Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel Ziad Elmarsafy ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd iii 23/10/2012 17:16 © Ziad Elmarsafy, 2012 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11/15 Adobe Garamond by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4140 6 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 5564 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 5566 3 (epub) ISBN 978 0 7486 5565 6 (Amazon ebook) The right of Ziad Elmarsafy to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd iv 23/10/2012 17:16 Contents Series Editor’s Foreword vii Abbreviations x Acknowledgements xi Introduction: Ouverture 1 1 Naguib Mahfouz: (En)chanting Justice 23 2 Tayeb Salih: The Returns of the Saint 52 3 Maªmūd Al-Masʿadī: Witnessing Immortality 66 4 The Survival of Gamal Al-Ghitany 78 5 Ibrahim Al-Koni: Writing and Sacrifice 107 6 Tahar Ouettar: The Saint and the Nightmare of History 139 Epilogue: Bahaa Taher, Solidarity and Idealism 162 Notes 168 Bibliography 235 Index 253 ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd v 23/10/2012 17:16 ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd vi 23/10/2012 17:16 Series Editor’s Foreword new and unique series, ‘Edinburgh Studies in Modern Arabic Literature’ A will, it is hoped, fill in a gap in scholarship in the field of modern Arabic literature. Its dedication to Arabic literature in the modern period, that is, from the nineteenth century onwards, is what makes it unique among series undertaken by academic publishers in the English-speaking world. Individual books on modern Arabic literature in general or aspects of it have been and continue to be published sporadically. Series on Islamic studies and Arab/ Islamic thought and civilisation are not in short supply either in the academic world, but these are far removed from the study of Arabic literature qua literature, that is, imaginative, creative literature as we understand the term when, for instance, we speak of English literature, or French literature, and so on. Even series labelled ‘Arabic/Middle Eastern Literature’ make no period distinction, extending their purview from the sixth century to the present, and often including non-Arabic literatures of the region. This series aims to redress the situation by focusing on the Arabic literature and criticism of today, stretching its interest to the earliest beginnings of Arab modernity in the nineteenth century. The need for such a dedicated series, and generally for the redoubling of scholarly endeavour in researching and introducing modern Arabic literature to the Western reader, has never been stronger. The significant growth in the last decades of the translation of contemporary Arab authors from all genres, especially fiction, into English; the higher profile of Arabic literature interna- tionally since the award of the Nobel Prize for Literature to Naguib Mahfouz in 1988; the growing number of Arab authors living in the Western dias- pora and writing both in English and Arabic; the adoption of such authors and others by mainstream, high-circulation publishers, as opposed to the vii ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd vii 23/10/2012 17:16 viii | series editor’s foreword academic publishers of the past; the establishment of prestigious prizes, such as the International Prize for Arabic Fiction (the Arabic Booker), run by the Man Booker Foundation, which bring huge publicity to the shortlist and winner every year, as well as translation contracts into English and other languages – all this and more recently the events of the Arab Spring have heightened public interest, let alone academic, in all things Arab, and not least Arabic literature. It is therefore part of the ambition of this series that it will be increasingly addressing a wider reading public beyond its natural ter- ritory of students and researchers in Arabic and world literature. Nor indeed is the academic readership of the series expected to be confined to special- ists in literature in light of the growing trend for interdisciplinarity, which increasingly sees scholars crossing field boundaries in their research tools and coming up with findings that equally cross discipline borders in their appeal. Sufi thought and practice and their main historical exponents have exercised a not insubstantial influence on all main genres of modern Arabic literature: poetry, drama and fiction. In poetry the influence can be traced back to the revivalist or neo-classical period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries down to the contemporary Adūnīs (b. 1930) and later poets. In drama, and particularly verse drama, it was the Egyptian poet, Salah Abd al- Sabur (1930–81) who showed the relevance of Sufi thought and practice to contemporary political life in his memorable play of the 1960s, The Tragedy of Al-Hallaj. When we come