What do you think?
Rate this book
The Penguin Anthology Of Classical Arabic Literature
Spanning the fifth century to the sixteenth, and ranging from Afghanistan to Spain, this unique collection provides a profound insight into the sheer vitality and depth of Classical Arabic literature. From the earliest surviving fragments of The Thousand and One Nights to the elegant beauty and profound power of the Qur'an - believed by the Islamic faith to contain the actual words of Allah - it includes translated extracts from all the major works of the period, alongside many less well-known but equally fascinating pieces. Exploring such traditional themes as lovesick yearning and fated doom, and considering subjects as diverse as the etiquette of falling in love with slave-girls and the terrors of the sea, this compelling anthology of poetry and prose brilliantly illuminates a body of writing that has been unjustly neglected by the west for centuries.
462 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2006
About the author
Robert Irwin
107 books141 followersRobert Graham Irwin was a British historian, novelist, and writer on Arabic literature.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 4, 2014
I knew nothing of Arabic literature before I read this book, and now I feel pretty good about how much I know. Inasmuch as it's more than nothing.
This isn't really an 'anthology' at all. Yes, it contains small snippets of texts, and a couple of longer pieces (from the 1001 Nights). But really it's a sampler, with a few paragraphs from dozens of works spanning 10 centuries. In between, we get Irwin's own history of Arabic literature, which is tremendously helpful. He has an eye for good anecdotes, and chooses his texts well too.
We start with the qasida, or, more precisely, mockery of the qasida, a poem that requires its author to pay tribute to ruins, his lady, and his horse or camel, "in many poems one feels that the excellence of the camel more than compensates for the lost lady love." Often a qasida ends with a thunderstorm. But the qasida he includes does have some wonderful lines; a poet makes his escape from danger thanks to a quick thinking woman--
Out I brought her, and as she stepped she trailed behind us
to cover our footprints the skirt of an embroidered gown.
Earlier he'd admired the virgins tossing about the "hacked flesh" of his camel, "and the frilly fat like fringes of twisted silk." This is not the western love poem tradition, and all the better for it.
There were many subcultures of poet. The Sa'alik poets were highwaymen; the futtak were *specialist killers* and poets. One rough sa'alik poet famously said that he loved the world for three things: "to eat flesh, to ride flesh, and to rub against flesh."
Then came the qur'an, for better or worse (just kidding: definitely better. I would not have made a good sa'alik), but the anecdotes continue. Ibn al-Rumi admitted to writing insincere panegyric, but defended himself thus: "God has reproached poets for saying what they do not do, but they are not guilty of this alone, for they say what princes do not do." Poets in the 7th and 8th centuries sat at the feet of 'authentic' arabic poets, who still rode camels and herded animals, finding obscure words like "bahlasa" which means "to arrive suddenly from another country without any luggage." Someone's leg is obviously being pulled here.
The ghazal separated from the qasida in this period, and I grew bored. Love poetry isn't the same without the flayed camel meat.
But the love of obscurity and rhymed prose continued into the tenth century. "Marcasite" is a stone which, if you see it, will make you laugh yourself to death. It can be found in China. But this was also an age of 'adab,' which is a kind of intellectual, literary chivalry or culture. One of its propagators was Jahiz, who sounds like a glorious fellow. He was crushed to death by falling books.
The development of culture continued with the zarif, a kind of connoisseur. Many of these men wrote cookbooks and poems about food; al-Mahdi "compared the turnip to the moon, the stars and to silver coins; the aubergine was another subject of poetic passion." Irwin also includes a poem about asparagus. Surprisingly contemporary! One court poet brought the eggplant to his Sultan, rhapsodizing about it at length. The Sultan tried it, and found it inedible, "whereupon the nadim launched into a lengthy diatribe about the awfulness of the aubergine. 'Just a moment ao you were praising the thing to the skies,' the Sultan expostulated. 'But, sire, I am your nadim, not htat of hte aubergine,' the assiduous courtier replied." Others wrote poems about visiting monasteries and drinking the wine.
