Mideast Youth » Duniazad (Libya)

Shakespeare in Arabia

Duniazad (Libya) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:13:31 +0000

Although Arabs generally see the theatre as a recent import from Europe, different forms of performing arts, such as shadow plays, Sufi and Shia miracle plays, and the oral performances of poetry reciters and storytellers, have a long history in the region. Acting troupes also entertained aristocrats in their palaces, travelling merchants in khans, and competed with other street performers for the attention of shoppers and passers-by in the maidan.

While such traditions seem comparable to the earlier forms of European dramatic art from which the theatre evolved, a few play scripts have recently been discovered, suggesting an Arab theatrical tradition comparable to the Chinese or Indian for example.

However, as with music, Arabs made no real attempt to preserve a fixed record. In the case of music this was because improvisation was seen as essential, which might also be the case for drama. But, while both music and performance arts survive in the folkloric tradition, the native theatrical heritage does not have an equivalent to the ‘high’ status form of classical Arab music. Historical records provide the life story of the legendary Zeriab, who brought the music of Baghdad and Damascus to the Andalusian court; but no mention is made of playwrights, which indicates that dramatic performance were seen as mere amusement.

The Arab world only began to consider drama as ‘art’ after the introduction of works by European playwrights, of whom Shakespeare was the foremost, the ‘canon of canons’, as Khalid Amine puts it.

Amine goes on to argue that the “making of the Shakespeare myth” in the Arab world was not spontaneous, but “was induced through the implantation of a whole apparatus of translation and theatrical reproduction” following an unequal colonial encounter.

After independence, Amine says, “Shakespeare becomes a paradigmatic icon of the ‘Western Other’ or the Other’s dramatic medium”, so that artistic engagement with his work by the postcolonial dramatist “amounts to a dialogue with the West and the Western dramatic tradition”.

The Nigerian Wole Soyinka has another take on the relationship of the Arab cultural establishment to Shakespeare. In his essay “Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist” he surveys Arab appropriations which seek to “claim him as one of their own”, and disparages Arab “translations and adaptations” of his work. However he ends by concluding that this still leads back to the immortal source, “to the gratification of celebrating dramatic poetry anew”, which reverses the earlier power dynamic that presents the English genius as the object of inept manipulation, and seems a positive spin on the process Khalid Amine describes.

Margo Hendrix argues that Soyinka’s essay anticipates two related points later raised by postcolonial theorists: recognising that importing the Shakespearian canon requires the absorption of culturally alien elements; but also the fact that the plays contain so much foreign material (settings, characters, topics, or just the odd reference –like Lady Macbeth’s “All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand”). The plays themselves are in a sense internationalised in their own right, as texts and not just in terms of appreciation.

Shakespeare’s fascination with the unknown and unfamiliar was a feature of the theatre during the Western ‘age of exploration’ (or exploitation for those on the receiving end); but what sets him apart is his complex treatment of ‘the other’.

Shakespeare’s play Othello, in it’s exploration of paradoxes and inconsistencies, is frequently cited to as the most striking example of this complex treatment . The title character being a North African commanding Christian European forces against an invasion by the expanding (European Muslim) Ottoman Empire, and the hatred, or at best ambivalence, with which he is regarded by the Italians whom he ‘defends’, have been linked to similar paradoxes and inconsistencies in Shakespeare’s Britain.

Although ‘Turk’ and ‘Moor’ were words that inspired fear and loathing, Queen Elizabeth I had alliances with both the Ottoman Sultan and North African states against her Catholic rivals. Mark Hutchings discusses the fearful fascination with the ‘Turkish Threat’ in English plays of the time, arguing that by drawing on memories of the fall of Constantinople and “perhaps an older ‘crusader’ narrative”, plays provided a safe thrill for an English audience who, as opposed to most of Europe, were not in reality threatened. The Turks were essentially the Godzillas and King Kongs of Elizabethan cinema. Nabil Matar’s book Turks, Moors and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery details extensive commercial relations and cultural exchange, including the fact that it was much more likely, and profitable, for an English adventurer to move to North Africa than North America.

Khalid Amine, in “Moroccan Shakespeare: From Moors to Moroccans”, charts the development of a range of responses to Othello specifically and the Shakespearian canon more generally, from “celebrations of Moroccan presence in the English Consciousness”, to more radical rewritings of Shakespeare’s plays.

