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Ottoman Period

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  • Rashā ʿAdalī (1976-, Egypt) – Shaghaf (2017, English trans. The Girl with Braided Hair, 2020). Yāsmīn is an art expert tasked with restoring a Napoleonic painting of a girl, when she discovers a lock of hair embedded into the portrait. She embarks on an investigation, eventually leading her to the archives of Paris, and discovers it is a portrait of Zaynib who was beloved by Napoleon. The novel links the aftermath of Napoleon’s campaign into Egypt with that of the 2011 uprisings through Alton Germain, one of Napoleon’s personal painters who, to the chagrin of Napoleon, preferred to paint Egyptian daily life to the military leader’s victories (reference) (also in O: Occupations, Professions and Hobbies: Arts).
Image of Shaghaf generated through DALL·E by Desiree Custers
  • Fakhrī al-Bārūdī (1887 – 1966, Syria) – Mudhakkirāt al-Barūdī (‘Memoires of al-Barudi’, 1951). Beginning with his childhood memories and descriptions of its folklore aspects in Damascus, al-Barūdī follows by describing the intensifying tensions within the Arab-Turkish relationship in his school. Though scarcely sharing personal details and how Arab nationalism in the period effected himself, the novel describes the general Damascene atmosphere in the pre- World War 1 period (reference) (also in M: Memoirs).
  • Rashīd al-Ḍayf (1945-, Lebanon) – Tablīṭ al-Baḥar (‘Paving the sea’, 2011). Beginning in 1860 following the sectarian massacres in Lebanon and Syria that led to the French intervention, and with-it Evangelical preaching, Fāris studies medicine at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. One of his colleagues is the renowned novelist Jurjī Zaydān. However, he leaves Beirut for the US, where he conscripts into the army and is stationed in Cuba. The novel reflects on the reality of the Levant during Ottoman times and portrays the early days of modern medicine education in the Arab world, including the discussions it raised on the relationship between science and religion (reference).
  • Sharbil Dhāghir (1950-, Lebanon) – Ibnat Būnābart al-Maṣriyya (‘The Egyptian daughter of Bonaparte’, 2016). Focusing on the daughter of Napoleon Bonaparte, this novel describes the period between 1811 and 1825, when many Egyptian Mamluks were murdered in Marseille, France (reference). The Mamluks had fled to France after they had fought at the side of Napoleon at Waterloo. The author uses three sources to build his story. The first are memoires written by Julie Bisouni, wife of a general who was close to Napoleon. The second source is a report written by an Italian journalist, Antonio de Balcalino, who wrote on the Mamluk massacre in 1815. The last source is the memoirs of Nūr al-Mansūrī (who was called Jeanette) who wrote the history of her Egyptian mother.
  • Alfrīd Faraj’s (1929 – 2005, Egypt) play Sulaymān al-Ḥalabī (‘Sulayman from Aleppo’, 1965) is a drama about a young Syrian student who murders the French General Kléber in Cairo during the brief French occupation of the country at the end of the eighteenth century (reference). The play uses this historical event as a peg on which to hang questions about freedom and justice, as it was written at the time of the Third World struggle against imperialism (reference) (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Philosophical heritage: British authors and philosophers).
  • ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Maḥmūd (1961-, Qatar) – al-Qurṣān (2001, English trans. The Corsair, 2013). This novel is set in the early 19th century, a time when the Arab Peninsula was at the outskirts of the Ottoman Empire and Britain was increasing its control over the coastal areas to protect its trade from pirates. Hero of the novel is Raḥamah bin Jābir, a Gulf pirate and Arab ruler who attacks a British ship carrying a precious Indian sword. What follows in a conflict of political intrigue based on a true historical event.
  • Muṣṭfā Naṭṭūr (1950-, Algeria) – ʿĀm al-Ḥabl (‘Year of the rope’, 2007) This novel uses motifs from traditional folklore (reference). It begins with Būqrah, a Darwish and a fighter against injustice, finding a manuscript on Algeria during the Ottoman period of Bey Saliḥ, which is then compared to Algeria after independence from France. Both storylines tell of displacement: in that of the manuscript, tribes from the northern Algerian region of Constantinople, which was hit by a pandemic and famine, go to the Bey to ask for help, who instead ties them together with a rope and put in a cave (reference). In the second timeline, tribes are forced to move for big factories (also in L: Cultural and Literary Heritage: Folktales).
  • Muḥammad Mansī Qandīl (1949-, Egypt) – Katībah Sūdāʾ (‘The black brigade’, 2015). This novel is set between 1863 and 1867, when a battalion of hundreds of black slave fighters from Egypt and Sudan were sent to Mexico to fight for the French emperor Napoleon III in quenching the Mexican popular revolution against their European oppressors (reference). The alliance of the battalion and other European soldiers was eventually forced to retreat, and the destiny of many of the slave fighters remains unknown. Qandīl gives the unknown soldiers a voice and a story (also in H: Historical novels: Historical novels on Slavery and W: Outside the Arab World: America: Mexico).
  • Laylā Qaṣrānī (1967-, Iraq) – Al-Ṭuyūr al-ʿAmyāʾ (‘The blind birds’, 2016). The story of this novel takes place in the Armenian village of Tūrbāzār, near Diyarbakır, where the citizens are forcibly displaced because they refuse to join the army of the Ottoman Empire in their war with Russia in the 19th (reference). In centers the Armenian girl Kūhār, who describes how her family is displaced after an Ottoman officer slaughters 40 Armenian children. The story continues to follow the villagers’ excruciating journey into exile (also in M: Minorities: Armenians).
  • Hājir Quwaydrī (?, Algeria) – Nawras Bāshā (‘Nawras Basha’, 2012) and al-Rāyyis (‘Raïs’, 2015).

