Arabic poetry” (242). In the last chapter, “The Metapoetic Hunt of Muḥammad ‘Afῑfῑ Maṭar,” Stetkevych—through interpretation, comparison, and criticism—shows how Maṭar’s modern poetry while “hermeneutically connected to the old genre… [is] very personal mythopoesis” (10). Stetkevych’s book does not discuss Andalusian hunt poetry, such as that of ‘Abbās Ibn Firnās, Ibn Hadhyal and Ibn al-Khaṭīb, nor the Ṭardiyyah of the contemporary Egyptian poet ‘Abdulraḥman Youssef, published in 2011 after the revolution in Tunisia and two days before the Egyptian revolution started. While including such examples would have further bol- stered this already strong and convincing argument and further illustrated the evolution of hunt poetry from the pre-Islamic era into modern times, their absence does not take away from the book writ large. Stetkevych’s excellent English translations of the poetry cited make his examples more accessible to readers who do not know Arabic. Overall, the book is a very valuable addition to literary criticism of Arabic poetry written in English and will surely be a great asset for scholars, students, and others interested in Arabic poetry as a reflection of a cultural and humanistic experience. Gaby SemaanAssistant Professor of ArabicUniversity of Toledo

Novelists in many literary traditions have come to terms with the distinctiveness of their art form by thinking about poets and poetry. The need to differentiate the novel from poetry is especially pressing for Arab prose writers because of poetry's preeminent status in that literary corpus. Many twentieth-century Arab intellectuals have valorized the novel as the representative genre of modernity–whether conceived as an absent ideal or the epoch of consumerist capitalism–while situating poetry as a backward element of contemporary life. But poetry has also offered prose writers such as Muhammad al-Muwaylihi, in A Period of Time, and novelists such as Tayeb Salih, in Season of Migration to the North, a way to reflect on the ambivalences engendered by modernity and the experience of colonialism. This tradition of using the novel to meditate on historical rupture and the fate of poetry continues into the present, even as poetry's relation to political and intellectual life becomes increasingly tenuous.

The image of the child in its various shades is one of the common images in Arabic poems from the pre-Islamic era to the modern era, but it did not receive the attention of scholars, and it was not studied in depth showing its connotations and symbols. Hence came my study entitled "The Child in Contemporary Iraqi Poetry", which is an attempt to clarify the symbols of the word (the child) and what it indicates according to the context in which they are mentioned, as well as the statement of the aesthetic aspects of how to employ these symbols through the selection of poetic texts of modern poets in which the image of the child was mentioned Where this image was linked to the intellectual and political framework of the trends of Iraqi poets to create with it multiple connotations that were in harmony with the successive conflicts and revolutions that the poet employed to express intellectual, political and artistic positions. Modern Iraqi poetry by this expression means what many poets wrote in a non-traditional or traditional (classical) poetry curriculum in the literature of their languages. It appeared in Arabic literature at the end of the first half of the twentieth century, especially at the hands of Al-Rihani, Al-Sayyab, the angels and the Arab diaspora in a number of European countries that they went to settle in, especially Italy, France, Britain and then the American states. One of the most prominent differences raised by this trend was what was raised about (authenticity and contemporary) in his book and its production, over decades of years, which lasted about a century.

Andalusian literature rose a great revival , it was aided by political progress, social superiority , and cultural advancement, the first thing to note about literary life, appearance of a new generation of real Andalusian poets is a birthplace , a origin and a culture, and notes that work is not limited to the people but the participation of rules in it as well and the saying of Arabic poetry was not limited to the Muslims of Andalusia rather , it was also said by Arabised Christians ,poets were worthy of study , and I studied their most prominent poems and I studied their poetic trends and their progress or development, the prosperity of familiar species and the abundance of literary output , its fertility and diversity, the common occurrence of poerty among Andalusians made it one of the most prominent features of the Andalusian civilization at the time. Key word: poets, Andalus, Arabs, Civilization .

