Periods of Islamic Literature

Three successive caliphates ruled the Islamic empire:

• The Patriarchal (632-661),
• the Umayyad (661-750), and
• the `Abbasid (750-1258).

In 1258 the Ottoman Turks invaded and sacked Baghdad, the capital, and murdered the caliph, thus ending Islamic rule in the eastern section of the empire. A weak ` Abbasid caliphate survived in Egypt until 1517, while in Spain and the western part of North Africa separate dynasties continued to rule until the 15th century. 

        The religious zeal of the early Muslims did inspire the beginning of two significant works, collections that were not completed until later centuries. The most important was the hadith, the record of the sayings and deeds of Muhammad. The sudden death of the spiritual and political leader took the Islamic community by surprise, and within a few decades it was deemed necessary to preserve all of Muhammad's words and actions since they were believed to have been inspired. By the 9th century, the hadith had been solidified into a body of material to which no new traditions were added. Today the hadith is revered as a major source of religious law and moral guidance, second only to the Koran.

            Another collection that was begun at the same time consists of the sayings of `Ali, Muhammad's son-in-law and the fourth caliph, whose followers later established a major division in Islam, Shi`ah. Finally compiled in the 10th century, the collection is called `The Road of Eloquence'. It is a masterpiece of Arabic prose that has inspired numerous commentaries and imitations in other languages.

The Umayyad Caliphate

         The Islamic civil wars and the rise of sectarian rivalries contributed to the emergence of a poetry that became a favorite vehicle for expression of the divergent points of view. The three greatest poets of the Umayyad period were all polemicists who used their verses to support political factions.

           Al-Akhtal, though a Christian, was a strenuous supporter of the policies of the first Umayyad, Mu'awiyah I. Jarir and Tammam ibn Ghalib Abu Firas (al-Farazdaq) were active at the courts of the Umayyad caliphs and their governors and were ardent supporters of the regime. The two were enemies, however, and they delighted rival tribesmen with their stinging satires against each other. The work of these two poets has furnished historians with a rich vein of material on the social and political climate of Islam during the early 8th century. They used the traditional qasida form with great effect, incorporating a wealth of vocabulary and imagination.

           A remarkable poet from Mecca, `Umar ibn Abi Rabi`ah, contributed to the development of the ghazel as a love poem. His poems sing of amorous adventures with the ladies who came to Mecca on pilgrimage. Using the same literary form, one of the last Umayyads, al-Walid ibn Yazid, gained a greater reputation as a poet than as a warrior. His poetry excelled in frivolous love verses and in odes praising the virtues of wine.

            In Medina the vogue was highly idealized love poetry akin to the chivalric romances of medieval Europe. Supposedly invented by Jamil, this genre sings of lovers who become martyrs, dying in their total surrender to the force of true love.

The `Abbasid Caliphate

         In contrast to the brief 90-year period of the Umayyads, the `Abbasid caliphate endured for more than five centuries. It was during the `Abbasid rule, with its capital at Baghdad, that the golden age of Islamic literature began. In Iraq (ancient Mesopotamia) all the cultural currents of the ancient Near East came together, and members of the Muslim community --centered at the court of the caliphs--began to adapt and rework elements from all the earlier cultures.

              The major poets of the ` Abbasid period were Abu Nuwas, Ibn al-Mu`tazz, Ibn Da'ud, al-Mutanabbi, and al-Ma`arri. The greatest of these was Abu Nuwas, who had an incomparable command of language and imagery. His witty, cynical verses and delightful drinking songs scandalized the orthodox Muslims, however. One of his lines, said to have been his motto, was: "Accumulate as many sins as you can."

            Al-Mu`tazz, in his `Book of the Novel and the Strange', laid down literary rules governing the use of metaphors, similes, and verbal puns. His concept of poetry involved the richest embellishment of verses by all kinds of figures of speech and rhetorical devices. In time, his advice produced poetry in which the content was overpowered by style and verbiage.

