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The Woman as a Sufi Motif in Modern Arabic Fiction

Received: 31 March 2021     Accepted: 19 April 2021     Published: 29 April 2021
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Abstract

The woman has been so intensely described in modern Arabic fiction that she has accomplished new fashionable connotations. She is often depicted in connection with a number of settings, especially the Şūfī one. In this context, the woman appears as a comprehensive representation that helps the male protagonist accomplish huge goals. This notion is copied from medieval mystic writers who considered the woman as a chief foundation of their practices which concentrated on love and yearning. Through the woman, or their earthly mistress they believed they could realize their supreme lover, God. Şūfī conventions have overwhelmingly jammed modern-day Arab writers. For the purpose of focus, this study will examine the manifestation of women in Al-Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to The North, Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love and Hasan Alwan’s, A Little Death. Although Al-Tayeb Salih does not use real şūfī characters, he floods his work with nice-looking women who are enchanted by and enchant the hero’s mysticism exactly like the beloved ladies of şūfī dignities. Furthermore, Salih packs his novel with references to şūfī celebrities, traditions and ideas to increase the mystic environment. Moreover, his protagonist, Mustafa Sa'eed discloses that his strategies in tempting women hang on the suspicious life style, abstruse philosophies and homoerotic verse of Omar al-Khayyām and Abū Nuwās. Instead of evading straight reliance on real Şūfī figures, Elif Shafak revives the old-fashioned şūfī customs and urges the present world to endorse mystic morals. Her aim is to propose answers to modern man’s complex problems. Through her female protagonist, Ella Rubenstein, Shafak gives forty Şūfī orations, epitomizing Rūmī's notion of the şūfī viewpoint. These guidelines are assurance that purify men and women from all hardships. Like Shafak, Hasan Alwan centers his novel on the life of Iben 'Arabī, a factual mystic figure. But, while Shafak aspires to prompt Şūfī ideas to settle modern man’s problems, Alwan is attracted to Şūfī free-thinking, travelling and style of life. Similar to Shafak and Salih, Alwan crams his novel with women within Şūfī settings. Our goal is to discuss what these writers attain through the employment of Şūfī practices assuming that the Şūfī treatment of women in modern Arabic literature provides new insights into the dynamic potential of the motif and a new critical approach.

Published in International Journal of Literature and Arts (Volume 9, Issue 3)
DOI 10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11
Page(s) 101-113
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Woman as Şūfī Motif, Al-Tayeb Salih, Elif Shafak, Jalāl ad-Dīn Rūmī, Hasan Alwan, and Iben 'Arabī

References
[1] Addas, Claude. Ibn Arabi: The Voyage of No Return (Second ed.) Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2019, 51.
[2] Albano, G. “The Benefits of Reading the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám as Pastoral.” Victorian Poetry 46 (1) (2008): 55-67.
[3] Barry, Kathleen. "Pornography: The Ideology of Cultural Sadism." In Female Sexual Slavery, edited by Kathleen Barry. New York London: NYU Press, 1984, 247.
[4] Bearman, Peri. "Global Arabic Encyclopedia." In Encyclopedias about Muslim Civilisations, edited by Aptin Khanbaghi. 2009. pp. 16–17.
[5] Bjerregaard, C. H. A. Şūfism: Omar Khayyam and E. Fitzgerald. London: The Şūfī Publishing Society, 1915, 3.
[6] Chittick, William. "Ibn Arabi." In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Stanford: Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University; 2018. (Retrieved 19 July 2018, 5.
[7] Farah, Nathalie. “Successfully Tracing the Footsteps of History.” Weekend Review (May 10, 2017).
[8] Iannone. C. “Is There a Woman’s Perspective in Literature?” Academic Questions 7 (1) (1994): 63-76.
[9] Killeen, Andrew. The Father of Locks. Dedalus: 2009.
[10] Krishnan, R. S. “Re-inscribing Conrad: Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to the North.” International Fiction Review 23.1 (1996): 7–15, 11.
[11] Levy, Ariel. Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Free Press, 2005, 4.
[12] Lewis, Franklin D. Rūmī: Past and Present, East and West: The life, Teaching and Poetry of Jalal Al-Din Rūmī. Oneworld Publication: 2008, 51.
[13] Lucaites, John Louis, Condit, Celeste Michelle, and Caudill, Sally. Contemporary Rhetorical Theory: A Reader. Guilford Press, 1999, 370.
[14] Ross, E. D. “Al-Musaffariyé: Containing a Recent Contribution to the Study of 'Omar Khayyām.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, (1898): 349–366. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25207968. Accessed 29 Dec. 2020, 14.
[15] Salih, Tayeb. Season of Migration to the North. Trans by Denys Johnson-Davies. Great Britain; Heinemann: 1991. *207280334-Tayeb-Salih-Season-of-Migration-to-the-North-New-York-Review-Books-Classics-2009. Pdfbint, 65. All subsequent quotations will be cited in the texts.
[16] Sarton, George. “The Tomb of Omar Khayyām.” Isis 29, 1 (Jul. 1938): 15-19, 15.
[17] Schimmel, Annemarie. The Triumphal Sun: A Study of the Works of Jalaloddin Rūmī. SUNY Press: 1993, 51.
[18] Schweickart, Patrocinio. “Reading Ourselves: Towards a Feminist Theory of Reading" (1984) in Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Robert Con Davis, and Ronald Schleifer. New York and London: University of Oklahoma, 1998: 197-219, 205.
[19] Seyyed, Hossein Nasr. Islamic Art and Spirituality. SUNY Press: 1987, 115.
[20] Shafak, Elif. The Forty Rules of Love. Britain: Viking, 2010: http://www.kkoworld.com/kitablar/elif-safak-esq-kko-eng.pdf, 13. All subsequent quotations will be cited in the text.
[21] Straley, Dona S. The Undergraduate's Companion to Arab Writers and Their Web-sites. Libraries Unlimited: 2004. (Titles of works in Arabic were translated by the writers).
[22] Absher, Hasan. Tayeb Salih: Critical Studies. Beirut: Riad al-Rais, 2001, 16, 45.
[23] Al-Qadi, Abu Bakr. "The Forty Rules of Love: A Critical Study." Al-Fath Website, 13-7-2019, 16.
[24] Alwan, Mohammad Hassan. A Little Death. Beirut: Dar Al-Saqi, 2017, 6. All quotations are taken from this volume and are translated to English by the authors. All subsequent quotations will be cited in the text.
[25] Am’adsho, Farid. The Şūfī Dimension in the Moroccan Novel. Morocco: Tangier Literary Publishing, 2009, 38.
[26] Mosa, Saadiyya. Semiotics as Theory and Application: Applied Studies in the novels of Al-Tayeb Salih. Saudi Arabia: Noor Press, 2017, 5-6.
[27] Sa’doun, Nadia Hannawi. “The Narrative of fiction between the Historical and Imaginative in The 40 Rules of Love." Fiqr: The Journal of Cultural Thinking 8, (2017), 3-4.
Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Jamal Ali Assadi, Mahmud Khaled Naamneh. (2021). The Woman as a Sufi Motif in Modern Arabic Fiction. International Journal of Literature and Arts, 9(3), 101-113. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11

