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Autobiography

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Although the term autobiography is widely defined, all novels in this category contain personal accounts that are written for a public audience. The stories cover large parts of the author’s lives and often to serve as a reflection on the ills of modern societies in the Arab world. The category is not exclusive, and there are often autobiographical elements in the literary works that exist outside of this category.

 

Modern Arab(ic) autobiographic writing should however be distinguished from autobiographical writing in a wider sense, often modelled on French or English examples, in that contemporary Arab(ic) autobiographical novels seems to serve as means of projecting the ills of modern societies. In addition, modern Arab(ic) autobiographies relates to a long history of autobiography which includes accounts dating to the medieval period of the careers of mystics and religious leaders, spiritual journeys, and travel stories.

  • Laylā Aḥmad (1940-, Egypt) – Mamar Jānibī (Ḥudūdī): min al-Qāhirah Ilā Amrīkā – Riḥlah Imrāʾ (1999, English trans. A Border Passage: From Cairo to America – A Woman’s Journey, 2000). Islamic scholar Laylā Aḥmad describes her upbringing in culturally diverse Cairene suburb of Heliopolis in the 1940s, and her subsequent move to Europe and the USA, where she was confronted with prejudices against Islam (reference). She also describes her own relationship with religion, how Islam was introduced to her through her grandmother and her views on patriarchy justified by Islam. Aḥmad was a strong critic of pan-Arabism, something that is discussed in the autobiography
  • Aḥmad Amīn (1886 – 1954, Egypt) – Ḥayātī (1950, English trans. My Life, 1978). This autobiography, written by the Egyptian historian, reflects upon the conflict between traditional and modern society embodied in the conflict between the author’s father, a religiously conservative man, and himself, who only appreciated his father after being liberated from his paternal authority (also in F: Family Life: Parent and Child: Father and Child). The novel furthermore describes Amīn’s search for intellectual development, his engagement with the secularist, nationalist and intellectual elite in Cairo, and his eventual return to religion when he faced crisis, fear, and loneliness (reference).
  • Fadhma Amrouche (1882 – 1967, Algeria) – Histoire de ma vie (1968, English trans. My Life Story – The Autobiography of an Amazigh Woman, 2009). Published posthumously, this autobiography describes the author’s life as she moves between the Kabylia Amazigh and French culture in colonial Algeria, and migrates to France after marrying an Amazigh teacher, where she became a well-known singer of traditional Amazigh songs, and her eventual conversion to Christianity. Fadhma’s daughter Taos Amrouche, also made music and wrote about her mother in the novel Solitudes ma mère (‘Solitude, My Mother’, 1995) (see in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Music)
  • Luwīs ʿAwaḍ (1915 – 1990, Egypt) – Awrāq al-ʿUmr (‘Notes of a lifetime’, 1989) describes the Coptic author’s life, from his formative years in Egyptian primary and secondary state schools in the 1920s, to his love for his Muslim neighbourhood, to his marriage to a French woman and finally his isolation in a country house near Dahshur (reference). It also reflects on the author’s environment, both the public, such as the political developments 20th century Egypt, and the private, such as his family and their relationship with the church.
  • Driss Chraïbi (1926 – 2007, Morocco) – Vu, lu, entendu (‘Seen, Read, Heard’, 1998). In this autobiography, the author, one of the Maghreb’s most prominent, describes Morocco between 1926 and 1947, including scenes of World War II, and the love for literature that he develops as an adolescent. The autobiography goes on to describe his ‘discovering of the outside world’ as he travels to Paris for educational purposes, and reflects on the author’s literary career.
  • Shawqi Ḍayf (1910 – 2005, Egypt) – Maʿī (‘With me’, 1981 and 1988). In this autobiography, made up of two volumes, Ḍayf, who was a prominent Arab literary critic, historian, editor, and scholar, narrates his life story (reference). He describes his boyhood in a small town, referring to its social cohesion, his religious education in Damietta, and his literary studies in Cairo, to obtaining his PhD and becoming a professor himself. It also includes the many trips Ḍayf made outside of Egypt and describes other Egyptian literary figures he encountered in life, such as influential the author Ṭaha Ḥusayn, and the Egyptian poet and politician ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Fahmy.
  • Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm (1898 – 1987, Egypt) – Sijn al-ʿUmr (1964, also published under the title Ḥayātī (‘My life’), English trans. The Prison of Life: An Autobiographical Essay, 1992). al-Ḥakīm, one of Egypt’s most prominent writers and pioneer of the Arabic novel and drama, tells the story of his childhood and youth, from inheriting his parents’, specifically his father’s, traits (the ‘prison’ referred to in the title), to his religious education and first contact with Arabic literature, to his puberty in Alexandria where he developed a love for painting, going to the cinema, and theater, to his twenties when he studied law in Cairo and started to first write theatre plays, until his departure for Paris in 1926 (reference).
  • Yaḥya Ḥaqqī (1905-1992, Egypt) – Khallīhā ʿalā Allāh (‘Leave it to God’, 1957). This autobiography is divided into four parts. The first focuses on Ḥaqqī’s law education and describes his professors and the different court cases he witnessed. In the second part he moves from Alexandria to Cairo and works as an attorney, while the third part describes a funnier aspect of his life, namely his relationship with his means of transportation: his donkey. In the last part of his autobiography, Ḥaqqī describes Egypt from a historical and social point of view, recounting many factual and humorous tales about the simplicity of the peasants and their exploitation at the hands of employees.
  • Jabrāʾ Ibrāhīm Jabrā (1920 – 1994, Palestine) – al-Biʾr al-Uwlā (1987, English trans. The First Well: A Bethlehem Boyhood, 1995) and Shāriʿa al-Amīrāt (1987, English trans. Princesses’ Street: Baghdad Memories, 2005).

