World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies

Barcelona, July 19th - 24th 2010

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Historical Narratives (153) - NOT_DEFINED activity_field_Panel
 

· NOT_DEFINED date: TUE, 20 / 5-7 pm

· NOT_DEFINED language: English / Français

· NOT_DEFINED description:
Paper presenter: Mohammad Ragheb (Independent Scholar), “Narrativity in Persian and Arabic Structures of Maqamat and their Effects in Development of Narrative Forms (A Comparative Narratologic Approach)”
Badi oz-Zaman Hamedani, Abu Mohammad Hariri, and Hamid od-Din Balkhi were the most famous writers of Maqamat in Arabic and Persian. Apparently, Maqamat had been written for the sake of showing ability of the author in presentation of literary devices, but in addition to verbal structures, these texts use special narrative structures in which construct new narrative form later has been effective not only in Persian and Arabic literature but also in the European picaresque story. This effect is not only limited to traditional forms but sometimes also is included contemporary fictional literature. Generally, impression of Maqamat in this article, will be divided into two important species of literary forms: 1- traditional short story 2- episodic novel The main purpose of this article is scrutiny of the common and distinct narrative elements of Maqamat in comparison with other forms of fiction by means of study of narrativity in plot from point of view of Gerald Prince. Although the degree of narrativity in Maqamat is not high at all in comparison whit contemporary literature, it is noticeable when it comes to the matter of traditional literature. In fact, later writers constantly increase narrativity of stories using the achievements of authors of Maqamat. Development of narrativity in the later stories shows move from simple narrativity to complex narrativity (from viewpoint of Marie-Laure Ryan) in narrative comprehension of Persian and Arabic readers. Maqamat is categorized as framed narratives because of special form of plot, actions of narrator and change of narrative levels. Frame of Maqamt sometimes provides closed plot for presentation of story that prevents dynamism and spread of narrative. The same point is important characteristics of Maqama’s form, and other forms are created by change in Maqama’s plot. As a matter of fact, change in progression of plot is the main factor of the emergence of new forms. Despite plot and narrative system, construct of character is one of the most fundamental issues that must be paid attention. Character in Maqama is created by three kinds: 1. Descriptive statements; 2. Debate; 3. Actions. On the whole, this characteristic is one of the effective distinctions of this genre from other genres that we proceed it in this article.

Paper presenter: Anna Nawolska (Assistant Professor - PhD, Institute of Classics, Mediterranean and Oriental Studies), “Sirat Antara. The Manuscript from the University Library in Wroclaw”
This proposal is about the discovery of a manuscript from the eighteenth century, the fifth incomplete volume of the chivalrous romance, Sirat Antara, handwritten in the Arabic language by anonymous scribes. The text consists of two hundred and twenty pages of narration which is interlaced by forty six poems. Antara ibn Shaddad al-Absi - the pre-Islamic poet-knight, whose best scope of poetic creation is dated in the sixth century, became the most famous Arabic hero. The memory of Antara has been kept alive in these stories, until the present day. The manuscript is currently to be found in the Manuscript Department of the University Library in Wrocaw and was translated only recently into English by the author of this proposal. Despite the significant difficulties related to the text-reading, from the exceptionally flowery style and its archaic vocabulary up to the description of events in chaotic order, Sirat Antara appears to be a valuable source of social history, material culture, traditions, religious beliefs and the sociological aspect of behaviour of the pre-Islamic society. The first part of the proposal presents a brief description of the chivalrous epos and its genesis, as well as the history of Sirat Antara in the light of the present state of research carried out in Europe. The second part of the study is concerned with a comparison of the narrative of the above mentioned manuscript with the text of the epos, Qissat Antara Ibn Shaddad al-Absi, published in Cairo in the year 1961 by Maktabat Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi. Taking into consideration the fact that a translation directly from the manuscript Sirat Antara has not been researched in the course of the last two centuries, the main purpose of this proposal in question is to enable the largest number of orientalists all over the world possible to get acquainted with it.

