Two ideas came together in the project for a Cambridge History of Southeast Asia. One was the concept of the Cambridge Histories themselves. The other was the possibility of a new approach to the history of Southeast Asia.

In the English-speaking and English-reading world the Cambridge Histories have, since the beginning of the century, set high standards in collaborative scholarship and provided a model for multi-volume works of history. The original Cambridge Modern History appeared in sixteen volumes between 1902 and 1912, and was followed by the Cambridge Ancient History, the Cambridge Medieval History, the Cambridge History of India and others.

A new generation of projects continues and builds on this foundation. Recently completed are the Cambridge Histories of Africa and Latin America. Cambridge Histories of China and of Japan are in progress, as well as the New Cambridge History of India. Though the pattern and the size have varied, the essential feature, multi-authorship, has remained.

The initial focus was European, but albeit in an approach that initially savoured rather of the old Cambridge Tripos course ‘The Expansion of Europe’, it moved more out of the European sphere than the often brilliant one-author Oxford histories. But it left a gap which that course did not leave, the history of Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia has long been seen as a whole, though other terms have been used for it. The title Southeast Asia, becoming current during World War II, has been accepted as recognizing the unity of the region, while not prejudging the nature of that unity.

THE BACKGROUND

The Nahḍah

Compared with earlier periods of Arabic literature the Modern period, often referred to in Arabic as al-Nahḍah (= renaissance), requires an approach that is at once simpler and more complicated. While Classical Arabic literature can safely be regarded as fundamentally a continuum, Modern literature constitutes in certain important respects an entirely new departure, even though its break with the Classical has sometimes been exaggerated, for despite its borrowing of European forms such as drama and the novel, Modern literature never really completely severed its link with its past. The Nahḍah was in fact a product of a fruitful meeting of two forces: the indigenous tradition, and the imported western forms. Moreover, the change from the past was an extremely slow and gradual process. However, because of the profound influence exercised by western literature on the Nahḍah, it seems more natural to divide its treatment into chapters on poetry, the novel, short story, drama and literary criticism, much as one might do in a traditional survey of a western literature. But it would be wrong to be blind to the continuities in Arabic literature, Classical and Modern: continuities that have determined the manner of the Arabs' apprehension and hence adaptation of the imported genres.

INTRODUCTION

In modern Arabic literature the close interaction between literature and socio-political issues makes it difficult to isolate one from the other. The importance of the socio-cultural dimension is particularly relevant in dealing with narrative forms, because narrative mediates human experience and derives its significance from probing it. This chapter describes briefly the context necessary for an understanding of the modern Arabic short story throughout the various stages of its development, and also outlines the history of the genre itself and the development of its formal and thematic elements. As is shown in the most comprehensive survey of the genre, published in The Kenyon Review (vols 30–32, 1968–70), the short story has been marginalized in most advanced western cultures. In the Arab world, however, as in other developing and semi-developed countries such as India, South Africa and Yugoslavia, for various reasons the short story has emerged as the most popular and arguably the most significant literary medium.

In Arabic literature, while one can trace its descent from other traditional forms of narrative going back to the Arabian Nights, the short story in the modern sense of the term is a new literary genre that developed in the last few decades of the nineteenth century and reached maturity only in the early decades of this century.

It is not accidental that the rise of Romantic poetry coincided with a period of convulsive change which was to shape the lives of many Arab countries for most of the twentieth century. As a result of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire, which had been the most successful political system in the history of Islam, no longer existed. What had been the Arab provinces of the Empire in Egypt and the Levant became new nation-states in the course of the 1920s. In spite of these new political forms, Anglo-French domination of the Nile Valley and the Levant remained very much in place, as in 1922 the League of Nations approved the mandate system for Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine with Transjordan. Although both Egypt and Iraq were declared sovereign independent states, these new versions of national independence were harshly circumscribed by the continuing reality of European power, while in North Africa the French colonial system had a depressingly permanent air. Yet in spite of all these deceptions these were heady days in Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. The final downfall of the Ottoman system gave great new impetus to the forces of Arab nationalism, which had to some extent been held in check during the war years, and the appearance of these new national political forms was accompanied by waves of strong, sincere emotions on the part of Arab populations and their leaders.

The lively presence of Arabic dialect poetry in the eighth to the fourteenth centuries is remarked upon by Ibn Khaldūn. Criticizing the grammarians' rejection of colloquial poetry, he notes that it has its own rules and eloquence, rooted in each dialect's milieu. Eloquence, he states, has nothing to do with grammatical rules, but is ‘the suitability of the utterance to the meaning desired and the demands of the situation.’

