Middle East

Overview

The Arabic qasida was fixed before Islam, and the Muallaqat hung at the Kaaba have been learned by heart for fifteen centuries. The Persian of Ferdowsi and Khayyam, Ottoman Turkish and Arabic shared the region without merging, each with its own prosody. The novel arrives late and by way of Egypt: Mahfouz published his Cairo trilogy in the fifties and received the Nobel in 1988, to date the only Arabic-language writer to do so. Egyptian cinema has produced more films than the rest of the Arab world combined. Cairo was releasing a film a week in the fifties.

What circulates

Cairo and Beirut print for the whole Arab world, and a ban in one country does not block circulation in the others; the exile of Lebanese publishing houses during the war moved that centre towards London and the Gulf. Hebrew, Persian and Turkish each have their own market, with no notable translation among them.

Limits of this grouping

The name was coined in London at the start of the twentieth century and denotes an east seen from Europe, middle because placed between the near and the far. The zone puts together countries that read one another little, Arab, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew, and separates Egypt from the Maghreb although their publishing answers each other.

Works cited

• PoetryShahnameh: The Persian Book of KingsشاهنامهFerdowsi · 1010The kings and heroes of ancient Iran sung in a Persian almost free of Arabic words.Literature
• NovelMidaq Alleyزقاق المدقNaguib Mahfouz · 1947A dead-end alley in old Cairo and its inhabitants, whom the world war tempts in a thousand ways.Literature
• NovelMen in the Sunرجال في الشمسGhassan Kanafani · 1963Fifteen years after 1948, Palestinian refugees look for work in the oil countries, at the mercy of smugglers.Literature
• CinemaCairo Stationباب الحديدYoussef Chahine · 1958A crippled newspaper seller, a drinks seller and the crowd of a great railway station.Cinema