          The theme of the lover who would rather die than achieve union with his beloved became central to ghazel poetry in the 10th century. An early exponent was Ibn Da'ud, a theologian, in his anthology `Book of the Flower'. Although used in a completely secular way at first, the theme was later taken over as a major concept in religious mystic poetry. It soon became commonplace in Persian, Turkish, and Urdu poetry as well. Its influence was even felt in Spain, where another theologian, Ibn Hazm, drew upon personal experiences to compose his `The Ring of the Dove', a prose work on pure love that is interspersed with poetry.

        Al-Mutanabbi, one of the greatest Arab poets, was in the mainstream of classical qasida poets, but his work surpassed that of his predecessors in imagination. His compositions were noted for their exaggeration, sound effects, and formal perfection.

           The verses of al-Ma`arri, the blind Syrian poet, continue to appeal to young Arab readers today. Yet their vocabulary is so difficult, and meanings so compressed in his double rhymes, that even his contemporaries had to ask him to interpret them. His outlook is deeply pessimistic and skeptical, running counter to the heroic idealism of his time. He taunted the privileged classes of his day and expressed a strong contempt for hypocrisy, injustice, and superstition. Pious Muslims supposedly were offended by his `Paragraphs and Periods' because they felt it to be a parody of the holy Koran. His `Epistle of Pardon', which describes a visit to the world of the afterlife, also contains sarcastic criticism of Arabic literature.

            During the reign of the `Abbasid empire, literary prose also began to develop. Writers were consumed by an insatiable curiosity for all kinds of knowledge, a curiosity that led them to compile and translate scholarly and philosophical works from other cultures.

        Ibn al-Muqaffa` translated the fables of Bidpai, an Indian sage, into Arabic. These stories provided Islamic culture with a seemingly inexhaustible fund of tales and parables from the animal world, comparable in some respects to the fables of Aesop and La Fontaine. He also introduced into Arabic the Persian `Book of Kings', a type of pre-Islamic mythology that sophisticated Muslims preferred to the rather meager accounts of the Arab pagan past. His translations of writings on ethics and the conduct of government are the prototype of the "Mirror for Princes" literature that flourished during the late Middle Ages in both Iran and the West.

          In response to the growing interest in life outside the Islamic world, al-Jahiz of Basra wrote treatises on many subjects. The `Elegance of Expression and Clarity of Exposition' dealt with literary style and the effective use of language. His `Book of Misers' is a collection of stories about the avaricious. Although an intellectual free spirit, al-Jahiz supported government policy by writing "Exploits of the Turks," an essay on the military qualities of Turkish soldiers, upon whose strength the government depended. His `Book of Animals' has little to do with zoology, but it is a mine of information on Arab proverbs, superstitions, and traditions.

           One of the most vigorous prose stylists was Abu Hayyan at-Tawhidi. His book denouncing the weaknesses of two of the caliph' s viziers (governors) for their literary ambitions highlights his brilliance and eloquence.

       The rhetorical style of rhymed prose found its best expression in the maqamah, which was invented by al-Hamadhani. The master of this form was al-Hariri of Basra, whose 50 maqamahs are closer to the Western notion of the short story than anything else in classical Islamic literature.

Range of Islamic Literature

            The Muslim empire was enormous in size; it included a great diversity of peoples, many of whom had preserved ancient cultures and languages. For a long period, Arabic became the literary language for many regions of the empire; but as time passed, local influences reasserted themselves and native languages once again came into use. This was particularly true in Persia, where the Arabic alphabet was adapted to the Persian language.

           By the 11th century, northwestern India and the region that is now Pakistan had become a center of Islamic literature in the Persian language. Persian remained the language of Muslim India until the 1830s, when it was succeeded by Urdu, which had borrowed heavily from Persian sources in its early period during the 18th century.

            Central Asia became part of the Muslim empire after 711. With cultural centers at Samarkand, Bukhara, and Fergana, it was a hub of Islamic literature and scholarship, much of it in the Arabic language, until the Russian invasions of the late 19th century. A great deal of the literature of this region was also written in the Turkic languages; and in later centuries, when the Seljuq and Ottoman Turks conquered much of the Islamic empire, their languages displaced Arabic in some areas.

