The recent proliferation of Arabic novelistic production that reimagines historical periods, events and past popular figures is quite remarkable. While earlier Arabic historical novels found in past Arab and Muslim history a rich source to fashion stories that served to consolidate a sense of cultural identity and infuse Arab nationalism, the recent turn to historical material in recent Arabic fiction represents a shift due to its diverse subject matter and complex narrative structures. In this panel, the presenters explore how the rethinking, reimagining and re-appropriation of past Arab historical episodes, themes, dynastical rule and characters opens a space for analyzing and commenting on current socio-cultural problems, identity crises and political turmoil associated with recent transformations in societies and cultures in the Arab region. In reimagining this historical material, the papers examine how the aesthetics and discourses of these historical fictional texts imply a more contestatory politics of citizenry and cultural affiliation. While the Egyptian writer Khayrī Shalabī uses in Riḥlāt al-ṭurshajī al-ḥalwajī a court jester who travels to Fatimid and Mamluk courts to address anxieties in the post-Nasserist Egyptian society, Yūsuf Fādil's Qiṭṭ abyaḍ jamīl yasīru maʻī (2011) uses the modern court jester to reconstruct the recent history of the country in dialogue with testimonial fiction. Similarly, Hassan Aourid deploys testimonial discursive modes and rhetorical strategies of witness and testimony genre in Rabee' Qortoba (2017) to comment on the social upheavals and political uncertainties of the Arab spring and its aftermath in the Morocco and the Maghrib. Aourid rehabilitates the role of the Moroccan native historical perspective by reimagining the uncertainties faced by al-Hakam, the second Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba who reigned after Abdurrahman III, in the form of end-of-life testimony in the form of a will to Ziri, an Amazigh historian scribe from Morocco.
Besides rethinking symmetries between past and present conditions, contemporary Arabic historical fiction problematizes meaning of historical truth through formalistic manipulation. In The Druze of Belgrade, Lebanese writer Rabee’ Jaber suggests alternative ways of defining the self through suffering and solidarity but with little influence over the course of history as Hanna Yacoub, the protagonist, appears as a spectator more than an active historical agent. Such posture informs contemporary Syrian historical fiction in which readers’ recognition of themselves in it depends on ability to identify underlying philosophical principles that construct realities rather than spotting parallels in content.
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Dr. Ahmed Idrissi Alami
Moroccan historical fiction has generally used fictionalized past events to suggest new acts of rereading and reinterpreting history. However, some of the writers such as Hassan Aourid use past political successes and failures, especially in times of tensions, as palimpsests to address crucial current crises. As a Moroccan intellectual, Palace Spokesman and the Kingdom’s historian, Aourid reads contemporary political upheavals as possible iteration of conflictual historical moments in which strong governance and established statecraft experience internal and external threats that usher uncertainties and possible decline. Such is the case in his novel Rabee’ Qortoba (2017) in which he reimagines the last days of al-Hakam al-Mustansir bi Allah, the strong ruler and second Umayyad Caliph of al-Andalus, as he narrates his final testimony combined with reflections and memories of his rule and the trajectory of his ancestral political achievements now that he is bedridden. In my paper, I argue that Hassan Aourid deploys testimonial discursive modes and rhetorical strategies of witness and testimony genre in this novel to comment on the social upheavals and political uncertainties of the Arab spring and its aftermath in Morocco and the Maghrib. Aourid rehabilitates the role of the Moroccan native historical perspective by reimagining the uncertainties faced by the second Umayyad Caliph of Córdoba in al-Andalus in the form of an end-of-life testimony and as a confessional will to Ziri, an Amazigh historian scribe from Morocco. In addition to signaling possible symmetries between past and present, I also argue that the author reinvents 'Mirrors for Princes" genre through the role of witness and testimony by focusing on how the discursive strategies the author employs suggest a more complex and multi-lateral engagement with historical fiction in relation to advice literature.
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Dr. Alexa S. Firat
Historical novels in Syria have often been read as alternative histories to “official ones;” pushing aside the theater of history to reveal behind-the-scenes prosaic experiences of historical events, at times revealing ruins, at others championing heroes. More often than not, as contemporary scholars remind us, historical fiction tells us as much about the present as it does the past. In Saba Mahmood’s study of the Egyptian church’s reaction to Zeidan’s Azazeel, she demonstrates, among other things, how a work of historical fiction triggers various kinds of recognition in its audience, depending on where one might be located within the social continuum. “A work of historical fiction does not place past events indifferently on a blank canvas but works to induce recognition among its readers,” she writes.
Taking this assertion as an entryway, this paper will discuss how a number of Syrian authors’ philosophical approach to engaging history instill their narratives concurrently with detachment and affect. Disarming historical continuities with the present, these narratives reject totalizing representations of reality (of the past), but instead, coerce the reader to imagine, from a philosophical perspective, the principles of the realities construed in them in both the past and the present. If, before 2011, the grammar of Syrian cultural discourse for the most part was negotiated through a dialectic with the state, reading these works with an eye to their philosophical discourse, may bring us closer to the salient issues these authors evoke through their inter-involvement of philosophy to the narrative.
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Dr. Amal Amireh
In Druze Belgrade, winner of the 2011 Arabic International Prize for Fiction, Lebanese writer Rabee’ Jaber revisits nineteenth century Othoman history to shape his narrative of one Hanna Yacoub, a Christian egg seller from Beirut, mistaken by the authorities for a Druze. Consequently, he is exiled with other Lebanese Druze men, who are being punished by the Othoman Sultan for their attacks on Christians in nearby villages during the civil war of Mount Lebanon in 1860 (considered by historians as a crucial point in the emergence of sectarian identities). The novel traces Hanna’s misadventures, alongside his Druze “brothers,” in Belgrade where he experiences jail, hunger, disease, massacres, and the loss of his companions one by one. Through Hanna’s own suffering, and his being a witness to the suffering of others, Jaber engages with questions of identity, sectarianism, history, and power. Who is Hanna Yacoub? A Christian? A Druze? A Muslim? All three? The novel asks. How does his identity change in the crucible of historical events beyond his power? How does the fluidity of identity become a condition for survival? In questioning the primordial view of identity that sectarianism assumes, Jaber suggests alternative ways of defining the self: through suffering, solidarity, and what Edward Said calls affiliation (vs. filiation). But this optimism, I argue, exists in tension with, and is constantly threatened by, the novel’s bleak view of history as capricious, random, and violent. This pessimism can be seen in the novel’s style, where description is privileged over narration, which, according to some theorists of the historical novel (George Lucac, Frederick Jameson), renders characters like Hanna Yacoub as mere spectators of events, rather than active historical agents.
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Dr. Cristina Dozio
The court jester (muharrij al-malik) or buffoon (bahlawān) is a fool who speaks the truth and a witty entertainer who becomes intimate with the king. This proverbial character, often based on historical figures, is found also in the Arabic literary heritage and popular culture. Taken out of its time, it provides an unusual perspective on history in contemporary Arabic fiction. Focusing on this character, this paper aims at investigating the aesthetic innovations of recent historical novels by looking at the re-elaboration of historical sources, the porous boundaries between fact and fiction, and the interplay of cross-cultural tropes and local culture.
To this aim, this paper will compare two historical novels that reimagine history to construct a complex memory, while experimenting with the narrative structures. In Riḥlāt al-ṭurshajī al-ḥalwajī (1991 [1981/83]) by the Egyptian Khayrī Shalabī (1938-2011), the protagonist is a time-traveller who visits the Fatimid and Mamluk eras searching for genuine Egyptianness. He plays several comical roles, including the buffoon at the court of the Mamluk Sultan. Defying the literary conventions of the travelogue and classical historiography, this novel is a humorous attempt to address the anxieties about the post-Nasserist Egyptian society.
Moving to the Moroccan literary scene, Qiṭṭ abyaḍ jamīl yasīru maʻī (2011) by Yūsuf Fādil (b. 1949) stages the conflict between the father, a court jester fired by King Ḥassan, and the son, a comedian disillusioned by Marxism. Fādil’s latest novels reconstruct the recent history of the country in dialogue with testimonial fiction.
