Prose Literature During Abbasid Period



Prose literature


The Abbasid Caliphate was an Islamic empire that lasts from 750 to 1258 C.E. because it was centered in Baghdad and included much of the center East. Poetry and literature were significant ways in which the Abbasids expressed their cultural values. Sponsored what was stressed by the Abbasid poetry, it is clear that the Abbasid court respected the authority of the caliph, entertainment and thus the practice of proving knowledge through poetry recitation. Prose literature had a big role within the Abbasid court also. The didactic collection of prose stories entitled Kalila and Dimna exemplify that the Abbasids enjoyed literature that provides instruction on behavior while providing entertainment. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment is another example of didactic prose, and it's similar messages that demonstrate how people should behave within the court. It also emphasizes everyday behavioral expectations and people’s duty to revere God. Warfare. The poetry and literature from the Abbasid Caliphate exemplify alternative ways to know eras in history. To find out a few society, it's helpful to review literature, not just wars and politics. Literature reveals the growth of society, and shows what societal norms and values are.



Prose was popular within the Abbasid courts, because many stories had the twin purpose of being entertaining and didactic. one among the foremost popular works was Kalila and Dimna. Kalila and Dimna may be a collection of stories, originally written in Sanskrit, that are attributed to a third-century Indian scholar named Vishnu Sharma.15 Around 750 C.E., the Persian writer Ibn al-Muqaffa translated the stories into Arabic. This allowed the work to be circulated throughout the Arab world, because the Abbasid influence increased through trade and other interactions. Kalila and Dimna embodies popular values at this point, like friendship, dedication to family, and revering royalty. The stories were meant to advise and entertain at an equivalent time. a part of the rationale the stories were so popular was because they provided entertainment while exemplifying proper behavior.

As an example of didactic literature, Kalila and Dimna was intended to entertain and instruct the audience. Ibn al-Muqaffa likely intended for the readership of his translation to be the elite within the Abbasid courts. In some ways, Kalila and Dimna provided an alternate to Islamic legal texts on proper behavior in society. Most of the stories specialise in court life through allegories of animals behaving like humans. The framework and structure of those stories are complicated, because there are multiple stories being told within the stories. The animals tell one another stories and explicitly state the moral of every story, therefore the reader can discern the right behavior from the instance of the characters in each story. Since most of the stories specialize in the thanks to behave within the court or around the king, the fables demonstrate the role of the king and therefore the way one should behave.


The Arabian Nights' Entertainment is another work of prose that was popular during the Abbasid Caliphate. it's a compilation of stories from Persian, Mesopotamian, Indian, Jewish, and Egyptian sources. Most of those tales were collected within the 10th century, but many stories have since been added and adapted over time. The framework for the remainder of the stories is a few king named Shahrayar. When his wife is unfaithful, he kills her and takes a replacement wife each night, but finishes up killing each wife out of fear that she is going to be unfaithful also. The vizier's daughter, Shahrazad, agrees to marry the king, and she or he says this can "either save the people [or I will] perish and die like the rest." Shahrazad keeps the king from killing her by telling her stories every night with the promise of the end of each story if she stays alive for the night that follows.With the assistance of Shahrazad’s sister Dinarzad, who expresses interest in each of her stories and begs Shahrazad to inform the remainder of the stories subsequent night, Shahrazad successfully maintains the king’s interest and thus keeps herself alive until the king falls crazy together with her. The Arabian Nights' Entertainment reflects the Abbasid culture during this period of time because it shows what the Abbasids valued, like reverence for royalty, reverence for God, and therefore the proper place and behavior of every person in society.

The Rise of Prose Literature.



 After the thirteenth century, the central role of Arabic poetry diminished, and had possibly begun to lose its influence much earlier. Arabic prose within the meantime arose and flourished throughout the amount 750 –1500 For about the primary 150 years of Islam, the Quran flourished alongside poetry and oral narratives; before 750, little prose literature was written, apart from a few treatises, epistles, and speeches, mostly related to the govt, such as those attributed to the Umayyad khalifal secretary Abd al-Hamid ibn Yahya (died in 750).