           After the 14th century, for example, an elaborate classical Turkish literature developed that was heavily influenced by Persian styles and vocabulary. In Spain, at the western end of the empire, the Muslims created a highly sophisticated culture that reached its apex in the 10th century and continued to flourish until the Muslims were driven from the country at the end of the 15th century. It was through Spain that so many of the major Arabic works in philosophy and the sciences made their way into medieval Europe.

Literary Types

            The difficulty of translation applied especially to Islamic poetry, which for centuries used traditional, rigid, and distinctive forms in a highly stylized way. Prose, in the Western sense of novels, short stories, and dramas, was not known in the Islamic world until the modern period. What prose writing there was also used specific forms, and often it, like poetry, was rhymed. This emphasis on form and style dominated Islamic literature until the early 19th century, frequently to the detriment of content.

           Classical Arabic poetry was built on the principle of the monorhyme, and the single rhyme was employed throughout a poem, whether it was long or short. Within the rhyming pattern, there were 16 basic meters in five groupings, but the poet was not allowed to change the meter in the course of a poem.

             The chief literary types, all poetic forms developed according to traditional rules, were the qasida, the ghazel, the qitah, the masnavi, and the roba`i. In prose, the chief genre was the maqamah.

         The qasida was developed by pre-Islamic Arabs and has endured in Arabic literary history up to the present. It consists of an elaborately structured ode of from 20 to 100 verses and maintains a single end rhyme through the entire piece. The poem opens with a short prelude, usually a love poem, to get the reader's attention. This is followed by an account of the poet's journey, with descriptions of his horse or camel and of desert scenes and events. The main theme, at the end, is a tribute to the poet's patron, his tribe, or even himself. After the coming of Islam, the qasida served as an instrument of praise to God, eulogies of Muhammad, and songs of commendation or lament for the saints. It was a type of poem that lent itself to displays of the poet's own knowledge.

• The ghazel is a love lyric of from five to 12 verses that probably originated as an elaboration of the qasida's opening section. The content was religious, secular, or a combination of both.

• The qitah is a literary form used for the less serious matters of everyday life. Its main function was for satire, jokes, word games, and codes.

• The masnavi originated in Persia, a country with its own ancient literary tradition. The term means "the doubled one," or rhyming couplet. The masnavi became very popular because it enabled the poet to tell a long story by stringing together thousands of verses. It was the closest approach to the epic poem that developed in Islamic literature. The Arabs rejected the epic as a form of fiction, which they felt was akin to falsehood.

• The roba`i also has its roots in pre-Islamic Persian poetic tradition. Its form is a quatrain (four-line verse) in which the first, second, and fourth lines rhyme. The most famous example of the roba`i is the `Rubáiyát' of Omar Khayyám.

• The maqamah is the most typical expression of the Arabic spirit in rhymed prose. It was used to tell basically simple and entertaining stories in an extremely complicated style. Because the maqamah was frequently used to display the author's wit, learning, and eloquence, it often became so tangled in convoluted terminology and grammar that it was quite difficult to comprehend and therefore almost impossible to translate. Only in the late 19th century, under the influence of translations from the European languages, did its style take on a matter-of-fact manner that made it less artificial.

Islamic Literature: An Overview

            The cultural flowering of Islam began at the time when Europe, except for the Byzantine Empire, was in a state of disintegration--the Dark Ages. When Europe at last began to emerge from the doldrums, it was in great measure due to the efforts of Muslims, who had collected and translated into Arabic many of the ancient Greek philosophical and scientific works.

            Although Europeans during the Middle Ages benefited from Islamic treatises on medicine, geography, mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy, they did not become acquainted with the original literary creations of the Muslim world. Even today, the rich heritage of Islamic literature is hardly known in the West, except for a few examples such as the Koran, the holy book of Islam; the `Thousand and One Nights' , or `Arabian Nights'; the `Rubáiyát' of Omar Khayyám; and the 20th-century works of Khalil Gibran.