This first novel is the story of heroine al-Ḍāwiyah and describes her past, such as her upbringing in the countryside, and present, such as her marriage to al-Bāsh Āghā, who dies during the plague epidemic that ravaged Algeria in the 1800s. His death forces her to return to her impoverished village, where her son of eight also dies. Soon she remarries a Bāsha, and becomes ever closer to the Turkish rulers, but she cannot have another child due to a spell put on her by her mother (reference). The novel thus links the personal history of al-Ḍāwiyah with that of the Ottoman Empire in Algeria (reference).

 

al-Rāyyis is set between 1791 and 1815 and portrays several characters who each tell a part of the story of the Algerian privateer Raïs Ḥamīdū, who eventually became admiral of a war fleet, through which the novel depicts the social and political life in Algeria during the rule of the Ottomans and the intrigues and conspiracies that were hatched between the Turkish rulers and their struggle for power (reference) (also in O: Occupants, Professions and Hobbies: On the Sea).

  • ʿAzzam Tawfīq Abū al-Saʿūd (1948-, Palestine) – Ṣabrī (‘Sabri’, 2006). Set between 1914 and 1929, this novel centres on Fuʾād Ṣabrī, a doctor who studied medicine in France and participated in World War I as part of the Ottoman army, and his son who studied law at Cambridge. The novel depicts the state of Palestine under Ottoman rule as suffering from poverty and injustice at the hands of the Turks, as well as the power competition in Jerusalem between the Khalidi and Husayni families. The novel is the first in a series of four novels that narrate Jerusalem’s recent history (see for more information in C: Cities: 1948 Palestine: Jerusalem).
  • Zakāriyyah Tāmir’s (1931-, Syria) short story ‘al-Jarīma’ (‘The Crime’) describes the arrest, interrogation procedure, and eventual punishment of the same Sulaymān al-Halabī mentioned in Alfrīd Faraj’s (1929 – 2005, Egypt, see above) play, who murdered the French General Kléber. The story can be found in the collection Rabīʿa fī al-Ramād (1963, English trans. Spring in Ashes, 1994).