Arabic is the language of the tribes that inhabited the peninsula from Yemen to the Levant to the race and the borders of Palestine and Sana to reach their purposes, which is one of the Semitic languages, and the subject of the emergence of language of the subjects addressed by the researchers of old and recent, and expanded in them a lot and their work that some opinions, The most important of these are: humility and terminology, and language inspired by God. The first person was taught the names of everything (arrest), and the language was born cumulatively subject to the factor of space-time and human need. After the advent of Islam, the Arabic language evolved with the decline of the Holy Quran, because the Arabic language before the descent of the Qur'an was classified into poetry and prose. When the Quran came down, the linguistic expressions in the three Arabic languages became Quran, poetry and prose. There is no doubt that the Arabic language reached the height of its glory and rose in the era of Islam because it became part of religion, and in the era of prophecy and the origin of Islam, people take care of Arabic a lot and are keen on it because it is the language of the Koran and religion and the true and faithful messenger. Other factors affecting the development of Arabic are political, social and cultural factors.

The rise of political consciousness in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century has long been referred to as an era of rebirth or resurrection (nahḍa), and from its earliest stages this period saw a dual process of aspirations to political emancipation and creative waves of cultural regeneration. Thus George Antonius was moved to attribute the beginnings of the Arab national movement to the foundation of a modest literary society in Beirut in 1847; the two figures who dominated the intellectual life of Syria in the mid nineteenth century—Nāṣīf al-Yāzijī and Buṭrus al-Bustānī—were ded icated to the resurrection of the lost world of classical Arabic literature, to the virtual re-creation of Arabic as one of the languages of the modern world, and to preaching the virtues of education based on inter-confessional tolerance and patriotic ideals. The most distinguished area of the early history of modern Arabic literature is neo-classical poetry, whose revival of the achievements of the golden age of the ‘Abbāsids provided the foundation on which the first tentative steps towards the renewal of the great tradition were to be based. Indeed the technical excellence of the neo-classical mode was such that it dominated poetry in Egypt at least until the late 1920s, and for even longer in Iraq and the rest of the Levant.

Abstract This article moves the poetic ijāzah from the periphery, where modern scholars have generally placed it, to a central position in Arabic poetry and mass media. The ijāzah was well developed before its adoption in the western Mediterranean, but Cordoban, Sevillian, and expatriate Sicilian poets distinguished the competitive improvised poem from corollary works in the Middle East, where it had first been invented. I argue that it is precisely the Andalusi innovations to the ijāzah’s formal development that have allowed traditional criticism to minimize its importance, against a larger trend of popular audiences appreciating performed ijāzahs, on stage and in mass media. Modern Arabic theatre and television have found enthusiastic audiences for the Andalusi poetic dialogue, a phenomenon that frames my Classical research. Media outlets, including those working closely with government officials, stage the ijāzah in ways that maximize its ideological value. As they use it to promote secularism and putatively benevolent dictatorship, propelling Andalusi literature into current Middle Eastern politics, we critics should seek to understand the dialogic form in its contemporary, insistently political phase of development.

Shi'r al-'ammiyya is a poetry movement whose emergence in Egypt in the early 1950s coincided with the heyday of Nasser's revolution, when the Palestine question was a national concern. With numerous practitioners today, the movement has yielded a large corpus of colloquial poetry that has become a significant part of Egypt's cultural landscape.This article presents a historical survey of shi'r al-'ammiyya's best known poets—Fu'ad Haddad, Salah Jahin, and 'Abd al-Rahman al-Abnudi—and their poems on Palestine. Among the essay's aims is to dispel the common misconception that the use of colloquial Egyptian ('ammiyya) denotes parochial rather than pan-Arab concerns, with the standard (fusha) Arabic seen as a signifier of pan-Arab identity.

