Exploring the horizons of Arab travel writing
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By Cilina Nasser Daily Star 27 December 2003
An Abu Dhabi-based institution has recently sponsored an ambitious literary
project that aims to boost travel writing in the Arab world and to make such literature available to a Western audience.
Dar al-Sweidi, which is headed by UAE poet Mohammed Ahmed al-Sweidi, is
planning to issue three anthologies of travel literature in Arabic.
According to Syrian poet Nouri al-Jarrah, who monitors Irtiyad al-Afaq or
Exploring the Horizons project, the goal is to translate the collections
so foreigners can learn how Arab views of the West and the wider world have
developed over the centuries.
“The idea for the project emerged three years ago when we decided to revive
Arabic travel literature,†Jarrah told The Daily Star in a telephone interview
from his office in Abu Dhabi.
“There is an enormous heritage of geographic and travel literature in the
Arab world that dates back over a thousand years,†he explained.
Travel literature in the Arab world began in the 10th century when Ibn Fadlan
was assigned by the Abbasid caliph, Al-Moqtader, to go to the Volga Bulgars,
which was then part of Russia and whose people converted to Islam, to deliver
a letter to the king and supervise the teaching of Islamic law to the local
population.
Ibn Fadlan wrote an account of his trip, vividly describing the people and
places he visited and relating his observations of the trades, clothing,
manners and customs of the residents.
“Unfortunately, all such impressions and personal observations of Arab travelers
were totally neglected,†said Jarrah, who has written eight collections
of poetry.
“This previously overlooked material is extremely valuable because it shows
how Arabs perceived Westerners, discovered their traits and used them for
themselves.â€Â
The first anthology that Jarrah and his team are working on is called Arab
Travelers to Germany: 1855-1945, which will be published in Arabic in July
next year, with a German edition arriving in October. “Very little has been
written about Germany from the Arab point of view,†Jarrah said.
“Most Arab travelers went to France and Britain because of the influence
of these two countries on the region,†he said, in reference to the system
of mandate rule imposed by the two European states.
Jarrah said the book would include the observations of at least 10 authors,
including those of Kamel Mrowa, the founder of the pan-Arab daily Al-Hayat,
and Lebanon’s The Daily Star.
The second book, Arab Travelers to Europe and Modernity, covers the period
from the seventeenth century to the early twentieth century and focuses
on Arab views of the development of civilization and architecture in European
cities, according to Jarrah.
This book is expected to be complete at the end of next year and will later
be translated into English, French, German, Italian and Spanish.
“We have already begun preliminary talks with a number of German and French
publishing houses and other non-profit European cultural institutions for
publishing the book,†said Jarrah.
The third book, One Thousand Years of Arab Traveling, covers the period
from the 10th to the 20th century and is expected to be finished in two
years. “This will cover Arab travel to all parts of the world, including
to China, India, Japan and other places.â€Â
Dar al-Sweidi is also issuing an only Arabic-language series of books under
the title 100 Arab Trips to the World, which will contain various testaments
of Arab travelers, who traveled around the world. The institution has already
published 25 such books.
All the projects involve the painstaking work of locating manuscripts written
by Arab travelers, specifying the era to which they belong, assessing the
credibility of their facts and the literary importance of their content,
and investigating the authors’ personalities. After this, introductions
are written for each group of manuscripts before they are printed as books.
“It allows readers to understand how a foreign eye perceives an alien world
the customs, fashion, literature, and daily life, and the individual’s
relationship with his state. That is, the whole civilization,†the Syrian
poet said.
The institution hunts for sources in libraries across the world.
Another source are long-dead travel journals, including the Cairo-based
Al-Moqtataf magazine that was publishing towards the end of the nineteenth
century and stopped bringing out issues at the beginning of the 20th.
“Most of the people who wrote their diaries during their trips around the
world in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries did so due to a deep desire to
know what the Europeans had that we did not, for instance the development
of different construction methods in cities,†Jarrah said.
The suddenly increased interest among Westerners in how Arabs perceive the
West that emerged after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks “affirms the importance
of our project,†he said. “It gives the West an idea of how Arab perceptions
of the West have developed.â€Â
In another attempt to encourage the preservation of travel literature, Dar
al-Sweidi granted three awards last month to Moroccan authors who have examined
manuscripts dating back to the year 1785.
One of the winners, Mohammed Bokbott, investigated a 200-page stack of manuscripts
that described the city of Mecca and the Muslim pilgrimage there in the
late 18th century. Another winner, Said Fadli, studied a 150-page stack
of manuscripts of a European trip in the early 19th century and a third,
Abdel-Rahim Moden, examined manuscripts written 101 years ago about London.
A fourth award was to encourage contemporary travel writing and it went
to an Omani poet, Mohammed al-Harethi, for his book, An Eye and a Wing,
where he described his experiences in places around the world, including
Canada, the United States and Saudi Arabia.
The awards were given during a celebration in the Moroccan capital, Rabat,
to commemorate the 700-year-anniversary of the birth of the renowned Moroccan
traveler, Abu Abdullah Mohammed Ibn Battouta, who is also known as Shamseddine
al-Tanjari.
“The absence of (travel literature) from Arab libraries will deprive us
of important testimonies and necessary materials that help eliminate racist
stereotyping ideas prevailing in the world today about the isolation of
Arabs and their fear of others,†said Mohammed Ahmed Sweidi, the head of
the institution behind the project.
“Our project is still in its early stages,†he added, “but we can dream,
plan and work together to revive interest in the Arab and Islamic geographic
literature as a distinctive quality not only for the Arab and Muslim culture,
but also for the whole world.â€Â
Sweidi, who also heads the Cultural Foundation in Abu Dhabi, promised to
hold a ceremony next year in Abu Dhabi to distribute the awards, which were
named after the 14th century traveler.
Dar al-Sweidi is also issuing a series, The New Sinbad, aimed at encouraging
contemporary authors, poets and intellects to write about their experiences
and observations on the countries they are visiting.
“We want them to write about why and how they moved from one place to another
and how they perceive others,†said Jarrah.
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