Such subversive strategies are present in the titles of Abdelkrim Berrchid’s two plays. Otheil Wa Alkhail Wa Al Barudu re-arabises the Othellos name, and to anyone familiar with Arab poetry echoes a line by Almutanabi, while Imri’u Alqais Fi Paris replaces Hamlet with the pre-Islamic poet who faces a similar “to be or not to be” predicament in a destructively futile revenge tragedy.

Sulayman Al-Bassam, the British-Kuwaiti writer and director of ‘the Hamlet Summit’ and ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’, presents his project of adapting Shakespeare’s plays to the politics of the modern Arab world in exactly the opposite way.

He insists on the “aura of authority”, or what he calls “the global accreditation”, with which Shakespeare is invested; seeing it in positive terms as giving the Arab dramatist “not merely a mask but a bullet-proof face” with which to face the censors.

More problematic is Al-Bassam’s assertion that “A fundamental pre-modernity is at the core of both the Shakespearian world and today’s Arab world”, which sounds like something straight out of The Collected Orientalist Stereotypes. His adaptations engage with the original context in a much more complicated and productive way.

But this point is made in even broader terms by reviews of his plays, which inanely and repetitively begin by saying that Arab world’s woes cry out for Shakespearian treatment, and back it up by noting one thousand and one parallels with England emerging from the Middle Ages.

Perhaps the best commentary on such reductive simplification of a postmodern and postcolonial situation to stereotypes of towel-heads in the dark ages is the fact that ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’, part of the RSC’s Complete Works Festival, was on at the same time as another Richard III adaptation – set in modern Britain.

The director of this Richard III, Michael Boyd, sees both his and Al-Bassam’s plays as dealing with “the tendency, very difficult to resist, of pulling more power where power was in the first place, of increasing the centralization of power”, and draws his own parallels, the totalitarian behaviour of democratic governments in the context of the war on terror, citing the manipulation of information to create and use “fear as a political weapon, fear as a means of censorship, a means of mobilization, a means of justifying arrest”.

This is the same ‘war on terror’ which in ‘Richard III: An Arab Tragedy’ is used as a pretext for tyranny and occupation, setting up an equivalence between the invading American general and the Arab Dictator. The French adviser to the Emir boasts that he “can make a mockery of the judiciary; thread an axis of evil through the eye of the press; I can turn a democracy into a tyranny and keep it all as clean and transparent as a Security Council resolution”.

What the two Arab re-makers of Shakespeare, the Morrocan Berrchid and the Kuwaiti Al-Bassam, have in common is their mixing of Arab and Western forms of performance in their theatrical art. In Berrchid’s case, as in that of many Arab dramatists, this includes a conscious decision to incorporate native dramatic traditions, such as the Albsat tradition of improvised comedy with a political message. Al-Bassam’s Arabian-Shakespearian tragedy contains recitals from the Holy Quran and folkloric dance and music, as well as email messages, phone conversations, Aljazeera newscasts and a religious TV show. They both create a mixed form which mirrors their content, a hybridized product of Arabia and Europe, East and West.

published in the Tripoli Post

Shahrazad Goes Live

Duniazad (Libya) — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 16:45:51 +0000

I don’t always agree with Fatima Mernissi, but she does have the most fantastically bizarre and yet wondefully commensensical ideas. In ‘The Satellite, The Prince and Sheherazade’, she explores “the empowerment dynamics of satellite broadcasting” and “Arab audiences’ fascination with strong female hosts and war reporters”. These women, who have become household names across the Arab world, fit the “Sheherazade profile, the brainy, self-confident storyteller”:

Promoting strong female stars has proven to be a fantastic asset for the Saudis’ most threatening TV rival. Al Jazeera is winning crowds every night through the eloquence of its news anchors, Jumana Nammour and Kaduja Bin Guna, and economics expert Farah al-Baraqaui. While state televisions and oil-funded channels traditionally limited their staff by censoring them and denying them the right to decide freely about their program content and what guests to invite, Al Jazeera’s success is due precisely to the freedom its programmers and speakers enjoy, which allows them to become credible communicators.”

Channels that want to be viable are required to rely much more heavily on high-impact ‘brands’ and product lines. Al Jazeera demonstrated the worth of such assets when it developed a range of programs whose titles and presenters have become household names inside and outside the Arab world,” explains Naomi Sakhr, the author of Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalization and the Middle East.