A Persian Abbasid prime minister, Ibn al-Muqaffa' (around 720-around 756), also wrote several treatises on prose. An Abbasid prime minister of Persian origin, Ibn al-Muqaffa‘ (circa 720 – circa 756), also wrote some prose treatises. Most of them are translations from Middle Persian, or Pahlavi literature, but a couple of of them are original or have original passages. His longest and best-known surviving work is that the tale of talking animals, Kalilah wa-Dimnah, an example of a “mirror for princes” (advice book for rulers), translated from Sanskrit through Pahlavi and into Arabic, with some reworking by Ibn al-Muqaffa’ to form it acceptable to Muslim sensibilities. After these beginnings, a never-ending stream of Arabic prose composition in various genres of literature has been unbroken to this day. The establishment of paper mills in Turkestan shortly after 750 and in Iraq before 800 made available a cheap writing material and facilitated an outpouring of prose composition and compilation. Unlike the compositions of Ibn al-Muqaffa’, however, later Arabic prose literature was increasingly inspired by the faith of Islam. The Arabic reading public therein age of calligraphy and handwritten manuscripts consisted almost entirely of Muslims, and most of those readers and writers worked within the religious field. Therefore, it's hardly surprising that the majority of the Arabic literature of the amount 750 –1500 is religious or ancillary to the religious writings The 2 earliest known long prose works are the Qur'an interpretation (tafsir) by Muqatil ibn Sulayman al-Balkhi (died in 767) and, subsequently, the Prophet Muhammad's biography (sirah) by Muhammad ibn Ishaq (circa 704-circa 767). Several other almost as early Qur’an commentaries also exist, and lots of others are written right down to this, forming a serious category of Arabic literature. The earliest commentaries were followed a brief time later by the primary significant treatise on Muslim law, al-Muwatta’ by Malik ibn Anas (circa 712–795), which incorporates many traditions attributed to the Prophet Muhammad also as Malik’s own legal opinions. Subsequently, two major themes of Malik’s work became separate genres of Muslim religious literature, the primary being fiqh (legal prescriptions, discussions, and opinions) and therefore the second, hadiths (traditions attributed to the Prophet). Each of those earliest surviving works may be a sophisticated piece of writing that's obviously not the start of a replacement genre but rather at an already advanced stage within the development of its tradition. The huge catalogue of Arabic literature by Ibn al-Nadim (circa 936–995), al-Fihrist, lists thousands of early works that were subsequently lost.

Legal Writings.


Subsequent genre of early literature to be widely cultivated was, following Malik, the fiqh works, or the compendia of Muslim practice consistent with the Shari’ah legal schools. These works became exceedingly long and various within the ninth century and have continued in like manner ever since. Among the earliest products during this area are the multivolume sets attributed to Abu Yusuf (732–798), Abd al-Razzaq al-Sanani (744–827), Muhammad ibn Hasan al-Shaybani (750 –805), al-Shafi’i (767–820), and Sahnun (777–854), the last compiled from Malik’s teachings. Such writings— including legal literature, prophetic hadiths, and other traditions — are the longest works in Arabic written up to their day.

Later, still longer legal encyclopedias were published by al-Sarakhsi (died 1090), Ibn Rushd (1063–1126), al-Nawawi (1133–1177), and Ibn Qudamah (1147–1223) and hundreds of others, concentrating more on law than customs. Many shorter works were compiled and circulated, often having more influence than the longer ones, because the smaller ones were more often studied and memorized. An example of 1 of those short works is al-Risalah (The Treatise) by Ibn Abi Zayd al-Qayrawani (922–996), which was taken to America much later by enslaved African Muslims who had memorized it, a number of whom left partial manuscripts of its contents in Arabic. The massive law books are reference works that had an enormous impact on Muslim society by setting its standards intimately, and that they remain perhaps the simplest known embodiment of Islam, a sort of literature that has contributed to the unity of Muslim beliefs and practice across space and time.


Hadith Commentaries.

Thereafter, several long comments were published on most collections of hadiths. A number of these commentaries became well-known works of Muslim literature in their title, especially that of Ibn Hajar al-’Asqalani (1372–1449) on al-Bukhari which of al-Nawawi on Muslim. Also, many secondary compilations of the hadith were taken from the first collections, and a number of other of those works became quite influential. In response to “the Six Books” of the Sunnis, the Shi’is created a standard corpus of 4 collections that they recognize as authoritative.

Devotional Prose.


 Additionally to works within the categories of tafsir, fiqh, and hadith, an excellent body of devotional and argumentative religious literature arose. A number of this literature was written within the sort of esoteric tafsir and ascetic hadith compilations. But eventually this writing became a separate genre which will be broadly described as esoteric or Sufi literature, which became as vast as other religious genres. In its early phases this writing is related to al-Muhasibi (died 857), al-Junayd (died 910), and al-Qushayri (986–1072). Later, the teachings of Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani (1078–1166) became prominent and popular. Abd al-Qadir was a strict Hanbali legalist who emphasized the moral teachings of Islam also because the practice of the law. In his Hikam (Wise Sayings) Ibn ' Ata ' Allah (died 1309) is praised for the pietistic aphorisms. The more philosophical trend in Sufism is represented by the controversial Andalusian Muhyi al-Din Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1240), whose many writings include his esoteric encyclopedia of Sufi piety, al-Futuhat al-Makkiyyah (The Makkan Openings).

Philosophical Prose.


Devotional and esoteric literature often addressed philosophical issues also, and there also are many separate philosophical writings. The best-known Muslim philosophers include al-Kindi (circa 801 -circa 866), who first systematized a Muslim philosophy that borrows from the Greeks but is additionally trusted the Qur’an; al-Razi (circa 854–925 or 935), a well-known physician; al-Farabi (circa 870–950), who wrote a few quite Utopia; Ibn Sina’ (980–1037, known within the West as Avicenna), an excellent physician and Neoplatonist; al-Ghazali (1059–1111, known within the West as Algazel), the synthesizer of the Sunni tradition, and Ibn Rushd (1126 — 1198, known within the West as Averroes), an excellent defender of Aristotelianism.


Historiography.