Irwin describes the next period, 900-1175, as a great century for poetry and prose, which flourished under Persian influence. Tawhidi was particularly fascinating: "Tawhidi had a conservative temperament and he believed that novelties were for women and children only. He made a habit of consorting with criminals and other low-life types in an age when it was fashionable to study the techniques and argot of such folk." Yes, just like conservatives of *our* age, except way more fun. He wrote a book so "venomous... that there was supposed to be a curse on anyone owning it." But he was also very intelligent: "Nature consequently needs art because it attains its perfection through the rational soul by means of skilful art, which takes by dictation what it lacks, dictating what advenes to it, seeking perfection through what it receives, bestowing perfection to what it bestows." And a pessimist, who wrote about the fsad al-zaman, the rottenness of the age. Tawhidi was associated with the Banu Sasan, litterateurs on the borders of respectable life. Another of them, Hamadhani, wrote hilarious satire, and described his home city, Hamadan: "In ugliness its children are like its old men, and, in reason, its old men are like its children." I feel the same way about Los Angeles.
Many of these chaps wrote in rhyming prose, and one translator in this volume tried to replicate it. It's surprisingly fun: "I went from Irak to Damascus with its green watercourses, in the day when I had troops of fine-bred horses and was the owner of coveted wealth and resources..." They were also very sensitive, and many became vegetarians. Al-Marzuban wrote a book on "The superiority of Dogs over many who wear clothes," which topic really doesn't need a book, since it's so self-evident.
My favorite discovery here, though, is Ma'Ari, who "despised poets in general, for they wrote lies about things like deserted campsites, passionate love affairs, and heroic battle, whereas he was only really interested in telling everybody the truth about how awful life was." His poems are in a difficult form, and are marvellous:
And where the Prince commanded, now the shriek
Of wind is flying through the court of state:
'Here,' it proclaims, 'there dwelt a potentate
Who could not hear the sobbing of the weak.'
He wrote about the afterlife, reportedly believing that it existed only for animals, who "suffered so much in this life that there must be recompense for them elsewhere." Nonetheless, there are people in his report of the afterlife (which may have influenced Dante). Everyone sits around discussing philology and poetry, though hell is also full of poets and philologists. A good Jinn mocks human poetry, which we understand only as cattle understand astronomy, for we "have only fifteen kinds of metre... we have thousands that your litterateur never heard of." Irwin includes a non-arabic tidbit here: St Ephraem wrote that vine stocks in heaven mate with monks who stayed chaste on earth. In the Arabic tradition, "adventurous travelers were delighted to discover, sex grew on trees."
The section on Andalusia was a little less exciting, although the poet-king al-Mu'tadid apparently kept a collection of his enemy's skulls, which he would often look at and weep with compassion. Also, one of the few women in the collection, Wallada, was from Andalusia. One of its best known poets, Ibrahim Ibn Khafaia, used to "walk out of his village of Shuqr until he reached the solitude of a ravine. There he would stand and shout repeatedly at hte top of his voice 'Ibrahim, you will die!' until he fell unconscious.
The final chapter deals with literature from the Seljuk period. Here we find many of the best known Arabic texts: 1001 Nights, writings from the Crusades and so on. These pale, however, next to the book of Usamah, "a keen rhabdophilist," who wrote "The Book of the Stick." He included Moses and Solomon's sticks, as well as those of his friends and himself. This is not a euphemism.
Ibn Daniyal is famous for scurrilous plays, and they do actually sound scurrilous: one "recounts the attempts of a disreputable hunchbacked soldier called Wisal (the name means 'sexual congress') to find a bride. He is assisted by a dishonest marriage-broker... he ends up with a hideous bride, who wants to beat her husband and who farts a lot; but she dies, in time for Wisal to repent his dissolute ways."
And finally, in "The Delectable War between Mutton and the Refreshments of the Market Place," King Mutton puts down a revolt by the poor people's foods, Honey and so on. Sugar, syrup and rendered fat betray Honey to side with Mutton.
Love live Honey.
This isn't really an 'anthology' at all. Yes, it contains small snippets of texts, and a couple of longer pieces (from the 1001 Nights). But really it's a sampler, with a few paragraphs from dozens of works spanning 10 centuries. In between, we get Irwin's own history of Arabic literature, which is tremendously helpful. He has an eye for good anecdotes, and chooses his texts well too.
We start with the qasida, or, more precisely, mockery of the qasida, a poem that requires its author to pay tribute to ruins, his lady, and his horse or camel, "in many poems one feels that the excellence of the camel more than compensates for the lost lady love." Often a qasida ends with a thunderstorm. But the qasida he includes does have some wonderful lines; a poet makes his escape from danger thanks to a quick thinking woman--
Out I brought her, and as she stepped she trailed behind us
to cover our footprints the skirt of an embroidered gown.