The most famous reporters in the Middle East today are probably the Palestine-based Al Jazeera reporters, Shirin Abu ‘Aqla and Jivara al-Badri, who are admired for their courage and professionalism. “History will remember that day when there was no one to speak up in the entire Arab nation, from the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf, but women such as Shirin Abu ‘Aqla and Jivara al Badri and Leila Aouda,” comments Ali Aziz, the columnist of the avant-garde Egyptian magazine ‘Critiques’ (An-Nuqqad), “while male leaders and gallon-wearing generals have disappeared from our sight and hearing.”

…but what are ’gallon wearing generals” ???

Leonardo's mother: an Arab slave?

Duniazad (Libya) — Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:23:02 +0000

The Arabist has this from Discovery:

Da Vinci Fingerprint Reveals Arab Heritage?
Rossella Lorenzi, Discovery News

Oct. 28, 2006 — Leonardo da Vinci may have had an Arab heritage, according to Italian researchers who have isolated and reconstructed the Renaissance master’s fingerprint.
The fingerprint represents the only biological trace of the Florentine genius, said Luigi Capasso, an anthropologist at Chieti University…Fingerprints are unique and don’t change over a lifetime. Analysis of the skin’s arches, loops and whorls — a science known as dermatoglyphics — has shown that there is a link between fingerprints and populations. In the case of Leonardo’s fingertip, patterns and ridges pointed to the Middle East, the researchers concluded.
“The fingerprint features patterns such as the central whorl that are dominant in the Middle East. About 60 percent of the Middle Eastern population display the same dermatoglyphic structure found in the fingerprint,” Capasso said. The discovery would support Vezzosi’s claim that Leonardo’s mother was not a local peasant girl as previously thought, but a Middle Eastern slave. According to Vezzosi, records unearthed in Vinci offer substantial evidence that Leonardo’s father, a craftsman called Ser Piero Da Vinci, owned a Middle-Eastern female slave named Caterina.
“It was common in 15th century Tuscany to own slaves from the Middle East,” said Vezzosi.
Indeed, in 1452, the same year of Leonardo’s birth, a law was passed in Florence that gave slave owners greater rights over their slaves. Shortly after the law was passed, Ser Piero married Caterina off to one of his workers.
The woman had just given birth to a boy called Leonardo.

Sandcomics-Arab cartoons and national identity

Duniazad (Libya) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:25:12 +0000

This advert has been running on all UAE channels for a while, and what with the repetition and the cool graphics, I felt compelled to go check out the website it advertised.

Turns out there is a new bilingual Emarati comic that will be distributed both in printed form, at an as yet unspecified price, and in an online edition will provide a downloadable page every day.

The idea, in the words of Ahmad Almansuri, is that it should “promote national identity and show the traditions of this Gulf state to visitors ”

I find the whole concept of ‘native pride’ a bit iffy, and as for Sandman as the incarnation of the spirit of the past …as Asia said “DAMMIT! muslims PLEASE be original “.

The artwork is actually very good, but not up to the standards of the TV trailer. And the super hero Ajaaj doesn’t seem to have been fully developed – what can you say to this cringeworthiness for example:

Then there’s the name.

3asifa ramliya (Sandstorm) not being very catchy, they came up with Ajaaj. Which has a sort of nice ring to it…only instead of conjuring up some primeval force bearing the ‘values of the desert’ into a futuristic city, it is – to me at least- synonymous with those ‘ayam 3ajaj‘ when you’re cooped up at home, with nothing to do but think about whether to dust or not to dust.

So overall it was a bit disappointing. I was expecting something like the Khaleeji cartoons last Ramadan, the Saudi and Emarati ones were pretty awesome.

Almost every national Arab channel has a short let’s-make-fun-of-ourselves cartoon during the fasting month, usually aired around if6ar time, for a local audience.

Highlander has blogged about our own 7aj 7mad, the great dissector of Libyan mores, who desperately needs a make-over as her photo makes clear.

Last year the Saudi’s aired Yaumiat Mna7i on their pan-Arab mbc – it dealt with topics from youth unemployment to Iraq. Sort of like 6ash ma 6ash but more understandable , so it was the content rather than the technical presentation that mattered.

It was the Emarati Fareej however, broadcast on Dubai, that broke the usual format of a well-meaning male fool as the central figure and representative of the ‘national character’.

Instead there were four older Emarati women of varying ethnic and social backgrounds, personalities, and I.Q levels. It was visually visionary too, being the first Arab 3-D animation.

Arabian Manga(stan) – Arab comics and Islamic 'culture'

Duniazad (Libya) — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 07:07:32 +0000

Nathaniel Naddaf-Hafrey wonders: Can Comics Change the Arab World?