Historical writing was also practiced by Muslims to help explain religious texts and perhaps guide rulers. The first writing of this kind was the biography of the prophet, followed by many historical narrative works, many in multivolume sets of encyclopedic duration, a body of work. The best-known Arabic narrative histories include those of the Qur’an commentator al-Tabari, covering the first three hundred years of Islam; al-Mas’udi (circa 890–956), who wrote extensively on non-Muslim peoples outside the khilafah; Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), a social analyst and philosopher of history; and al-Maqrizi (1364–1442), a great political, economic, and social historian of Egypt. Indeed, with regard to al-Maqrizi and his contemporaries, the fifteenth century has often been considered the high point of Muslim historiography in Egypt and Syria.


As with other medieval chronicles, Muslim historical narratives also concern rulers and capital cities. Thus, in general, they are political histories and do not concern themselves with peaceful religious developments, even when they are written by ulama’ (religious leaders) such as Ibn Kathir. Their purpose was mainly to provide the literate classes with historical information about the general course of Islam. Although the historical narratives were sometimes read to the rulers, they were often unfavorable to them, especially in describing the intrigues, scandals, and failures of past rulers with great frankness and detail. Muslim narrative histories also include much economic, social, and non-secular information. While medieval Muslim histories don't follow modern historical methodologies, they scrupulously document their sources, in many cases achieving a greater degree of such documentation than previous historians elsewhere. Another useful kind of Muslim history writing is local history centered on one city or province. Geography and Travel Writing. Another kind of literature useful to spiritual scholars and historians is geographical writing. Muslim geographers definitely surpassed all other ancient and medieval geographers in both the quantity and quality of their output. Geographical writings helped rulers, merchants, and non-secular scholars to know their world. The central location of the Muslims in proximity to Europe, Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, China, and Turkestan probably enhanced the worth of their work. Two of the most important Muslim geographers were al-Muqaddasi (born 947), who based his innovative description of the world on firsthand observations, and al-Biruni (973-at least 1050), a geographer and ethnographer, especially of India, which he visited. A related genre is that the travel narrative, of which there are several medieval Muslim examples. The best known is the account of the Moroccan Ibn Battuta (1304–1369), who dictated it in 1357. Ibn Battuta traveled longer and more widely than anyone before him, visiting China, India, Central Asia, East Africa, and West Africa, also as most of the central Muslim lands.



Adab.-

 Adab. Less purely religious than other types of prose, adab, or cultured prose poetry, attended to represent a public very different from tafsir, sirah, fiqh, or hadith.While it often included poetic quotations also, adab is essentially less-religious prose writing as contrasted with poetry. The audience for adab literature included rulers and government officials, as well as religious scholars, who greatly enjoyed relief from reading serious religious books. Also, most rulers, princes, and government officials received some religious training and read religious works and commentaries as a foundation of their education. Some, such as al-Mahdi Ibn Tumart (circa 1080–1130), the founder of the messianic al-Muwahhid movement, which established a dynasty in Morocco, had extensive religious training, qualifying them as scholars in their own right.



Generally, Islamic scholars usually wrote Adab literature. Like most Muslim poets but unlike writers of strictly religious works, adab writers attended have rulers as patrons. The first great Muslim writer of adab or cultured, literature is typically considered to be al-Jahiz (circa 776-869) of Basrah. Although al-Jahiz wrote treatises on many subjects, including religious and political topics, he is best known for his amusing essays and treatises, such as Kitab al-bukhala (The Book of Misers).Some of his writing appears to be taken from the works of Ibn al-Muqaffa’. Al-Jahiz had a substantial influence on the standards for courtly literature. Although his elaborate style is usually deemed most appropriate for the cultivated elite, he has remained popular among various.


Maqamat.

An important type of rhymed prose (saj ') (is that of the maqamat (assemblies, or occasional speeches; singular: maqamati), fictional stories told by an author in the first person. as if he were narrating them from their source, who is typically an eloquent vagabond—and sometimes a scoundrel and swindler also . Contrasting a highly classical Arabic with plotlines about disreputable members of society and their tricks, maqamat are highly amusing and must have appealed to both the elite and the merchant class. The concept of the polished vagabond is a commonplace in the literature that extends back to the story called “The Eloquent Peasant” in ancient Egypt circa 2000 B.C.E. Maqamat writers often wove into their stories much subtle but sharp social commentary and criticism. This genre was originally established by the Iranian Ahmad Badi al-Zaman al-Hamadhani (968–1008) as a story related by a narrator a few disreputable but eloquent person.



As its medium, Al-Hamadhani adopted rhymed prose, creating a humorous and bouncy effect, endowing the writing with a special verve.Al-Hamadhani was said to possess produced four hundred maqamat, but only fifty-two are known. The form was further popularized by al-Hariri (1054–1122) of Basrah, who heightened the effect of his stories by employing a loftier vocabulary than al-Hariri. Al-Hariri’s maqamat enjoyed great popularity in his own lifetime and is still read, studied, and celebrated. Writers still employ the maqamat genre, especially once they want to interact in sly or sarcastic social criticism. In fact, no century after al-Hariri has lacked authors working in this genre.
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