The article considers the strengthening of the Turkic factor in Egypt after the Mamluk Emirs, natives from the Khwarezm, Turkmen and Kipchak tribes, who came to power in the second half of the XIII century. The influence of the Turkic factor affected all aspects of life in Egypt. Under the leadership of the Turkic Emirs, the Egyptians defeated the crusaders who invaded Egypt in 1248. This defeat of the 7th crusade marked the beginning of the General collapse of the Crusades. Another crushing defeat of the Mamluks led by Sultan Kutuz caused the Mongols, stopping their victorious March through the Arab world. As a result of these brilliant victories, Egypt under the first Mamluk Sultans turned into a fairly strong state, which developed agriculture, irrigation, and foreign trade. The article also examines the factors contributing to the transformation of Egypt in the 13-14th centuries in the center of Muslim culture after the fall of the Abbasid Caliphate. Scientists from all over the Muslim world came to Egypt, educational institutions-madrassas were intensively built, and Muslim encyclopedias were created that absorbed the knowledge gained in various Sciences (geography, history, philology, astronomy, mathematics, etc.). Scholars from Khwarezm, the Golden Horde, Azerbaijan, and other Turkic-speaking regions along with Arab scholars taught hadith, logic, oratory, fiqh, and other Muslim Sciences in the famous madrassas of Egypt. In Mamluk Egypt, there was a great interest in the Turkic languages, especially the Oguz-Kipchak dialect. Arabic and Turkic philologists write special works on the vocabulary and grammar of the Turkic languages, and compile Arabic-Turkic dictionaries. In Egypt, a whole layer of artistic Turkic-language literature was created that has survived to the present day. The famous poet Saif Sarayi, who came from the lower reaches of the Syr Darya river in Mawaraunnahr was considered to be its founder. He wrote in Chigatai (old Uzbek) language and is recognized a poet who stands at the origins of Uzbek literature. In addition to his known the names of eight Turkish-speaking poets, most of whom have nisba “al-Khwarizmi”. Notable changes occurred in Arabic literature itself, especially after the decline of Palace Abbasid poetry. There is a convergence of literature with folk art, under the influence of which the poetic genres, such as “zazhal”, “mavval”, “muvashshah”, etc. emerge in the Egyptian poetry. In Mamluk Egypt, the genre of “adaba” is rapidly developing, aimed at bringing up and enlightening the good-natured Muslim in a popular scientific form. The works of “adaba” contained a large amount of poetic and folklore material from rivayats and hikayats, which makes it possible to have a more complete understanding of medieval Arabic literature in general. Unfortunately, the culture, including the fiction of the Mamluk period of Egypt, has been little studied, as well as the influence of the Turkic factor on the cultural and social life of the Egyptians. The Turkic influence is felt in the military and household vocabulary, the introduction of new rituals, court etiquette, changing the criteria for evaluating beauty, in food, clothing, etc. Natives of the Turkic regions, former slaves, historical figures such as the Sultan Shajarat ad-Durr, Mamluk sultans as Kutuz and Beybars became national heroes of the Egyptian people. Folk novels-Sirs were written about their deeds. And in modern times, their names are not forgotten. Prominent Egyptian writers have dedicated their historical novels to them, streets have been named after them, monuments have been erected to them, and series and TV shows dedicated to them are still shown on national television. This article for the first time examines some aspects of the influence of the Turkic factor on the cultural life of Mamluk Egypt and highlights some unknown pages of cultural relations between Egypt and Mawaraunnahr.