DEFINITIONS

Today, vernacular Arabic is chosen by poets who feel that what they want to express, and the milieu in which they practise their art, demand an idiom based on everyday speech. Drawing upon a heritage of local oral folk traditions and an elite colloquial poetry originating in medieval Andalusia, this poetry is often labelled al-shiʿr al-shaʿbī (folk or popular poetry), or zajal, as colloquial Andalusian strophic verse was called, attesting to these links. Other terms define it by what it ‘lacks’, echoing attitudes that Ibn Khaldūn attacked: in the Maghrib, it is known as al-shiʿr al-malḥūn (from laḥn, that is, not adhering to fuṣḥā grammar) and, in the Arabian peninsula, as al-shiʿr al-nabaṭī (Nabatean, thus ‘non-Arab’). While contemporary poets refer to it as shiʿr al-ʿāmmiyyah (poetry of the colloquial), negative connotations remain: ʿāmmī means not only ‘colloquial’ but also ‘common’ or ‘vulgar’.

The beginnings of a fictional tradition in modern Arabic literature are part of the wider process of revival and cultural assimilation known in Arabic as al-Nahḍah. This process involved a creative fusion of two separate forces. One is the rediscovery of the treasures of the Arabic literary heritage and the emergence therefrom of a ‘neo-classical’ movement. The other is the translation of works of European fiction into Arabic, their adaptation and imitation, and the eventual appearance of an indigenous tradition of modern Arabic fiction. Not surprisingly, these two tendencies find themselves pitted against each other during the initial phases of development under the rubrics of ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’.

In the case of fiction, such a ‘revival’ involved the investigation of the earlier tradition of Arabic prose in quest of precedents and models. To a western audience which has come to regard The one thousand and one nights as a great repository of tales, it may seem surprising that, in the process of reexamining the genres of prose writing, there was little recourse to this great collection; it was regarded as a repository of ‘popular’ culture and thus not part of the repertoire under consideration. However, a prose genre which had flourished within the thoroughly rhetoricized tradition of criticism during the preceding centuries was the maqāmah, the initiation of which is attributed to Badīʿ al-zamān al-Hamadhānī (969–1008).

By the eighteenth century, Arab literary criticism had been reduced to blanket judgements, usually unsupported, on the literary qualities of men of learning who earned a place in biographical dictionaries, and to ever more elaborate treatises on rhetoric, especially on that branch of it known as badīʿ, which concerned itself mostly with tropes that exploit not imagery but the forms of words. In prose and poetry alike, it was the ability to juggle with words that was most highly prized.

The challenge set by European powers, first to the Ottomans in the Balkans then more directly through the Bonaparte expedition to Egypt in 1798, was soon to lead to changes that were initially designed to strengthen the armed forces, but that inevitably went on to affect administrative, educational and economic practices in one Arab country after another. Not surprisingly, it was the material benefits of western technology that were most readily accepted – Egypt had a railway line as early as 1854 – whereas an appreciation of its intellectual underpinnings came later, and of European aesthetic perceptions later still.

INITIAL CONSERVATISM

Of the first Arabs to be directly exposed to European life, Rifāʿah Rāfiʿ al-Ṭahṭāwī (1801–73) readily opened his gigantic intellect to new ideas without surrendering his independence of judgement.

The Arab literary establishment of the period immediately preceding the nineteenth century had reached such stability in social status, such homogeneity in education and such unanimity in cultural values that it was no longer searching for innovative ideas, and of its men of letters – poets and prose writers alike – it expected not originality but consummate skill in the use of words. The prose that it favoured was not only rhymed, but laden with tropes, especially those developed in the branch of rhetoric known as badīʿ, which concerns itself not so much with imagery as with verbal artifices (such as the paronomasia, the double entendre, and the palindrome) of which by then over 150 varieties had been devised.

INHERITED PRIORITIES

An indication of the priorities of the period is that one of the most celebrated prose writers whose activities extended into the modern period, Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (c. 1766–1834 or 1838), devoted some of his energies to a book of inshāʾ which he described as ‘divided into two sections: the drafting of contracts and title-deeds, and the composition of letters and communications exchanged between common people and kings. With these two arts is the ordering of the world effected, for they form one of the wings of kingship, the other being its sword.’

THE EMERGENCE OF THE NOVEL: POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CONCERNS

My survey of the earliest stages in the development of the modern Arabic novel in the preceding chapter concluded with a brief discussion of Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal's novel, Zaynab. While this novel was much concerned, like many other examples of its own and earlier times, with romance, Haykal placed a set of Egyptian characters firmly into the present and proceeded to use them in a discussion of a societal problem which was of great interest to himself and to many other Egyptian intellectuals, namely the role of women in society. In the decades that have followed the publication of Zaynab, at the hands of some writers the novel continues its functions as both entertainer and educator. Novels of romance, designed to divert, continue to appear and have more recently provided ready material for both television and film. The tradition of the historical novel has also continued, particularly under the impetus of a growing sense of national pride fostered by Arab Nationalism but, in more recent times, the attention of novelists has tended to be more devoted to the events of the recent past and the lessons to be gleaned from them.

Arab poetic modernity resulted from two major forces: the influence of the western modernist movement and of the other major experiments that preceded or accompanied it, and the state of Arabic poetry itself at the midpoint of the twentieth century, which responded to intrinsic needs for a change towards a more ‘modern’ apprehension of experience, aesthetic and otherwise. Major poetic change in any language is never wholly a matter of intention; neither the result of sheer conscious adoption, nor the following of fashion. The success of a major poetic change in any direction, no matter how drastic, proves not simply that genius and cogent talents lie behind it, but also the important fact that poetry at the time was, if not absolutely and specifically in need of the kind of change in question, at least potentially receptive to it. The second of these factors, the intrinsic need for change, will be in evidence throughout this essay. However, the first factor, the influence of western modernism on the Arab movement, needs more explicit consideration before we continue further.