Refrences:

In order of appearance

  1. Al-Quds al-ʿArabī . 2018. “al-Riwāʿiyah al-Maṣriyah Rashā ʿAdalī: Riwāyah ‘Shaghaf’ Muqārabah li-Zaman Nābulyūn wa al-Rabīyʿah al-ʿArabiyyah” www.alquds.co.uk, 1 April 2018, https://www.alquds.co.uk/%EF%BB%BF%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B5%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B1%D8%B4%D8%A7-%D8%B9%D8%AF%D9%84%D9%8A-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%B4%D8%BA/ (last accessed 26 October 2021)
  2. Thomas Phillip. 1993. “The Autobiography in Modern Arab Literature and Culture.” Poetics Today 14(3): 573-602, p. 580-1
  3. Sayed Mahmoud. 2011. “Book review: Confronting darkness with the little-known legacy of the Arab Renaissance.” www.english.ahram.org.eg, 18 December 2011, https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/18/62/29665/Books/Review/Book-review-Confronting-darkness-with-the-littlekn.aspx (last accessed 12 July 2024)
  4. Haytham Ḥussayn. 2016. “Sharbal Dāghir Yughāmir Riwāʾiyan fī ‘Ibnat Nābuliyūn Būnābart’.” www.alarab.news, 23 October 2016 https://alarab.news/%D8%B4%D8%B1%D8%A8%D9%84-%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%BA%D8%B1-%D9%8A%D8%BA%D8%A7%D9%85%D8%B1-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%A7-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%86%D8%A9-%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A8%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%A8%D9%88%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%A8%D8%B1%D8%AA (last accessed 19 November 2021)
  5. Roger Allen. 2000. An Introduction to Arabic Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 206
  6. EAL, p. 219
  7. Rasheed el-Enany. 2000. “The Quest for Justice in the Theatre of Alfred Farag: Different Moulds, One Theme.” Journal of Arabic Literature 31(2): 171-202, p. 183
  8. Walīd Buʿadīlah. 2017. “Abʿād al-Tawẓīf al-Tārīkhī fī al-Riwāyah al-Jazāʾiriyyah – Dirāsah fī Namāthij Mukhtār”, Majallah Muntadā al-Ustāth 19: 36-52, p. 38
  9. Al-Azhar ʿAṭiyyah. 2020. “ʿĀm al-Ḥabl… Riwāyah al-Nabūʾāt.” www.djazairess.com, 8 December, 2020 www.djazairess.com/annasr/266188 (last accessed 22 September 2022)
  10. Haytham Ḥusayn. 2015. “‘Katībah Sūdāʾ’ .. Ḥurūb al-Ākhirīn wa Ṣafaqāt al-Abāṭirah wa al-ʿAbīd.” www.aljazeera.net, 9 May 2015, https://www.aljazeera.net/culture/2015/5/9/%D9%83%D8%AA%D9%8A%D8%A8%D8%A9-%D8%B3%D9%88%D8%AF%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%AD%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A8-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A2%D8%AE%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%86-%D9%88%D8%B5%D9%81%D9%82%D8%A7%D8%AA (last accessed 4 December 2023)
  11. Farīq al-ʿAmal. 2019. “Adab al-Aqaliyyāt.. 4 riwāyāt Taḥkī lak al-Jānib al-Majhūl min al-Qiṣṣah al-Siyāsiyah.” www.sasapost.com, 28 December 2019 www.sasapost.com/minority-literature/ (last accessed 16 November 2022)
  12. Maryam al-Tījī. 2013. “Qirāʾah fī Riwāyah Nawras Bāshā lil-Riwāʾiyyah al-Jazāʾiriyyah Hājir Quwaydrī” www.almothawaf.com, 6 January 2013, https://www.almothaqaf.com/readings-1/71284 (last accessed 10 February 2022)
  13. Muḥammad Najīb. 2016. “‘Nawras Bāshā’ al-Sird al-Mutawaḥish.” www.al-watan.com, 21 August 2016, https://www.al-watan.com/news-details/id/21543 (last accessed 10 February 2022)
  14. Fayiz ʿAlām. 2016. “Riwāyat ‘al-Rāyyis’: Takhayyalū al-Jazāʾir fī Zaman al-al-ʿUthmāniyīn,” www.raseef22.net, 23 March 2016, https://raseef22.net/article/52339-%D8%B1%D9%88%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A7%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%AA%D8%AE%D9%8A%D9%91%D9%84%D9%88%D8%A7-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%AC%D8%B2%D8%A7%D8%A6%D8%B1-%D9%81%D9%8A-%D8%B2%D9%85%D9%86-%D8%A7 (last accessed 13 June 2021)
 

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