In al-Biʾr al-Uwlā, the influential Palestinian writer Jabrāʾ Ibrāhīm Jabrā describes his childhood and literary education in Bethlehem and Jerusalem at the hands of the poet Ibrāhīm Tuqān and writers such as Isḥaq Mūsā and Khalīl al-Sakākīnī before he received a scholarship to study English literature at the universities of Exeter and Cambridge (reference).

 

Shāriʿa al-Amīrāt describes Jabrā’s experiences in Exeter and Cambridge, among others him meeting Agatha Christie. It furthermore centres Jabrā’s return to Jerusalem to teach at the Rashidiyyah College, and, after being forced into exile in Iraq in 1948, his life in Baghdad, where he taught at the Tawjihiyyah College and the College of Arts and Sciences.

  • ʿAbd al-Majīd bin Jallūn (1919 – 1981, Morocco) – Fī al-Ṭufūlah (‘In childhood’, 1957 and 1968) a two-volume autobiography of the writer’s upbringing in Morocco, and travels to England and Egypt.[1] He describes how events in his childhood, such as the death of his mother, their move to England and vacations in Morocco, their return to his birth country, and the death of his sister, affected him (reference).
  • Ḥanna Mīnāh (1924 – 2018, Syria). This prominen Syrian writer has published three major autobiographies: Baqāyā Ṣuwar (1975, English trans. Fragments of Memory, 1993), al-Mustanqaʿa (‘The swamp’, 1977) and al-ʿQuṭāf (‘The harvest’, 1986).

In Baqāyā Ṣuwar, Mīnāh describes his childhood in a poor family in northern Syria in the context of the developments of the region in early 20th century, such as that of the silkworks industry that introduced modern foreign technology. It also describes the intimate details of his family’s life, especially through criticizing his father (reference). This novel was made into a movie with the same title in 1973.

 

In al-Mustanqa,ʿ the author describes his childhood in Alexandretta when it was part of the State of Syria during a time characterized by an economic crisis by the name of al-Kariza. This crisis led to famine in the authors neighbourhood. The novel also reflects on the role exile had on the family (reference).

 

al-ʿQuṭāf, picking up where the previous part left off, starts with the family’s return to Latakia after Alexandretta becomes part of Turkey, where they work on an olive farm.  

  • Salāma Mūsa (1887 – 1958, Egypt) – Tabiyat Salalāma Mūsā (‘The Years of Salama Moussa’s Apprenticeship’, 1947). In three volumes, this autobiography of the Egyptian Coptic thinker, writer, and socialist starts with his primary and secondary education in Egypt, and his migration to Paris in 1909, where he lived for a period of three years and subsequently moved to London, where he was during World War I (reference).
  • Mīkhāʾīl Naʿīmah (1889 – 1988, Lebanon) – Sabʿūn: Ḥikāyat ʿUmr (‘Seventy: the story of a life’, 1962-66). In the first part of this three-volume work, the author describes his years in his birthplace Biskinta (now Lebanon, then Ottoman Empire), his schoolyears in Nazareth, and studying in Poltava (Ukraine) from 1906 to 1911 (reference). The second volume is set between 1911 and 1932, and reflects on his stay in the United States studying at the University of Washington and serving for the US army in Bordeaux during World War I (also in 1914-1918 World War I) (reference). The last volume concerns the years after his eventual return to Lebanon until 1959, in which he resettles in his birth town of Biskinta.
  • Nawāl al-Saʿadāwī (1931 – 2021, Egypt) – (English trans. A Daughter of ISIS: The Autobiography of Nawal El-Saadawi, 1999). In this autobiography, prominent author, scholar, and feminist al-Saʿadāwī reflects on her life from her home in exile in North Carolina.
  • Bint al-Shāṭiʾ (pseudonym for ʿĀʾishah ʿAbd al- Raḥmān, 1913 – 1998, Egypt) – ʿAlā al-Jisr bayn al-Ḥayah wa al-Mawt (‘On the bridge between life and death’, 1999). In this autobiography, the Egyptian author Bint al-Shāṭiʾ describes her upbringing and her education that consisted of home-schooling through various religious books and Islamic sciences (reference). This was followed by enrolment in the university, where she was one of the first women to study. There she met her future husband who was her professor. Her extensive knowledge of the Arabic language and Islam led her to become the first women to lecture at the Azhar University. In the final part of her autobiography, she describes the death of her husband and soulmate, and her life after his death.
  • Fadwā Ṭūqān (1917 – 2003, Palestine) – Riḥlah Ṣaʿba, Riḥlah Jabaliyya, (1985, English trans. A Mountainous Journey, 1990) and al-Riḥlah al-Asʿab (‘The tougher journey’, 1993). These two literary works form the autobiography of the prominent Palestinian poet Fadwā Ṭūqān.