La poésie des prisons est composée dans des circonstances exceptionnelles et pendant des moments pénibles de la vie des poètes : derrière les murs de la prison où la plume est enfermée. Écrire au fond de la cellule permet au poète d’exercer une forme de liberté, liberté d’assembler les mots, de maîtriser le rythme de sa propre vie, cadencée par des horaires et des contraintes qui n’ont pas été choisies. Notre étude est consacrée à cette création poétique carcérale particulière chez quelques poètes français et arabes contemporains. Nous présentons le contexte historique et littéraire dans lequel se situe cette création. Notre travail montre que cette poésie reflète le désir du poète prisonnier d’affirmer son humanité tout en refusant le lent processus de déshumanisation qui accompagne l’incarcération. La création poétique pendant l’incarcération forme la mémoire de l’homme en prison. Les poèmes composés en prison prennent une dimension éthique plus qu’analytique et s’attachent à des expériences vécues plus qu’à des systèmes de pensée où l’engagement des poètes vient au-devant de la scène. Dans une perspective comparatiste, notre travail examine la relation entre la poésie et la politique, représentée dans la poésie des prisons. Les interrogations sociales et humaines qui occupent les poètes prisonniers sont aussi au centre de notre étude tout comme la poétique et les structures du poème-emprisonné. La thèse étudie également les procédés intertextuels qui nourrissent la poésie des prisons : religieuse, mythique et historique. L’intertextualité constitue une caractéristique fondamentale de cette poésie et occupe une place importante dans notre recherche. En bref, la poésie des prisons prouve que les poètes sont vraiment « les maîtres des mots », ceux qui ignorent le « taisez-vous », adressé aux prisonniers, grâce à la hauteur de leur langage poétique qui exprime leurs différents messages. La création poétique pendant l’emprisonnement montre que les poètes prisonniers sont capables de « dire la prison », chacun dans sa singularité, tout en s’engageant dans la Cité où ils vivent
Prison poetry is composed in the midst of exceptional circumstances and during painful moments of the life of poets; behind the prison walls where the pen is imprisoned. Writing at the bottom of the cell allows the poet to exercise a form of freedom, a freedom to put together words, to master the rhythm of his own life, timed by schedules and constraints that are not chosen. The present study is devoted to this particular creation written in prison by a number of contemporary French and Arab poets. It previews the historical and literary context in which this creation is located. It shows that this type of poetry reflects the prisoner poet's desire to assert his humanity while rejecting the slow process of dehumanization that accompanies incarceration. Poetic creation during incarceration shapes the memory of the man in prison. Poems composed in prison adopt an ethical dimension more than analytical and focus on lived experiences more than systems of thought where the commitment of poets comes to the fore. From a comparative perspective, the study addresses the relationship between poetry and politics, represented in prison poetry. The social and human questions that occupy the imprisoned poets are also at the center of the study as the poetics and the structure of the imprisoned-poem. The thesis copes with the intertextual processes that nourish the poetry of prisons in many forms: religious, mythical and historical. Hence, Intertextuality is a fundamental feature of this poetry and will be considered in our research. In short, prison poetry proves that poets are really "the masters of words", those who ignore the "shut up", addressed to prisoners, thanks to the height of their poetic language that expresses their different messages. The poetic creation during imprisonment shows that jailed poets are able to "say prison", each in its own uniqueness, and to get involved in the City to which they belong

Volonté de présenter la poésie de 19 Varieties of Gazelle de Naomi Shihab Nye, In the Country of My Dreams de Elmaz Abinader, The Capital of Solitude de Gregory Orfalea et Before Our Eyes de Lawrence Joseph pour mettre en lumière les approches idéologiques, cette thèse s’appuie sur plusieurs axes pour synthétiser la vision de ces poètes américains, enfants d’immigrants arabes. Les recueils préfigurent eux-mêmes ces axes. Aussi proposons-nous d’aborder l’impact du père chez ceux qui écrivent, l’impact de l’identité arabe sur la relation à l’autre, qu’il soit américain ou arabe, et sur leur idéologie politique et religieuse
Willing to introduce the poetry of 19 Varieties of Gazelle by Naomi Shihab Nye, In the Country of My Dreams by Elmaz Abinader, The Capital of Solitude by Gregory Orfalea et Before Our Eyes by Lawrence Joseph to shed light on the ideological approaches, this thesis emphasizes several directions to synthesize the vision of those American poets, children of Arab immigrants. The very anthologies prefigure those directions. Thus, we suggest to tackle the impact of the father on those who write, the impact of the Arab identity on the relation to the other, whether American or Arab, and on their political and religious ideology

This chapter traces the evolving relationship of the Arab poet with the city; an evolution which reflects the poet’s changing role and place in society. It is role that develops from that of the hero, to the group’s voice and representative, to the career poet resigned to playing a circumscribed role in the social and political system, and finally to the alienated outsider looking in. While praise is a common mode of connecting to a place and its people, this chapter examines the inverted failed connection with places by which the poet ends up attacking the city and all it stands for. The city itself, in this confrontation, transforms in time from a locus into an ethos, becoming an embodiment of the modern poet’s anxieties and frustrations towards the world.

This chapter explores the complex relationship between literature and politics in revolutionary Egypt. The 2011 revolution (and its ongoing aftermath) has sparked a wave of literary activity that is generally subject to two assumptions: first, it gave expression to the pulse of the Egyptian nation; second, it formed an integral part of the uprising, and possibly even played a role in inspiring and fuelling it. The chapter analyses both of these assumptions by discussing the ways in which politics can influence literature and vice versa. It also considers how the consumption of literature (particularly poetry) in contemporary Egypt affects political participation and democratic views. Drawing on the results of a survey conducted from December 2011 to January 2012, it shows that poetry consumers, whilst sharing with the general population their strong support for democracy, were more likely to support a strong leader taking non-democratic measures if necessary.