Earlier he'd admired the virgins tossing about the "hacked flesh" of his camel, "and the frilly fat like fringes of twisted silk." This is not the western love poem tradition, and all the better for it.
There were many subcultures of poet. The Sa'alik poets were highwaymen; the futtak were *specialist killers* and poets. One rough sa'alik poet famously said that he loved the world for three things: "to eat flesh, to ride flesh, and to rub against flesh."
Then came the qur'an, for better or worse (just kidding: definitely better. I would not have made a good sa'alik), but the anecdotes continue. Ibn al-Rumi admitted to writing insincere panegyric, but defended himself thus: "God has reproached poets for saying what they do not do, but they are not guilty of this alone, for they say what princes do not do." Poets in the 7th and 8th centuries sat at the feet of 'authentic' arabic poets, who still rode camels and herded animals, finding obscure words like "bahlasa" which means "to arrive suddenly from another country without any luggage." Someone's leg is obviously being pulled here.
The ghazal separated from the qasida in this period, and I grew bored. Love poetry isn't the same without the flayed camel meat.
But the love of obscurity and rhymed prose continued into the tenth century. "Marcasite" is a stone which, if you see it, will make you laugh yourself to death. It can be found in China. But this was also an age of 'adab,' which is a kind of intellectual, literary chivalry or culture. One of its propagators was Jahiz, who sounds like a glorious fellow. He was crushed to death by falling books.
The development of culture continued with the zarif, a kind of connoisseur. Many of these men wrote cookbooks and poems about food; al-Mahdi "compared the turnip to the moon, the stars and to silver coins; the aubergine was another subject of poetic passion." Irwin also includes a poem about asparagus. Surprisingly contemporary! One court poet brought the eggplant to his Sultan, rhapsodizing about it at length. The Sultan tried it, and found it inedible, "whereupon the nadim launched into a lengthy diatribe about the awfulness of the aubergine. 'Just a moment ao you were praising the thing to the skies,' the Sultan expostulated. 'But, sire, I am your nadim, not htat of hte aubergine,' the assiduous courtier replied." Others wrote poems about visiting monasteries and drinking the wine.
Irwin describes the next period, 900-1175, as a great century for poetry and prose, which flourished under Persian influence. Tawhidi was particularly fascinating: "Tawhidi had a conservative temperament and he believed that novelties were for women and children only. He made a habit of consorting with criminals and other low-life types in an age when it was fashionable to study the techniques and argot of such folk." Yes, just like conservatives of *our* age, except way more fun. He wrote a book so "venomous... that there was supposed to be a curse on anyone owning it." But he was also very intelligent: "Nature consequently needs art because it attains its perfection through the rational soul by means of skilful art, which takes by dictation what it lacks, dictating what advenes to it, seeking perfection through what it receives, bestowing perfection to what it bestows." And a pessimist, who wrote about the fsad al-zaman, the rottenness of the age. Tawhidi was associated with the Banu Sasan, litterateurs on the borders of respectable life. Another of them, Hamadhani, wrote hilarious satire, and described his home city, Hamadan: "In ugliness its children are like its old men, and, in reason, its old men are like its children." I feel the same way about Los Angeles.
Many of these chaps wrote in rhyming prose, and one translator in this volume tried to replicate it. It's surprisingly fun: "I went from Irak to Damascus with its green watercourses, in the day when I had troops of fine-bred horses and was the owner of coveted wealth and resources..." They were also very sensitive, and many became vegetarians. Al-Marzuban wrote a book on "The superiority of Dogs over many who wear clothes," which topic really doesn't need a book, since it's so self-evident.
My favorite discovery here, though, is Ma'Ari, who "despised poets in general, for they wrote lies about things like deserted campsites, passionate love affairs, and heroic battle, whereas he was only really interested in telling everybody the truth about how awful life was." His poems are in a difficult form, and are marvellous:
And where the Prince commanded, now the shriek
Of wind is flying through the court of state:
'Here,' it proclaims, 'there dwelt a potentate
Who could not hear the sobbing of the weak.'