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    ACS Style

    Jamal Ali Assadi; Mahmud Khaled Naamneh. The Woman as a Sufi Motif in Modern Arabic Fiction. Int. J. Lit. Arts 2021, 9(3), 101-113. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11

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    AMA Style

    Jamal Ali Assadi, Mahmud Khaled Naamneh. The Woman as a Sufi Motif in Modern Arabic Fiction. Int J Lit Arts. 2021;9(3):101-113. doi: 10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11,
      author = {Jamal Ali Assadi and Mahmud Khaled Naamneh},
      title = {The Woman as a Sufi Motif in Modern Arabic Fiction},
      journal = {International Journal of Literature and Arts},
      volume = {9},
      number = {3},
      pages = {101-113},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijla.20210903.11},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijla.20210903.11},
      abstract = {The woman has been so intensely described in modern Arabic fiction that she has accomplished new fashionable connotations. She is often depicted in connection with a number of settings, especially the Şūfī one. In this context, the woman appears as a comprehensive representation that helps the male protagonist accomplish huge goals. This notion is copied from medieval mystic writers who considered the woman as a chief foundation of their practices which concentrated on love and yearning. Through the woman, or their earthly mistress they believed they could realize their supreme lover, God. Şūfī conventions have overwhelmingly jammed modern-day Arab writers. For the purpose of focus, this study will examine the manifestation of women in Al-Tayeb Salih’s Season of Migration to The North, Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love and Hasan Alwan’s, A Little Death. Although Al-Tayeb Salih does not use real şūfī characters, he floods his work with nice-looking women who are enchanted by and enchant the hero’s mysticism exactly like the beloved ladies of şūfī dignities. Furthermore, Salih packs his novel with references to şūfī celebrities, traditions and ideas to increase the mystic environment. Moreover, his protagonist, Mustafa Sa'eed discloses that his strategies in tempting women hang on the suspicious life style, abstruse philosophies and homoerotic verse of Omar al-Khayyām and Abū Nuwās. Instead of evading straight reliance on real Şūfī figures, Elif Shafak revives the old-fashioned şūfī customs and urges the present world to endorse mystic morals. Her aim is to propose answers to modern man’s complex problems. Through her female protagonist, Ella Rubenstein, Shafak gives forty Şūfī orations, epitomizing Rūmī's notion of the şūfī viewpoint. These guidelines are assurance that purify men and women from all hardships. Like Shafak, Hasan Alwan centers his novel on the life of Iben 'Arabī, a factual mystic figure. But, while Shafak aspires to prompt Şūfī ideas to settle modern man’s problems, Alwan is attracted to Şūfī free-thinking, travelling and style of life. Similar to Shafak and Salih, Alwan crams his novel with women within Şūfī settings. Our goal is to discuss what these writers attain through the employment of Şūfī practices assuming that the Şūfī treatment of women in modern Arabic literature provides new insights into the dynamic potential of the motif and a new critical approach.},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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Author Information
  • Department of English, Sakhnin College, Sakhnin, Israel

  • Department of Arabic, Academic College Achva, Achva, Israel

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