“I went back to my Arab heritage to draw from its design calligraphy, myths and legends, I tried to incorporate them all into the character. Manga usually features Japanese culture, and I wanted to introduce some Arabian mysticism to the market.”

Asia Alfasi has taken part in (and won) local and international competitions, landed a contract with Harry Potter’s publishers, and is being celebrated as a “cool muslim” icon.

Apparently she was the the first female participant on Hi8us competition, which I thought was interesting.

Jazeera had a Japan season quite a while back, and one of Fadi Salama’s reports was about the predominance of female manga artists, despite the ‘machismo‘ of much of what they produced…

Anyway, Asia’s achievements are just WONDERFUL, especially in light of her being a Libyan @_@

BUT (being nitpicking me) I’ve got… issues with cartoons based on Islamic ‘culture’

This petty-peeve is actually about a completely different person, a Kuwaiti guy who created the 99 and recently featured on Witness. First off he did the whole revolutionary “first comic based on Islamic culture” thing, which is simply untrue.

My experience would confirm the Fulla-hype for example, in that none of my cousins whine for a Barbie doll/bag/skipping rope – in fact I haven’t heard anyone mention Barbie at all since the alternative hit the shelves…and the satellite channels.

But the 99 is more of an addition. It competes with Western imports like Majalit Mickey, and with 3ala’idin and Samir and the gazillion other Arabic comics I grew up reading in the 90s.

So basically the documentary gave me the impression (rightly or wrongly) that this Naif Al-Mutawa person was self importance on steroids personified. Also obnoxious was the way he kept re-repeating the “comic based on Islamic culture which is NOTHING to do with religion” line, like he was afraid of being shoved into some CIA dungeon unless he transformed his dark materials into something as palatable as Tan’s sugar-sister-hooded Chinatown.

About the characters:”there’s nothing fundamentally Islamic or non-Islamic about them”

Asked about a muhajaba he says “well is that Islamic, or is that just part of being human?” (yep, he actually used those words) “nuns dress like that, and some orthodox Jews cover their hair or wear wigs ”

Which is true, but doesn’t alter the fact that the character is a muslim girl wearing a hijab. And that shouldn’t be too bitter a pill to swallow unless sugar coated.

Except if your from the Planet of the Chimps, whose comments on Mangastanis include:

Invocations to the Spartan 300:

There is nothing like the spectacle of defenders of Western Civilization slaughtering tyrannical Persian invaders…

And various ever-so-original suggestions for FUNdamental characters, prefaced by the observation that it was “Sad how these kids are brought up as if terrorist were heroes”

More puzzling was this complaint:

Once again, proof positive that Muslims are completely incapable of original thought or idea. They copy EVERYTHING from the culture that they so despise, sprinkle large helpings of Islam all over it…

Bush’s endless WWII and Cold War analogies had left me with the distinct impression that we were supposed to copy-cat…

Somebody had a somewhat similar reaction:

I actually like this idea. Assuming these Superheroes are really “Good” guys and fairly Western, and aren’t like roaming the globe, forcing conversions to Islam, beating women, and cutting off infidel’s heads, killing Jews, then I think it would be good role models for muslim youth. It would give them something to look up to, and perhaps keep them out of the madrasas… maybe.. well, one can hope..

Despite the long string of ifs and buts, and the implications of “really ‘Good’ guys and fairly Western”, in it’s contextI suppose the above exemplifies tolerance, multiculturalism and all that zift.

AT A LATER DATE: closer inspection reveals the ABC article they’re commenting on (which managed to get the “intricate backstory”wrong) mentions a FATWA!!! Make way for Sir Naif Al-Mutawa…

Ressurecting the past, or retrieving lost knowledge?

Duniazad (Libya) — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 17:53:25 +0000

Reorganising my dad’s I came across this arresting title, Alfiya mukarrara fi al-amrath al-nafsiya almu3tabara( ‘the thousand’ Alfiya repeated on important psychological illnesses) a book-length poem which combines the many talents of Dr. Salim 3amar: the first professor of Psychology in the newly independent Tunisia’s national university, he has published over 300 research papers and won a prize for his book on schizophrenia; but his interests are not limited to the strictly scientific – he is a prominent member of the International Society for the History of Medicine, has written extensively on Arab and Islamic Medicine, and has a passion for poetry.

As the introduction, by a former Tunisian culture minister states, ” is there anything stranger than the case of this ‘Alfiya’ which appears even in it’s name to be a rare example of an attachment to heritage and a desire to revitalise it with the spirit that created it in the past”?