Originally published in serial from, Riḥlah Ṣaʿba, Riḥlah Jabaliyya recounts Fadwā Ṭūqān’s life story from her birth in Nablus in 1917 until the 1967 Naksah (reference). The narrator interweaves historical and national events with the development of her own poetic voice, her struggle against oppressive societal mores as enforced by her family, and the role her family members played in shaping her identity, such as the death of her mother and her brother, Ibrahīm, who taught her how to write poetry when she was deprived of continuing her education (reference). The autobiography includes several of the author’s poems.

 

al-Riḥlah al-Asʿab continues to reflect on the Palestinian issue, describing the tragedy of Palestinians after the 1948 Nakbah and the 1967 Naksah. She narrates how these events affected her personally, as she continued to live in Nablus, and how they changed Palestinian society. The autobiography also describes Tuqān’s relations with the Palestinian literary scene and intellectuals, and the development of Palestinian poetry in the period covered (reference).

  • Laylā al-ʿUthmān (1943-, Kuwait) – Infaḍ ʿAnnī al-Ghubār (‘Dust me off’, 2017). In this autobiography, al-ʿUthmān recalls growing up in Kuwait. It is divided into three parts; the first is about her childhood and her relationship with her strict father who forbid her from publishing. The second part describes the city of Kuwait, her first marriage to a Palestinian doctor, and her second marriage to the Palestinian writer, Walīd Abū Bakr. It was during this second marriage that her talent for writing was acknowledged, and her relationship with literature and writing is the theme of the third part of her autobiography (reference).
  • Nizār Qabbānī (1923 – 1998, Syria) – Qiṣṣatī Maʿ al-Shiʿr Sīra Dhātiyya (1972, English trans. My Story with Poetry. An Autobiography, 2017). While in this autobiography, Qabbānī does mention his years working as a Syrian diplomat from 1945-1966, it focusses more on his poetic themes of revolution and passion. Giving insight in the life of one of the Arab world’s most prolific poets, famous for his sensual and romantic verses, it can be read in different ways: as a fight against censorship, as the success story of a self-made poet, and “as the chronique scandaleuse of an Arab Don Juan” (reference).
  • Sayyid Quṭb (1906 – 1966, Egypt) – Ṭifl Min al-Qarya (‘A child from the village’, 1973). This autobiography tells of the author’s childhood in a village and his eventual move away from the village in the search of further education. It was written before the author’s journey to the United States and his conversion to radical Islam. It shows that al-Quṭb’s turn to fundamentalism was a reaction to tradition village life, as well as to the modernity that he saw as disturbing. His autobiography also provides an anthropological and political insight into the Egyptian village at the eve of World War I (reference) (also in 1914 – 1918 World War I).
  • Laylā Abū Zayd (1950-, Morocco) – Rujūʾilā al-Ṭuflah (1993, English trans. Return to Childhood: The Memoir of a Modern Moroccan Women, 1998). One of the first modern autobiographies to be written in Arabic rather than in French by a Moroccan women, this autobiography interweaves Morocco’s struggle of national independence with the personal story of the author between her eighth and fourteenth year (reference). Through giving voice not only to herself but also her mother and grandmother, the author offers a view of Moroccan history from women’s perspectives (also in 1956: Independence Morocco) reference).
  • Laṭīfah al-Zayyāt (1923 – 1996, Egypt) – Hamlat Taftīsh: Awrāq Shakhsiyyah (1992, English trans. The Search: Personal Papers, 1996). Egyptian political activist and writer Laṭīfah al-Zayyāt describes the formation of her political awareness during her childhood, as she early in life witnesses Egypt’s resistance to the British and is educated by her two brothers (reference). She joined the communist Iskra in her fourth year of university and partook in student revolts against the British occupation, landing her in prison in 1949 (reference). She was imprisoned again in her fifties, when she opposed the Camp David Accords. In the autobiography, al-Zayyāt reflects on being a female activist and the different ‘selfs’ that she lived/lives through in the personal and political context (reference) (also in G: Dysfunctional Governance: Prison Literature and Torture: Female Prison Experiences).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

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  19. Thomas Phillip. 1993. “The Autobiography in Modern Arab Literature and Culture.” Poetics Today 14(3): 573-602, p. 589-90

  20. Ariel M. Sheetrit. 2015 “Narrative Strategies of Self- Definition and Voice in Leila Abouzeid’s ‘Return to Childhood’.” Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 11(2): 179-198, p. 190, 191 192
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