He wrote about the afterlife, reportedly believing that it existed only for animals, who "suffered so much in this life that there must be recompense for them elsewhere." Nonetheless, there are people in his report of the afterlife (which may have influenced Dante). Everyone sits around discussing philology and poetry, though hell is also full of poets and philologists. A good Jinn mocks human poetry, which we understand only as cattle understand astronomy, for we "have only fifteen kinds of metre... we have thousands that your litterateur never heard of." Irwin includes a non-arabic tidbit here: St Ephraem wrote that vine stocks in heaven mate with monks who stayed chaste on earth. In the Arabic tradition, "adventurous travelers were delighted to discover, sex grew on trees."
The section on Andalusia was a little less exciting, although the poet-king al-Mu'tadid apparently kept a collection of his enemy's skulls, which he would often look at and weep with compassion. Also, one of the few women in the collection, Wallada, was from Andalusia. One of its best known poets, Ibrahim Ibn Khafaia, used to "walk out of his village of Shuqr until he reached the solitude of a ravine. There he would stand and shout repeatedly at hte top of his voice 'Ibrahim, you will die!' until he fell unconscious.
The final chapter deals with literature from the Seljuk period. Here we find many of the best known Arabic texts: 1001 Nights, writings from the Crusades and so on. These pale, however, next to the book of Usamah, "a keen rhabdophilist," who wrote "The Book of the Stick." He included Moses and Solomon's sticks, as well as those of his friends and himself. This is not a euphemism.
Ibn Daniyal is famous for scurrilous plays, and they do actually sound scurrilous: one "recounts the attempts of a disreputable hunchbacked soldier called Wisal (the name means 'sexual congress') to find a bride. He is assisted by a dishonest marriage-broker... he ends up with a hideous bride, who wants to beat her husband and who farts a lot; but she dies, in time for Wisal to repent his dissolute ways."
And finally, in "The Delectable War between Mutton and the Refreshments of the Market Place," King Mutton puts down a revolt by the poor people's foods, Honey and so on. Sugar, syrup and rendered fat betray Honey to side with Mutton.
Love live Honey.
February 11, 2014
I knew little of Arabic literature when I picked up this volume, and was excited to dive into a new place, peoples, and stories.
While I learned much from the commentator and editor, Robert Irwin, I found the structure of the book jolting. He divides the book's contents into seven phases of history, but within each he mixes history, biographies of important personages, theories on translation, translated selections, and notes on meanings of words. For an individual who was already acquainted with the region this structure would have been acceptable, but the book itself is a survey of poems, prose, and fiction. Anyone with background in this material would probably choose to read a piece in its entirety, not an excerpt. If the editor had made clear demarcations between a general periods history, followed by author bios and their texts, I believe the book would be much more accessible for its intended audience.
Be that as it may, I enjoyed the depth and foresight Irwin gave to selecting translations, providing a historical framework, and his discussion of theories and issues surrounding translation.
I had trouble with many of the pieces--not because I didn't understand them, but because the prevalence of rape, beating, murdering and selling of women found in this literary genre (especially in the earlier periods).
I deeply enjoyed the animal fables, though, such as the monkey and the turtle narrative found in Kalila wa-Dimna and the story of the animals confronting humans, questing the belief that Allah made animals subservient to people in the 'natural order.' The Ghayat al-Hakim was also delightful, with it's descriptions of what it is that makes people human.
I most enjoyed the last section of the book "servitude and military grandeur", because it contained much more fiction, including selections from One Thousand and One Nights.
While I learned much from the commentator and editor, Robert Irwin, I found the structure of the book jolting. He divides the book's contents into seven phases of history, but within each he mixes history, biographies of important personages, theories on translation, translated selections, and notes on meanings of words. For an individual who was already acquainted with the region this structure would have been acceptable, but the book itself is a survey of poems, prose, and fiction. Anyone with background in this material would probably choose to read a piece in its entirety, not an excerpt. If the editor had made clear demarcations between a general periods history, followed by author bios and their texts, I believe the book would be much more accessible for its intended audience.
Be that as it may, I enjoyed the depth and foresight Irwin gave to selecting translations, providing a historical framework, and his discussion of theories and issues surrounding translation.
I had trouble with many of the pieces--not because I didn't understand them, but because the prevalence of rape, beating, murdering and selling of women found in this literary genre (especially in the earlier periods).
I deeply enjoyed the animal fables, though, such as the monkey and the turtle narrative found in Kalila wa-Dimna and the story of the animals confronting humans, questing the belief that Allah made animals subservient to people in the 'natural order.' The Ghayat al-Hakim was also delightful, with it's descriptions of what it is that makes people human.