              This unfamiliarity is due in part to the fact that almost all of this literature was written in languages that often were quite difficult to translate, in part because they used an alphabet in Semitic script. 

Islamization of unislamic elements in islamic literary work

Advice to governors by Nizm Al-Mulk


            In one of the advice proposed by Nizam Al-Mulk in his work "Advice to governors", he mentioned about the roles of boon-companions. Boon-companions here refer to the companies of the king. There are many criteria needed to become a boon-companion. A boon-companion needs to be someone who is familiar, he must always be in a position of a body guard to the king, must have cheerful face, pure faith, able to keep secrets and wear good clothes. He must also be a good talker and pleasant partner to the king. Apart from those criteria, there is another criterion that we personally feel a little bit unislamic about it which is agreeing on whatever the king says or does. If the boon-companions practice this kind of behavior in giving their service for the king it will somehow portray injustice which is absolutely unacceptable in Islam. The issue of injustice in this situation happens when the king does or says something that is not right in accordance to Islam then it is approved and supported by the boon-companions. As what is stated in the Holy Qur'an,


“…When you speak, speak with justice, even if it is against someone close to you…” 
                                                                                                          (Surah Al-An'am:152). 

            So, what can we do in a way to islamize the implementation of unislamic behavior practiced years ago in an Islamic country is that even if you are selected to become the company of the king you must always practice the Islamic teaching fully as how it is sent down from Allah S.W.T through His messengers. Islam is a comprehensive religion and you will not become a perfect believer of Islam if you only practice a part of it and at the same time abandoning what is it actually promoting to its believers. And from the part of the king, he should know that whatever he does or says, it must always be in line with the Islamic jurisprudence. 

            Therefore, the moral lesson that can be taken from this idea about justice in governing a country in Nizam Al-Mulk's piece of work is that everyone from the king,the boon-companions and to the citizens, they must always speak the truth and practice justice in their deeds so that Islam will be seen as a just religion. 

Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein

Sultana's Dream by Rokheya Shekhawat Hossein (1880 - 1932) is fundamentally dealing with 'Islamic' feminist movement which was initiated by Rokheya herself. 

The injustice in Sultana's Dream:

           In Ladyland, men were kept indoor while women work outside. Men are part of society but shorn of power. They live in seclusion and look after the house and children. Women the dominant group do not consider men fit for any skilled work. This reverse role of men and women is unjust in Islam. 

           It is understood that men should not be kept indoor and taking over all domestic works. While women, it is not their absolute responsibility to be bread winner in the family since it is the duty of the husband. Moreover, Though women should do domestic works, that does not mean a total seclusion to them from the society. In short, this utopian reverse role of two gender is unjust from Islamic point of view. 

          The story of Sultana's Dream was based on the real context of how women were treated in those days, particularly in India, women were totally secluded from the society and placed in zenana. Men neglected the rights of women to socialize with their own community. In respond to inequality in patriarchal society towards women, Rokheya came out with the idea of Ladyland as a paradox of the real societal treatment towards women. Unfortunately, her utopian idea on Ladyland is contradicting with the teaching of Islam since in Islam, man is regarded as a leader, protector and sustainer of the family.  

For further information, click here.

ASSIGNMENT 1: SUMMARY

ASSIGNMENT 1: SUMMARY

Group Members: Naheed Binti Azhari (0715986)

         Nik Izyani Bt Nik Nordin (0715784)

         Melati Binti Mohd Noor (0718098)

         Raihan Binti Mansor (0719576)

Section              : 1

Course Code      : ENGL 4740

Course Title       : Computer Applications in Language Studies

Instructor           : Dr. Rozina Bt. Abdul Ghani

Date Submitted: 18th January 2011

Kuliyyah          : IRKHS, IIUM

According to Sanders (2006), the study of “A Comparison of Chat Room Productivity: In-class Versus Out-of-class” is purposely to evaluate out-of-class, electronic contact as an alternative to some face-to-face contact on the students who took the Spanish course at a US university. Plus, out of class participation could provide significant cost savings through distributed resource utilisation.

