Middle East/North African Lit discussion

Tariq Ali's A Sultan in Palermo reviewed by Kamila Shamsie here.

copy/pasting from another thread in the group:

okyrhoe wrote: "The historical fiction genre - something that I read a lot of when I was a teenager but haven't visited again in a long while. I realize now that the writers I am most familiar with are those whose cultural & historical connection to their subject matter was/is more or less a tenuous one; eg. contemporary American & north European authors writing about ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, etc. (and who often took liberties with their subject matter).
Even the French-educated Lebanese Amin Maalouf writing about the Persian Omar Khayyam and the British-educated Pakistani Tariq Ali writing about the Moroccan/Sicilian Mohammed al-Idrisi are not immediately & culturally connected to their books' topics.
Tariq Ali wrote a recent entry in his blog about his personal relationship (or lack thereof) with the historical background to the Islam Quintet novels. It's a useful background piece as it helps to explain to me some of the things that are bugging me in my reading of A Sultan in Palermo."

Nile daughter wrote: "I would like to hear about what is bugging you while reading " A sultan in Palermo" - sure you can open a thread for it in the salon at any time - I did not read any of the Islam Quintet novels , or even any of Tariq Ali 's books , but I am palnning to try to read the Quintet at sometime - hope we can read one in our tour."

I wasn't aware of the extent of the Arab/African presence in Italy until reading this novel.
From my general historical knowledge I "had the facts" about southern Italy's colonization by various peoples such as the ancient Greeks & the Byzantine Greeks, and later by successive waves of Crusaders originating from northern Europe. The Arab presence either wasn't part of the established narrative covering this region's history or it failed to stick in my mind.
After reading the novel and a bit of browsing online* to acquaint myself with the background to the novel's subject, I now question how this period of Europe's history is apparently glossed over in a general overview.

As for the novel itself, I found Tariq Ali's writing a bit too carefree. He does create a vibrant and engaging protagonist in his depiction of Mohammed al-Idrisi. There were moments though when it felt like he was taking liberties with the historical facts (especially the circumstances of Idrisi's death). And I wished that there was more information about the map-book that Idrisi compiled and for which he is remembered today, or even cursory details about Idrisi's travels on which the maps were based; these elements were hardly present in the novel at all.
Instead, Tariq Ali focuses on the political intrigue and the religio-philosophical conflicts of the time, at a critical moment when the Arab presence in Sicily was under dual threat - by the Muslim conservatives, and the expansionist aims of the Pope on the mainland. Idrisi, acting as advisor to the Norman king, is caught in this power struggle. He must make decisive choices regarding the future of the Arab population on the island and the well-being of his extended family, two concerns which are not compatible.
This is where the novel falters; Ali has developed Idrisi as a fictional character with a large family and the greater part of the plot is concerned with Idrisi' dealings with his wives, daughters, sons, sons-in-laws, mistresses, and newborn infants both legitimate and illegitimate. This domestic drama eventually dominates the narrative; the political & historical issues aren't explored in as much depth as I was looking forward to.

links:
History of Islam in southern Italy
the Arabs in Sicily
The Saracen Door and Battle of Palermo
the Emirate of Sicily
Norman-Arab-Byzantine culture
Norman-Arab-Byzantine architecture

Thanks Okyrhoe for the review :) , I have no historical background of what the novel is covering either , thanks for the links too , I will come and check them again .

Thank you for the tip. I want to read this book. As the granddaughter of a Sicilian, having lived in North Africa, and living now in the Middle East, I've been very much interested in all books about this topic!

i'm also interested in the Arab history of Sicily and southern Italy. my Algerian friend calls Sicily (in a friendly, joking way) "North North Africa" and apparently there are still some street signs in Palermo with arabic script. i have, in the past, read a few articles about the influence of Islam and Arab civilization on southern Italy, but i can't claim to have retained any details, but it's something that interests me generally, but also personally (my husband being of Sicilian and Neapolitan descent).

Interestingly, i've been reading The Count of Monte Cristo and Sicily and Naples are consistently referred to throughout the novel as belonging to the Orient or the East.

Okyrhoe, i love your comment, "I now question how this period of Europe's history is apparently glossed over in a general overview."

Marieke, if you're on Facebook, there's a group called "Ummah Remembers Islamic Italy, Sicily the untold story", which often posts interesting articles or book reviews. Some of my family members live in Mezzojusso, which was called in the time of the Arabs "Manzil Yusuf", the house of Yusuf. And the Sicilians have some Arabic words in their vocabulary, but, most of them, don't really like the link with the ancient occupiers. :) The mentality there is also another thing they have more in common with North Africa, then with Europe.

Sum Of Mind wrote: "Marieke, if you're on Facebook, there's a group called "Ummah Remembers Islamic Italy, Sicily the untold story", which often posts interesting articles or book reviews. Some of my family members li..."

cool! i'll look for it.

there's quite a lot in their family culture that seems much more middle eastern to me than european. i like to just call it "Mediterranean" because i'm pretty sure the eastern side of the Mediterranean in southern Europe would also probably seem familiar to me. i lived in germany but have arab friends and the way i'm welcomed into my husband's family members' homes is like visiting an arab friend, not a german, lol. AND THE FOOOOD!!! hahaha.

Another interesting thing I learned is that the Sicilian language has retained its Arabic influence in words still in use today. (I was only aware of Arabic surviving in Iberian place & food names, and in the language of Malta.)
Tariq Ali uses Arab-Sicilian words in the novel, along with the Arabic versions of people's and place names. It took me a while to figure out that a certain name was in fact Homer!
Interestingly, Tariq Ali takes the position that "mafia" is *not* an Arabic word.
Some representative Arab-Sicilian words.
(Does anyone besides me recognize that maybe dudda (attributed to indo-european & welsh/gallic) is the Arabic tout?)

From the list of history books on Sicily I first came across the author David Abulafia, a historian who has published several books on the medieval history of Mediterranean Europe, apparently with a focus on non-Christian peoples.

Tariq Ali mentions a rare source: Storia dei Musulmani di Sicilia by Michele Amari (written in the early 1800's), available only in Italian and in an Arabic translation, from what I understand. The Italian original edition is at the Open Library. I found the scanned pages (.pdf) are easier to browse, the .txt version isn't encoded properly for the Italian script.

Thank you for this okyrhoe. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Sicilian is rather bad, but when I visited my family in 2009, I could recognize some Arabic in their words. For example: In Arabic, you say "meskeen/meskeena" for "poor guy/poor girl", and in Sicilian you say "meshkeen". There are other, but I can't immediately think about any right now.
Food-wise, Trapani, on the west coast of the island, is famous for it's couscous. That's what they have in common with their North African neighbors.