I most enjoyed the last section of the book "servitude and military grandeur", because it contained much more fiction, including selections from One Thousand and One Nights.
January 15, 2021
I thoroughly enjoyed this anthology. This was my first time being exposed to (translations of) Arabic poetry and prose, let alone classical Arabic. Although I didn't love all the extracts in this novel, I found many beautiful gems that I know I will continue to look back on & read again and again. I also appreciated all the thorough historical context of the societies & background information on the writers that Irwin provided, which I found to be very interesting and insightful.
February 5, 2026
Good translation and commentary. I just strongly dislike the actual literature.
December 14, 2012
I read this right through. He encourages you to do so, with his divisions into time periods/phases, and his introductions to each phase that act as a trot-through of cultural history. He does Commentary too on the works. If that sounds dull, I know Robert Irwin as a novelist and editor of the Dedalus Decadent collection, and I think here he's learned but fun. I felt I got a real guide through medieval Arabic poetry and society alongside it.
Here's an index to tempt you:
Pagan Poets
The Qur'an
Court Culture
Widening Horizons
The Wandering Scholars
The Lost Kingdoms of the Arabs: Andalusia
Servitude and Military Grandeur
It's only half poetry/prose, half cultural commentary, as I say, in the company of Robert Irwin, who has wide horizons and an enthusiastic style. I wished it were twice the page count, but he does fit in a lot.
I'll quote this from him, on his selection criteria:
It would have been easy to have packed this collection with entertaining tales of adventure, sex and comedy -- easy, but seriously misleading. Much of the best of Arabic literature, by which I mean what has been most highly regarded by the Arabs themselves, is decidedly short on adventure or sex. Some of what I have selected has been written in a wilfully difficult language. Personally, I am not indifferent to easy pleasure in literature, so sex and comedy do find their place in this anthology. However, I am more interested in giving the English reader a taste of the authentic strangeness of the medieval Arab past, and its sheer alienness. It is, I think, part of a translator's task to leave some elements of strangeness in the work which he or she is representing in English. Some of my chosen pieces are abstruse, mannered, and absurdly allusive (and this applies whether they are read in Arabic or in English). They are included because they are important or at least typical...
But that's why he lays on the help and the context, and why the stuff makes sense when you go from start to finish and follow the growth.
Here's an index to tempt you:
Pagan Poets
The Qur'an
Court Culture
Widening Horizons
The Wandering Scholars
The Lost Kingdoms of the Arabs: Andalusia
Servitude and Military Grandeur
It's only half poetry/prose, half cultural commentary, as I say, in the company of Robert Irwin, who has wide horizons and an enthusiastic style. I wished it were twice the page count, but he does fit in a lot.
I'll quote this from him, on his selection criteria:
It would have been easy to have packed this collection with entertaining tales of adventure, sex and comedy -- easy, but seriously misleading. Much of the best of Arabic literature, by which I mean what has been most highly regarded by the Arabs themselves, is decidedly short on adventure or sex. Some of what I have selected has been written in a wilfully difficult language. Personally, I am not indifferent to easy pleasure in literature, so sex and comedy do find their place in this anthology. However, I am more interested in giving the English reader a taste of the authentic strangeness of the medieval Arab past, and its sheer alienness. It is, I think, part of a translator's task to leave some elements of strangeness in the work which he or she is representing in English. Some of my chosen pieces are abstruse, mannered, and absurdly allusive (and this applies whether they are read in Arabic or in English). They are included because they are important or at least typical...
But that's why he lays on the help and the context, and why the stuff makes sense when you go from start to finish and follow the growth.
February 14, 2015
A superb introduction to older Arab literature. It's basically an anthology featuring loads of different translations, virtually all of the canonical greats and a lot of interesting literary curiosities. The balance between the latter two categories is well struck. While people in Europe and America are fairly familiar with the Western Canon and the West's Classical literature, there is very little known about Arab poetry, pre-Islamic, Medieval or otherwise; Imru al-Qays, al-Mutannabi and Ibn al-Farid are very unfamiliar names for example. This is what the book is good for, introducing all the great poets and giving you some idea of what they are known for and what can be found in their verse. I'm learning Arabic so the hope is that I'll be able to get to know these poets better in the original language soon. The books is also pretty good for generally acquainting you with Arab literary culture and its history, which is again something that's fairly unfamiliar for Westerners
Read
April 15, 2022500 CE -
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews