…All we do, crumbles to the ground, though we refuse to see Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind Don’t hang on, nothing lasts forever but the earth and sky It slips away, and all your money won’t another minute buy. Dust in the wind, all we are is dust in the wind…
— from Dust in the Wind, lyrics by Kansas
This post focuses on how the significance of a twelfth-century poem has shifted over time and geography according to its audiences.
This month we have a Sufi love poem by Ibn Arabi, a chance to rest from your tasks and worries. This poem contains some of the most-quoted lines of poetry in Sufism and in anthologies of pre-modern Arabic literature. Usually only a few lines are included, as in these two examples:
My heart is capable of every form:
Pasture for deer, a monastery for monks,
Temple for idols, pigrim’s Ka’bah,
In this post, I want to bring together information and resources regarding children’s literature in Arabic. The primary impetus for this post is to inform and assist librarians and teachers, in public libraries and schools, particularly in the United States, who want to purchase and provide books in Arabic for kids and their families.
Context First, we need to introduce one key linguistic concept: diglossia. Diglossia refers to the existence of multiple levels of language usage within any given language.
Relating to the MENA/SWANA region Discretion by Faïza Guène | The best Algerian novel to my knowledge, it recounts the experience of an Algerian family fitting into life in Paris. Likeable characters, provides a view of Algerian colonial and postcolonial experience. Available in French and English. I picked this up after reading an interview with the author here. I was struck by her comment that there are very few likeable Arab men in literature, but there are plenty in real life.
I lived in Cairo 2004-2005, attending the Center for Arabic Studies Abroad (CASA) program and interning at the UNESCO Cairo Office. Toward the end of my time in Cairo, a story I wrote in Arabic won first place in a writing contest. I’m sharing it with you here, with elegant English translation by Lily Sadowsky. Check out the PDF copy here for the original Arabic and the English translation together. Enjoy!
In honor of Salma Khadra Jayyusi, who passed away earlier this year, I’d like to revisit Juha the famous trickster character. I was fortunate enough to study Arabic langugage and literature during the years when Jayyusi’s PROTA project was bringing many works to the attention of readers in English. One of these works is published as Tales of Juha: Classic Arab Folk Humor (Northampton, MA: Interlink, 2007). This is a great compilation and rendition of many classic Juha stories.
In this post, I’m adding some new Arabic proverbs/sayings to the ones I posted years ago here. The post from 2016 is one of my most consistently popular posts, but it is high time we got some new ones! This round is more colloquial. The earlier post includes more quotations from literature. Enjoy!
Honey | Source
إن كان حبيبك عسل، ما تلحوش كلّه If your honey is sweet, don’t lick him/her all away
Atlas Studios. Source
Two Film Industries (Separate, Not Equal) It would seem that there are two very distinct film industries in Morocco: the films produced by Moroccans, and the films produced by foreigners. In fact, they are linked to one another by political economy. Consider the following scene. Moroccan filmmaker M. A. Tazi was trying to reconstruct a fourteenth-century urban environment in Salé for a film based on a Moroccan novel.
Scene from Tazi’s Looking for My Wife’s Husband (1995). Source
This mini-series consists of two posts. The first provides a historical introduction to the film industry in Morocco. How did it get started? What are the big issues that shaped, and continue to shape, this industry?
The Foreign Origins of Cinematography in Morocco Both domestic and foreign production are best understood in the context of Moroccan history. The history of film in Morocco, like that of modern technology in most of the world, begins with colonialism.
This series seeks to map shifting levels of language dominance in Moroccan history in order to investigate contemporary developments in government policy. The previous post focused on Colonial Language Policy.
Nationalist Language Policy of Arabization The Moroccan constitution of 1956 names Arabic as the sole official language, and by the end of the 1950s, a project of Arabization was swiftly in place. A key component of Morocco’s Arabization project was a five-year plan for transforming the school system left by the French Protectorate.