This chapter examines the emergence of colloquial Arabic poetry as populist-political commentary in Egypt by offering a reading of Mahmud Bayram al-Tunisi's series of texts, which figured political contestation in the thematic-formal mould of the sira shaʻbiyya. It first provides an overview of the sira shaʻbiyya (folk epic, folk romance) before discussing at least four Bayramic sira compositions, all of which narrate the Turkish–Greek conflict over possession of Asia Minor in the context of postwar intra-European negotiations for neocolonial primacy. The texts, labelled ‘Sira Kemaliyya’, chronicle the conflict between Greece and Turkey in 1919–1922, highlighted by the exploits of Turkish ‘epic hero’ and nationalist leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The chapter explains how Bayram manages the duality of heroic posturing as a heavy-handed colonialist tactic versus the effective heroism of Mustafa Kemal.

This chapter examines the lives and writings of a few Mizrahi Jews who succeeded in Israel despite the challenges they faced there. Focusing on the first wave of immigration and its aftermath through novels, poetry, autobiographies and films, this chapter uses the asylum metaphor to describe Israel. Initially, Israel was an asylum for European Jews (Ashkenazis) until they turned the asylum into their state. From that point on, they created asylums for various constituencies, including Jewish Arabs. The chapter also considers the process of acculturation in the asylum of Israeli transit camps, which has figured prominently in Mizrahi literature; how ‘foreigners’ in Israel achieved nationalisation through religion and not-religion; and the exodus of thousands of Iraqi Jews to Israel; the role of language in Jewish Arabs' self-fashioning in Israel; and the political awakening of Jewish Arab intellectuals.

Chapter four investigates tarjama’s dual meaning in Arabic as biography and translation in the works of Ṭāhā Ḥusayn and Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal. Following up on the secular prophecy of chapter three, it studies the complex relationship between Islam and literature in the two modernists’ mappings of Arabic literary history and in relation to their approach to translation. It examines specifically Haykal’s two-volume biography of Jean Jacques Rousseau in 1921 and 1923, his biography of the Prophet and literary essays, exploring political and spiritual temporalities in his unfolding critique of colonialism. It then considers Ṭāhā Ḥusayn’s controversial claims about the historicity of Jahili poetry as post-Islamic in On Jahili Poetry (1926) and argues that it prefigures his translations of André Gide ((1946) and Voltaire (1947), resituating his “heretic” claims within his translation theory. It concludes on the failed narrative subjectivities that emerge from the translations’ critique of European Enlightenment thought, contextualizing the importance of these adaptations to the study of the Arabic novel.

Palestinian poet laureate, Mahmoud Darwish writes that land is inherited like language. Most accounts of Arabs in Israel focus on the lost inheritance of Arab lands. This book investigates the problematic place of the Arabic language in Israel. While Arabic is an official language of Israel, according to a law which goes back to the year 1922, during the British Mandate, it is at the same time the language of the ‘Arab’ enemies surrounding and infiltrating Israel, the language of the Palestinians who remained in Israel after 1948 and who constitute today about 20 per cent of the total population, and also the language of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. It is, moreover, the language of a dwindling number of speakers from the Mizrachi Jewish community. How are these seemingly contradictory positions of Arabic resolved, and what space is given to Arabic in the state? That is what this book is trying to answer.

The current relationship between Hebrew and Arabic in Israel/Palestine is the outgrowth of over a century of sociolinguistic, political, and cultural developments; though the two languages had shared a long and storied past, Zionism catalyzed their reunion in the context of modern nationalism. This chapter surveys that historic landscape to offer a counternarrative of Israeli language and culture, arguing that Arabic has played a central, formative, yet paradoxical role in the self-definition of Modern Hebrew from the very outset. The repressed story of Arabic and Hebrew in Israel/Palestine is inseparable from the triangulated history of Ashkenazi Jews, Palestinian Arabs, and Mizraḥi Jews, each group having faced distinct yet interrelated dilemmas of language. In excavating this multilayered site of memory, the chapter traces pre-state linguistic practices, the institutionalization of Modern Hebrew, and the continuing evolution of Hebrew and Arabic in the political scene, concluding with the question of literary translation between the two languages.