Indeed a modern Arab book with a rhyming title in the medieval fashion is a novelty in itself, but this one is also more specifically placing itself in relation to Ibn Sina’s Alarjuza Fi Al-6ib ( alarjuza – from rajz, one of the seas of poetry- on medicine; often called the Alfiya because it has 1000 odd lines). In fact Dr. Salim 3amar proclaims his poem an Alfiya Mukarrara, as it has 3500 lines.

Writing a poem, even if not great in the aesthetic sense and regardless of the topic, of such length is an achievement; and as this one conveys detailed information on psychology for a lay audience in an uncomplicated way it is is a doubly impressive one…but I wonder if it is worth the effort?

Ibn Sina and his contemporaries had their reasons for writing in poetry. his Alfiya for example was a summary of his massive Al-Qanun Fi Al-6ib, which “the chief Sheikh”, as Musa ibn Ibrahim calls him, knew could not be grasped in it’s entirety. He therefore created a sort of aide-memoire to the essentials, an arjuza “easy to remember and [whose rhythm] energises the spirit” as Ibn Rushd says, which he required all his students to know off by heart before they could join his study circles.

However there seems to be no reason why a book on psychology printed in 1992 should be a poem, and the limitation of the rhythm must have adversely affected Dr. Salim 3amar’s treatment of his material, and is offset by no positive practical purpose.

The book seems to ‘degenerate’ into a mere curio, even in the fulsome praise of the minister of culture who ends by declaring “this Alfiya is thus given a unique character, and becomes a wondrous treasure [tuhfa 3ajiba]…so the reader should enjoy it’s manner as well as it’s matter, as every person of taste enjoys everything that is rare and precious”.

Printed on glossy paper with patterned borders, the two column layout of traditional arabic poetry reinforces the ‘gimmicky’ effect of the rhymed chapter and subtitles, the cover illustration from a medival manuscript, and the title which echoes the descriptive rhyme of the inumerable Alfiyat across the centuries on everything from grammar to theology.

In short, Dr. Salim 3amar’s Alfiya mukarrara fi al-amrath al-nafsiya almu3tabara ends up being just the sort of book people only buy as gifts, ending up looking good and gathering dust on a shelf.

A different approach is taken Dr. Sami Mahmoud, who supervised a recent edition of Tadhkirat Uli Al-albab wa Al-jame3 li Al-3ajab Al-3ujab (The memorandum for the intelligent, and the compendium of the wondrously strange) by Dawud ibn 3amr Alan6aki, and says he found his original intention to publish a full or even abridged version impractical.

Instead of seeking to slavishly duplicate what was produced to fulfil the needs of a different era, Dr. Mahmoud used the Tadhkira as a basis for a book he calls Tadhkirat Dawud Lil-3ilaj Bil A3shab wa Al-wasa2il Al-6abe3ia (Dawud’s memorandum on on herbal and natural treatments), the title says it all really- no rhyme, and he uses the phraseology natural to him as the writer of an earlier best-selling book on herbal medicine. Unlike Dr. Salim 3amar he sees no need to twist his expertise into an unatural form to revive the past, instead he goes back to it to take what is useful in a contemporary context.

The original Tadhkira is a massive three volume book – the first volume gives the properties of over 3000 medicinal plants and herbs arranged in alphabetical order, the other two deal with the diagnosis and treatment of alphabetically arranged illnesses and diseases; but it also contains detailed sections on topics such as veterinary science, farming and geography. The language is difficult, and at times obscure, and as the publisher says in his introduction, some of the elements required for the compounds are almost impossible to obtain, and others are unkown even to an expert.

This edition edits content and language, and after each entry on a plant or illness from the Tadhkirah adds the explanation in terms of modern science. As an active researcher in the field of herbal medicine, Dr Mahmoud provides additional uses for plants and treatments for diseases from other medieval texts, and from folk remedies.

Such an approach is actually much more in line with that of doctors and 3ulama like Ibn Sina and Dawud ibn 3amr, the latter says in a quote which serves as an epigraph to Dr. Sami Mahmoud’s book

“We have chosen medicines that are easily available and inexpensive, to comply with the needs of the seeker, who if he agrees accepts, and if so his acceptance is an honour, and if not let him cover what faults he sees with the tail of forgiveness, for it is the ever-blessed (God) who is free from all deficiency and mistakes…and let my prize for this [work] be a prayer from him; God is the one who guides us to the right, and to him is the return and in his hands my fate, there is no power but God the high and great, he is the one I depend on, the most perfect sustainer “