Much older than we think .. Thus participated Arab writers in the emergence of the art of the novel

Imran Abdullah

Academic tradition has preserved the history of the novel since its inception in Europe, with Don Quixote in 1605 or in the early 18th century with the Italian word "novella", which was used to describe long stories in the Middle Ages, despite the existence of earlier forms of the ancient novel.

The early traceability of the history of the novel and the old works - which have not received the title of "novel" despite being a long and short prose narrative describing fictional or realistic characters and events - reveals much about the contributions of Arabic literature in the world, especially in the art of the novel along with Latin or ancient Greek and Japanese literature. And even ancient Chinese.

The classic academic tradition of the study of the novel's literature suggests that fictional prose narrative has evolved since the 18th century - especially since the Victorian era - to gradually replace poetry and drama and become increasingly popular for taking up stories and characters about the middle class.

The novels focus more on the development of the character than the plot because the role of the novel in the study of the human soul, regardless of its type.

The Arabic Novel
The Arab philosopher and physician Ibn Tufail al-Andalusi (1100-1185 AD) wrote his fictional novel of the philosophical nature of the neighborhood of Ibn Yaqzān, in which he used the high symbolism of the protagonist based on a series of writers for the same story, including the philosopher Ibn Sina and Shihab al-Din al-Suhrawardi.

Ibn al-Tufail wrote his novel in the context of the controversy over the role of philosophy in Islamic thought, which philosophers fought with the great mystic Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, and his philosophical metaphor novel has a major impact on world literature, and received widespread in Europe after its translation of English at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

Though the English novelist Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) is thought to have borrowed the novel from Ibn al-Tufayl, who died at the end of the 12th century, the Arab philosopher Malik ibn Nabi, in his book The Problem of Ideas in the Islamic World, compared the stories of Hay Ibn Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe for the English novelist.

Ben Nabi pointed out that the novel of the English novelist revolves around the sensory and physical worlds only and does not indicate beyond the physical world, and that the story of Robinson Crusoe preoccupied with the requirements of eating, sleeping and materials made, while Ben Yakzhan busy in the novel Ibn al-Tufail search for the truth of existence and meditation about death and life And the existence of the Creator.

Ibn al-Nafis, an Arab physician, wrote "The Complete Message", an early philosophical novel that embodies a kind of interaction with Ibn al-Tufail's story, mixing it with his medical knowledge with elements of science fiction, and using it as a kind of pilgrim and responding to "belief in cramming the bodies," a controversial philosophical theme Long between philosophers and Muslim speakers, including Ibn Sina and Ghazali.

Arabs knew fiction from early times, and ancient manuscripts preserved fiction literary works such as "A Thousand and One Nights", "the biography of Saif bin Dhi Yazan", "the biography of Antara", "Kalila and Dimna" and others.

European and Asian works
Early works of fantasy prose - ancient novels - include works in Latin, such as the Book of the Adventures of the Satrikon, described as the first Roman novel (about 150 AD) without necessarily implying its affiliation with modern novel and literary form, while in the late 2nd century AD in ancient Greece, Davies wrote a story A true "novelist", while Sanskrit novels from the fourth or fifth century AD and Japanese novels in the eleventh century coincided with the work of Ibn Tufail famous novelist, followed by Catalan and Chinese novels in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

The story of the Japanese genji, written in the early 11th century, is known as the first novel in the well-known sense of the novel.It is located in more than three quarters of a million words.It was divided by Japanese writer Murasaki Shikibu into 54 chapters dealing with Genji's romance stories, in which she focused on fine details, personality and relations between heroes.

Urbanization and the spread of printed books during the Song Dynasty (960-1279) in China led to the development of oral storytelling into fictional narratives by the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644).

The parallel European developments only took place after the invention of Johannes Gutenberg printing press in 1439, and the emergence of the publishing industry over a century allowed similar opportunities, according to the British Encyclopedia, where the invention of printing immediately created a new market for relatively cheap entertainment and knowledge at the time.

Modern Novel
Since the end of the 18th century, the modern novel has undergone several transformations associated with major intellectual changes in the West, due to the growing middle class, more free time for reading books and money.

Public interest in the human personality has led to the growing popularity of biographies, memos and novels.

While the first half of the 19th century was influenced by romantic philosophy and the focus became on nature and imagination and transcend nature rather than thought and emotion, the advent of industrialization in the 19th century led to a tendency towards writing that depicts realism, and novels began to depict characters who were not good or completely bad, rejecting idealism The former romance, then realism quickly evolved into a natural vision that portrayed harsher conditions and pessimistic personalities became powerless because of their environment.

The twentieth century is divided into two phases of literature: modern literature (1900-1945) and contemporary literature (1945 to the present) and also referred to as postmodernism.The novels of this era reflected great events such as the Great Depression, World War II, Hiroshima, the Cold War and communism.

The realism of the modern era of the novel paved the way for the emergence of post-modern surrealist novels involving magical realism such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "Hundred Years of Solitude" (1967) and the graphic novel.