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Towards the Reappraisal of Classical Arabic Literature and History: Some Aspects of Tāhā Husayn's Use of Modern western Criteria

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Mohamed Al-Nowaihi
Mohamed Al-Nowaihi
Affiliation:
American University in CairoCairo, Egypt
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Extract

In modern Arabic scholarship, it would be difficult to find a hypothesis more implausible than that advanced by Tāhā Husayn in his fī‘l-’adab al-jāhilī. Yet it may be wondered whether any other book, written by a contemporary Arab, has had a comparable influence in changing the fundamental attitude of the Arab intelligentsia towards their classical literature and history. The unsoundness of the book's central assertion—that the bulk of pre-Islamic poetry was fabricated by Muslims, and portrays Islamic, rather than pre-Islamic, conditions and conceits—has been exposed by several critics, both native, in varying degrees of wrathful condemnation, and orientalist, with different approaches to conclusiveness. Of the latter, one at least, the late A. J. Arberry, had some pretty strong words to say, not of the Arab propagator of the fallacy, but of D. S. Margoliouth, who, in the same year 1926, had, as it happened, published identical views, supported by largely similar arguments. Said Arberry, introducing his stern refutation, “The sophistry — I hesitate to say dishonesty — of Professor Margoliouth's arguments is only too apparent, quite unworthy of a man who was undoubtedly one of the greatest erudites of his generation.” He went on to castigate Margoliouth's disregard of certain Qur'anic meanings and intentions of which “he must have been very well aware,” his “shocking misapplication of scholarship,” his “immodesty”, and the rest. Quite restrained criticism when compared to the diatribe which the Arab debaters poured on the heads of their fellow citizen and his presumed infidel mentor, but rather unusual in the serene Arcady of orientalism.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , April 1980 , pp. 189 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

NOTES

1 Husayn, Tāhā, fī'l-adab al-jāhilī, Dār al-Ma'ārif, Cairo, 1962. This book was first published in 1927. The year before, the author had printed a briefer presentation of his hypothesis under the title al-shi'r al-jāhilī, which was suppressed. The present book omits the chapter which caused most offense, and which expressed the author's doubt about the historical veracity of the Qur 'anic story on Abraham and the building of the Ka'ba.Google Scholar

2 Arberry, A. J., The Seven Odes, London and New York, 1957, “Epilogue: True or False?”, p. 228 ff.Google Scholar

3 Ibid., p. 238.

4 Ibid., p. 239.

5 Ibid., p. 244.

6 Op. cit., pp. 55–59.

7 Ibid., pp. 243–244.

8 Ibid., pp. 67–70.

9 al-Ghamrāwī, Muhammad Ahmad, al-naqd al-tahlīlī li-kitāb “fīl-adab al-jāhilī,” Cairo, 1929.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., pp. 100–132.

11 Ibid., pp. 44–54.

12 Now constituting vol. II of the rearranged ed., Dār al-Ma'ārīf, Cairo, 1964.Google Scholar

13 Now, with the later series which studies some pre-Islamic poems, constituting vol. 1 of the book, Dār al-Ma'ārif, Cairo, 1965, beginning on p. 173.Google Scholar

14 Husayn, Tāhā, hadīth al-arba‘ā’, 1964, vol. 2, pp. 58–62.Google Scholar

15 Husayn, Tāhā, hadīth al-arba‘ā’, 1965, vol. 1, p. 173.Google Scholar

16 They were tackled in another paper by the present author, Ibn Khaldūn and Modern Arab Historiography, Seminar on Historical Sociology, Department of Sociology, American University Cairo, April 17, 1972.Google Scholar

17 Kitāb al-aghānī, Dār al-Kutub, Cairo, 1928, vol. 2, pp. 2 ff.Google Scholar

18 Husayn, Tāhā, hadīth al-arba‘dārsquo;, vol. 1, p. 194.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 222.

20 Husayn, Tāhā, hadīth al-arba‘dārsquo;, vol. II, p. 6.Google Scholar

21 Husayn, Tāhā, hadīth al-arba‘ā’, vol. I, p. 178 and vol. II, p. 27.Google Scholar

22 Husayn, Tāhā, khisām wa naqd, Bayrūt, 1960, pp. 221–260. (For the present writer's answer, see his book Nafsiyyar Abī Nuwās, 2nd ed., Cairo, 1970, pp. 176–184 and 193–204.)Google Scholar

23 Ibid., pp. 90–127.

24 Arberry, A. J., op. cit., p. 229.Google Scholar

25 For an exposition of this characteristic, see the present writer's al-shi'r al-jāhilī: manhaj fī dirāsatih wa taqwīmih, Cairo, 1966, vol. I, pp. 107–120.Google Scholar

26 Husayn, Tāhāhadīth al-arba‘dārsquo;, Vol. I, pp. 107–120.Google Scholar

27 Husayn, Tāhā, ma‘a’ l-mutanabbī, Cairo, 1962.Google Scholar

28 Husayn, Tāhāhadīth al-arba‘ārsquo; vol. II, pp. 63–70.Google Scholar