In December 1922, Ahmed Hassanein Bey set out on his second expedition into the Libyan desert, determined to travel from Sollum to Darfur accompanied by camels and Bedouin guides. His mission was to rediscover and accurately plot two “lost” oases, which had been plotted only approximately by the famed German explorer Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs in 1879. Upon his return to Cairo, Hassanein published a narrative account of this journey Ri?lah f? ?a?r?? L?biy? (1923, The Lost Oases, 1925). In its structure and pacing, this work appears to be similar to other British travelogues of the same period; the author portrays himself as an intelligent and diplomatic leader, one whose errors and trials serve to heighten the narrative tension rather than undercut the reader’s trust in him. In this paper I argue that although Ri?lah f? ?a?r?? L?biy? refers back to his earlier trip only briefly, it should be read against the narrative account of Hassanein’s first foray into the desert, The Secret of the Sahara: Kufara (1921) written by his traveling companion Rosita Forbes, a British divorcee and travel writer. In 1920, Forbes and Hassanein travelled together to Kufra on a diplomatic mission to the secluded Senussi sect. Forbes wore the costume of a Muslim woman and travelled as Hassanein’s wife under the name “Khadija.” Her account of this trip follows a similar narrative trajectory as Hassanein’s, but with a significant twist; in The Secret of the Sahara Forbes is the clever and decisive leader, while Hassanein is cast as her foil - a foppish native whose language skills are occasionally valuable but whose weaknesses for clothing and perfume threaten the success of their endeavor. As writers and subjects of their own narratives, both Forbes and Hassanein are seeking legitimacy from a system which is both colonial and patriarchal. In this paper, part of a larger project on the influence of the travelogue on Arabic narrative discourse, I use a postcolonial framework of analysis to examine the ways in which each author, often at the expense of the other, seeks to form an identity which at once conforms to and resists perceived British expectations for women and Egyptians respectively.

This paper will address the figure of the intellectual liberal activist woman in four Arabic-language Moroccan novels. Each of these novels—Muhammad Aziz Lahbabi's "Generation of Thirst" (1967), Fatima al-Rawi's "Tomorrow We'll Get Our Land Back" (1967), Khennatha Benouna's "Fire and Choice" (1969) and Ahmad al-Bakri al-Siba`i's "Labor Pains" (1972)—presents us with a major female character who is a liberal, educated political activist. The characters, and their authors, belonged to the very narrow intellectual class in the Morocco of that era; neither group was representative of the larger society. Such characters thus do not "fit in," and their authors are required to undertake major contortions in order to provide a plausible rationale for how their characters became activists. These contortions are not only often rather more interesting than the novels themselves, but also provide us with the opportunity to examine Morocco of the late 1960s through the prism of what was excluded from that society. In Rawi's case, only an earthquake that destroys her city and family enables her character the freedom to act. Both Lahbabi and Benouna try to dodge the question of how the activist became who she is, though in different ways, while only Siba`i is able to provide a means by which the intellectual female activist might become the rule rather than the exception. In all four novels, what is most salient about the female activist is that she is excluded from anything like a meaningful romantic life. The contortions required to keep her single yet unavailable are rather more complex than those necessary to make her an activist in the first place. Close examination of this phenomenon leads us to delineate a fault line in the culture in its refusal to allow a female activist entry into family life—a fault line that Moroccan novelists of the 1980s such as Leila Abouzeid will explore in detail.

In this paper, I intend to examine the short fiction of Iraqi writer Mu?ammad Khu?ayyir (b. 1942) in light of Umberto Eco’s notion of “the open work” (l’opera aperta.) Although Khu?ayyir first gained prominence for his stories in the 1960s, his enigmatic, metafictional style was emblematic of the shift in Iraqi literature in the 1970s, when Iraqi writers broke with the dominant trend of social realist fiction that had characterized much Iraqi writing in the 1950s and 1960s. The shift in Iraqi fiction tracks closely with a broader societal, cultural and literary transformation that Sabry Hafez sees reflected in Arabic fiction written after 1960. Specifically, the “open work” describes a text in which the author deliberately employs indefiniteness and ambiguity, thus requiring the reader to collaborate in generating meaning. Thus, the “open work” forms part of a broader trend in 20th-century literary theory that de-emphasized the centrality of the author as creator of a text and its meaning. In particular, I will examine a select number of his short stories written in the 1970s, specifically, Manzil al-nis?? (“House of Women”), I?ti??r al-rass?m (“Death of the Artist”), and al-T?b?t (“The Coffin”), each of which can be read as an “open work,” in which Khu?ayyir uses ambiguity as a narrative strategy. As Eco has shown, a work’s “openness” can operate on more than one level: with “House of Women,” the story’s openness can be found in its doubled narrative (the story is structured as two parallel narratives, separated physically by a horizontal line across the middle of each printed page.) In “Death of the Artist” and “The Coffin,” the openness operates on the level of the narrative itself: in the latter, Khu?ayyir emphasizes the limited visual perspective of the narrator--a narrative reminder of the incomplete information provided by the author--and leaves it to the reader to determine (among other things) whether the narrator is in fact a ghost. Although Khu?ayyir’s fiction is never overtly political, I argue that his “open work” approach, which rejects a monologic authorial voice in favor of a mutual cooperation between author and reader, can be understood as a response to the oppressive political environment in which he (and other Iraqi writers who were and are his contemporaries) wrote.

Last year, a university in Azerbaijan hosted a conference on the scientific aspects of Nizami Ganjavi’s (d. 1209) writings. The nature of Nizami as poet, mystic, ethicist, and scientist has been a topic of debate for several decades in Euro-American scholarship as well. Little examined in this ongoing conversation, however, is the first of his five masnavis, The Makhzan al-asrar (Treasury of Secrets), which is not an insignificant work. A mystico-ethical text, it was emulated in both meter and structure by a host of major Persian poets, including Amir Khosrow (d. 1325) and Jami (d. 1492). The Makhzan inaugurated a tradition of beginning mansavis with several lengthy prolegomena, covering topics such as God’s unity (tawhid), praise of the patron, and praise of the Prophet. Invocations of the Prophet in the Makhzan and its descendants make a point of highlighting Muhammad’s heavenly journey (Mi’raj). The Mi’raj narratives in Nizami, Amir Khosrow’s Matla al-anwar (The Ascent of Lights) and Jami’s Tohfat al-ahrar (The Gift of the Nobles) focus upon Muhammad as a cosmic figure with ontological significance, and as a model for Sufis to follow. This paper will examine all three texts’ treatment of the Mi’raj, which set themselves apart from what Frederick Colby dubs “the Ibn ‘Abbas discourse” of ascension narratives in several ways. One thread that runs through each of these poetic ascension accounts is the recurrence of references to garments, garment touching, and the bestowal of clothing—especially cloaks and belts. Nizami goes so far as to depict the throne of heaven bowing to touch the hem of Muhammad’s robe (daman). Through a close reading, this paper will argue that all three poetic accounts of the Mi’raj: 1) depict Muhammad as an initiate who is symbolically granted knowledge and authority during his ascension; 2) utilize language and imagery derived from a Sufi context to portray such transfers of knowledge and authority; and, 3) link Muhammad’s ascension to the mystical path, pointing to it as a paradigmatic model for those who would aspire to attain proximity to God. This paper contributes to current scholarship by: 1) examining a set of poems mostly overlooked by Western language scholarship; 2) situating Nizami, Jami, and Amir Khosrow’s discussion of the Mi’raj firmly within mystical discourses on the Prophet’s ascension; and, 3) highlighting masnavi prefaces on the Mi’raj as an important source of information for discussions of the nature of Muhammad’s ascension among Sufis.