There is a clear ambiguity in Arab writings between ‘modern’ and ‘modernism’, which is a term applied to a specific movement in art and literature in the west.

By the 1930s the theatre had become firmly rooted in the Egyptian soil: seeds sown in the previous decades now began to shoot up and bear some fruit. Egyptian theatregoers were getting used to the presence of good actors and actresses, particularly the talented Jūrj Abyaḍ who had received a proper training in Paris. They were also introduced to the concepts of a director (ʿAzīz ʿĪd), a theatre-manager and producer (Yūsuf Wahbī), and a highly disciplined company (Ramsīs, founded in 1923). A national company was formed under government auspices (1935), was given financial support and placed under the joint management of a poet with wide and varied cultural interests, Khalīl Muṭrān, and some of the most prominent men of letters of the day, including Ṭāhā Ḥusayn. No less important was the emergence of a gifted playwright who dedicated his best abilities to dramatic writing and who was soon to become, by dint of hard work and continuous presence on the scene, Egypt's national dramatist, Tawfīq al-Ḥakīm. The forties brought with them further consolidation. The High Institute of Drama, which had been forced to close down after a brief appearance in 1931, was reopened in 1944, headed by the properly trained Zakī Ṭulaymāt.

Even twenty years ago the Arabic novel was regarded as practically synonymous with the Egyptian novel. Since then the novel has acquired an established place in the literary production of most, if not all, Arab countries, as is described elsewhere in this volume. Yet the Egyptian novel still deserves a place apart in a survey of modern Arabic literature because of the number of works of quality written in Egypt, while the relatively longer history of the genre there enables its different stages of development to be distinguished and studied more easily than is the case in countries where it has had a life of only two or three decades. It is a far cry from Haykal's Zaynab to Idwār al-Kharrāṭ's al-Zaman al-ākhar, but thanks to the abundance of material it is possible to explain, at least in some measure, the relationship between the restrained and rather conventional grandmother and her adventurous and unbridled grandchild.

PIONEERS

When Muḥammad Ḥusayn Haykal published his novel Zaynab in 1913 he had some models to follow. Apart from the translations and adaptations of European fiction other examples from which he could learn included Zaydān's historical novels, Ṣarrūf's novels of social concern, al-Manfalūṭī's sentimental fiction and al-Muwayliḥī's Ḥadīth ʿĪsā b. Hishām with its combination of classical form and modern subject matter.

INTRODUCTION

The emergence of Neo-classical poetry in modern Arabic literature in the nineteenth century was not the outcome of the sudden incursion of a new literary model upon the established system of literature. Neither was it the product of a literary grouping around an innovative poet (or group of poets) endowed with revolutionary zeal. Quite the contrary. Its development was quiet, involving no visible upheavals. The main trend of this school (if school it was) was to go back to an old, venerable model, and to relive the glorious experience of ancient poets. The model is, of course, that of medieval Arabic poetry at its peak, as represented by the spirited bards of the Jāhilī (Pre-Islamic) and early Islamic periods and, more emphatically, by the great urbane poets of the heyday of Abbasid creativity: al-Mutanabbī, al-Buḥturī, Abū Tammām, Abū 'l-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarrī and al-Sharīf al-Raḍiyy.

In point of fact, modern neo-classical poetry does not constitute a phase of literature that can be sharply separated from its immediate ancestry. Arab poets, writing in traditional fashions, never ceased operating in the Arabic-speaking regions. Even in the darkest of times, for example between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries, the production of poetry in fuṣḥā (= literary Arabic) and according to the traditional metres continued.

WRITING IN THE WILDERNESS

To assess Arab women's writings in the twentieth century, we must go back to the latter half of the nineteenth. The late 1880s were a time of turmoil in Egypt, the contemporary cultural heartland of the Arab world. There was a climate of openness and acceptance of the new. Egypt was attracting Arab intellectuals – including women like the Lebanese Zaynab Fawwāz (1850–1914) in 1870, Wardah al-Yāzijī (1838–1924) in 1899 and the Palestinian-Lebanese Mayy Ziyādah (1886–1941) in 1908 – who could not find such intellectual freedom at home. Many of these immigrants became journalists, thus overcoming their outsider status and becoming intellectually integrated into their new society. Persistent contact with Europe throughout the nineteenth century was beginning to have a profound effect in Egypt. The values and philosophies of this alien culture were being absorbed and slowly transformed into indigenous commodities. The novel and the short story became for the Egyptians, as for their European counterparts, forays into reality. Writers, using these genres, could begin to create themselves as subjects within their transforming social context.

Women, too, were beginning to write. Contrary to what is generally believed, there were some women in the nineteenth century who were educated and could write.