to the novel, the art form most adept by its nature at the detailed representation of reality, it was no wonder that Muhammad Husayn Haykal’s novel, Zeinab (1912), broadly accepted as the first novel in Arabic of literary quality, reflected in some of its scenes popular Sufi practices and beliefs, as did the great Taha Husayn’s fictionalised autobiography,The Stream of Days (1929). It is as if the Arabic novel was born with a genetic propensity towards engagement with Sufism, a condition which continued unabated from those early days until the present, with the relationship grow- ing ever more intense and complex, naturally more so with some authors than others, manifesting itself sometimes realistically, sometimes symboli- cally or allegorically, according to the styles of writing, the political agenda of authors, and their worldview in general. Most notably, Sufism plays a major role in the work of Egypt’s Nobel laureate, Naguib Mahfouz (1911–2006), ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd viii 23/10/2012 17:16 series editor’s foreword | ix who has demonstrated time and again in his work that while Sufism may be viable as a means of personal salvation by withdrawal from society, it had no role to play in bringing about progressive social change. Other writers may have other views, but few could afford to ignore Sufism in their writing, considering its standing both in Arab/Muslim thought and popular belief and practice. Despite the above, the study of representations of Sufism in Arabic fic- tion, let alone other genres, has received little scholarly attention and remains a field wide open for researchers’ endeavour. The vast landscape needs to be surveyed, historical and socio-political connections established, develop- ments delineated, links with world trends identified, and the tools of relevant literary theory brought to bear on all that. Ziad Elmarsafy’s current volume, Sufism in the Contemporary Arabic Novel, makes a much needed start on all these fronts through representative case studies of some of the most central exponents of Sufi thought in the contemporary Arabic novel. Rasheed El-Enany, Emeritus Professor of Modern Arabic Literature University of Exeter ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd ix 23/10/2012 17:16 Abbreviations CW = Complete Works / Al-Aʿmāl Al-Kāmila (various authors) EI = Encyclopaedia of Islam. Refers to articles in both the second (P. Bearman et al.) and third (Kate Fleet et al.) editions EM = Louis Massignon, Ecrits mémorables EQ = Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān FM = Ibn ʿArabī, Al-Futūªāt Al-Makkiyya GA = Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe Note on Transliteration and Translation I follow the IJMES system for the transliteration of Arabic names. For the authors studied in this work, however, I have relied on the spelling used in the extant translations into Western languages (mainly English), in order to make them more accessible for the general reader. I have followed the same policy with titles and characters, adopting them as they exist in the extant translations. If there is no English translation, I use the transliter- ated Arabic for the author’s name and title. For the sake of clarity, authors’ names are transliterated according to the IJMES system at first mention in the text (mainly in the introduction) and in the bibliography where neces- sary. All nouns and the definite article ‘Al’ are capitalised in Arabic titles and names. Some widespread proper names are transliterated according to their better-known form, hence Gamal Abd El-Nasser rather than Jamāl ʿAbd Al-Nā‚ir. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations are my own. Once again, for the sake of accessibility, translations of individual works (mainly English, some French) are listed in the bibliography. All translations from the Qurʾān are taken from The Qur’an: A New Translation by M. A. S. Abdel Haleem (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2004). x ELMARSAFY 9780748641406 PRINT.indd x 23/10/2012 17:16 Acknowledgements irst and foremost, I wish to thank Professor Rasheed El-Enany, whose Finitiative and constant encouragement over the past three years made this book possible. The patient and professional support of the editorial and pro- duction teams at Edinburgh University Press was essential to keeping this pro- ject from derailing. The generous leave policy of the English Department at the University of York, coupled with a visiting appointment at the Université de Paris III–Sorbonne Nouvelle at the kind invitation of Professor Jean Bessière, gave me the time and resources necessary to get the project off the ground. The idea at the heart of this book began as a series of discussions with Gilles Ladkany, Daniel Rivet and Hamit Bozarslan at the Institut d’Etudes de l’Islam et des Sociétés du Monde Musulman (IISMM).