Paper presenter: Kumiko Kondo (Associate Professor, Osaka University), “Mosaic Structure of the Narrative: From the Thousand and One Nights”
It is known that there are many versions for the Thousand and One Nights through its long history from the MSS versions to the printed ones. In 19th century, four major printed versions have published; Calcutta I, Breslau, Bulaq and Calcutta II. My presentation will deal one story from the Nights ‘The story of Khalifa the fisherman’ and will analysis its mosaic narrative structure. This is the story about a poor fisherman in Baghdad, and he came across the Caliph Harun al-Rashid at the Tigris then his destiny will be changed in some incidents. And this story includes also a part of the Caliph’s romance, thus the motives seem assembled and the structure is complicated. I had my research on this theme in comparison with two stories in Calcutta II and Baghdadi manuscript that I have gotten in Baghdad, and I will deal also Bulaq version in this presentation. The major points that will be considered exactly are the hero’s destiny and the Caliph’s story. Looking up some inconsistencies of the stories in 3 versions, it can be seen two types for this narrative of the fisherman. While the Caliph’s story will be traced to one type of love-stories, i.e., it is linked with other narratives in the Thousand and One Nights featured Sitt Zubaida and the slave girl Qut al-Qulub. The monkey(s) at the beginning of the narrative will be also emphasized, as it changed the fisherman’s life. In Calcutta II, when the monkeys appeared from the Tigris in the strange ugly features, it seems that the narrator has made his recitation livelier, while the monkey is beloved by Khalif the hero and it is sent from God in the Baghdadi manuscript. Along this difference, the aspects of Khalifa are different in some versions. In this presentation, I will analysis the mosaic structure of the narrative dealing with these points mentioned above, also will attempt to trace for the earlier shape of the story.

Paper Presenter: Oleh Kshanovsky (Associate Professor, Kiev National University), “The Arabic and Turkic Elements in Persian: Typological Approach”
Both Arabic and Turkic elements played and are still playing a significant role in the development of the structural and communicative system of Persian. But from the point of language typology these elements have completely different statues. For example, on the one hand, both such Arabic elements as broken plurals, all Arabian suffixes of plural, the article al, adverbs with tanvin, Arabian degrees of comparison etc. and such Turkic elements as evidentiality in the grammatical structure of verbs, numerous lexemes etc. are classical borrowings. On the other hand more than 20 indications of different levels, bonding with agglutinative technique of morpheme connection as the constituents of lexical forms are the result of language change. The minimum number of consonant overlap (so called clusters) at the beginning and at the end of the word (such overlap is observed in some recent cases of the borrowings from European languages), the presence of regressive synharmony, the stable last syllable stressed, the presence of the large quantity of participles and nouns derived from verbs, the presence of special class of complex words, parts of which may be used independently (so called complex verbs), the presence of independent stem-root, the simple way of splitting the affix from the stem-root, the increasing affixation from words, monosemic affixes, a particular productivity of lexical derivation, the absence of the words subdivision as to the stems (so called declining), the presence of post-syllable ‘ra, the minimal quantity of prefixes and the large quantity of suffixes, isolation and independence of affixes (the possibility of their usage on distance, and also so called ?group forming?), the presence of morphological way of reduplication, facultativeness (that may or may not occur) of some morphological indexes, the existence of incorporation, the existence of stable word order in the word-group ?signifier-signified? (post-position of signifier), the post-position of a verb in the sentence, the absence of syntactic concordance, the existence of syntactic devices isolation and incorporation. These are the features Persian gained during interference. In our opinion, the progressive changes of morphological structure Old Persian became a result of mutual influence of classical agglutinate as well as analytical Old Turkic dialects and classical fusion as well as synthetic Old Persian dialects.

Paper Presenter: Belgherras Abdelouahab (Chercheur, Centre de Recherche en Anthropologie Sociale et Culturelle-Oran-Algérie), « L'Emir Abdelkader et le la prison de l'Amboise »
Parlant de la crise qu’a traversé l’Emir le combattant, le soufi, nous démonte comment un soufi vivre la crise, au niveau personnel et social, et comment il l’emploie civilisation nellement et religieusement. L’expérience soufie se révèle dans « l’Etat » = hal, c’est-à-dire le passage d’un état ç un autre et l’obligation de la coexistence avec les états difficiles et pénibles et d’éviter le repos et croire au destin. L’état dont l’Emir a fait usage était celui de se rapprocher de Dieu c’est pour cela qu’il a su s’adapter à la crise .On peut résumer son parcours historique soufi comme suit :
1- L’apprentissage pendant l’enfance.
2- Foutoua (jeunesse), la tolérance envers les autres, appuyer les pauvres et les faibles.
3-Mourabata (cantonnement) dans les lieux ou l’ennemi attaque pour la défense de l’état islamique, il l’a incarné dans la lutte contre le colonialisme.
4-La période de la médiation et le raisonnement (prière, production intellectuelle) de 1848 au 1852.
5-La période de la maturité et l’expression (Djihad Akbar) la création dans le soufisme devient le disciple d’Ibn Arabi en Syrie jusqu''à sa mort en1883.
En plus il y’a l’état de l’Amour (amour de Dieu implique l’amour des êtres et de là apparaît le sourire de l’Emir avec les français alors qu’il était prisonnier, et il continué à inviter au dialogue et la tolérance entre les religions et les cultures. Enfin la crise qu’a vécu l’Emir du point de vue soufi est le suivi de ses conséquences ç travers l’histoire est événement avec des douleurs et des souffrances mais en réalité c’était une dignité, un honneur et une bonté.