Methodology

In this study, students were divided into a control group and experimental group. Student in the control group spent 30 minutes of their weekly class time to complete a chat room assignment in the computer labs while students in the experimental group spent the same amount of time in chat rooms but outside of their class time. Both groups of students were asked to exchange their personal information in groups and lastly report the information on their own in formal compositions as in paper writing for the control group. As for the control group, they completed the chat room assignments during the class time, under the supervision of the instructor, in self-selected groups by using a WebCT chat room (SCMS) whereas the experimental groups needed to find their own chat sessions outside of class time and form own work groups. In contrast, this group posted their compositions in a WebCT electronic bulletin board (ACMC). For the control groups of students, their grades were based on their writing compositions not the transcripts but it was vice versa for the experimental groups. They were graded using the transcripts of their chat discussions. The instructor also did not participate in the activity although the instructors for the control group were there to help the students. They only interfered in class with direct instruction whenever grammatical errors done by majority of the students were spotted. The instructors for both groups were different. The control students were taught by three different non-native instructors while the experimental students got three instructors and the course coordinator (the author). One of the instructors was a native Spanish speaker.

Literature Review

As mentioned by Beauvois (1992), Biesenbach-Lucas & Weasenforth (2001), Chun (1994), Kelm (1992), Kern (1995), Kiesler, Siegel & McGuire (1984), and Warschaeur (1996), they agreed that text-based Computer-mediated Communication increases the students’ production by facilitating greater students’ participation, greater participation by “shy” students (Beauvois, 1992; Chun, 1994; Kelm, 1992) and reduces the anxiety (Chun, 1994; Kern, 1995). Then, according to Sotillo (2000), the interaction in SCMC is more interpersonal whereas it becomes more presentational in ACMC. However, there is a hindrance on the effectiveness of CALL which is the limited technology resources in the classroom.

Findings

The results were tested based on several points namely, social interaction and focus on task, spelling accuracy, and production and time on task. As a whole, both groups were equally attentive to the assigned task yet on the social interaction part, the experimental group engaged electronically more in social communication. Then, both groups were identified to have the same degree of spelling accuracy by comparing each student’s the ratio of correctly spelled Spanish words with the recognizable Spanish words. As for the production and time on task, the experimental group did better than the control group in 11 of the 16 “per-minute” calculations. Finally, the study showed an implication that greater student collaboration and responsibility resulted in greater production, in this case, the Spanish language, while preserving the class time and technology resources.

Implication to Language Learning in General

Sanders highlighted the differences between SCMC (Synchronous CMC) and ACMC (Asynchronous CMC) of which “synchronous electric communication elicits an interactive style set upon information exchange and social cohesion, whereas asynchronous electronic communication elicits formal analysis and synthesis of information.” (Sanders, 2006) and found out that ACMC resulted in the lowest oral production of all when compared to SCMC and face-to-face preparation. Hence, chat room which is performed simultaneously by students in classroom or computer lab and with the instructor presented is claimed to be more helpful and effective in Language Learning.

Apart from enhancing vocabularies, the findings of this research has basically brought forward the idea that language learning becoming more interesting to learners and give some sort of self-trust and confidence to use language naturally while at the same time enhancing vocabularies and correcting sentence structure and spelling during the lesson. Real-time CMC or SCMC not only agreeable to face-to-face context of communication, it also enables instructors or teachers to evaluate the writing skill of the learners and the learners to learn to write better.

Computer Assisted Language Learning as a Discovery Learning

Discovery learning, as suggested by numbers of learning theorists and psychologists including Jean Piaget, is a method of inquiry-based instruction and considered as a constructive approach of learning in education. Focusing on language learning though the use of technology i.e. CMC leads students to be more natural and creative yet abide by the instructions given by the teacher.

Sanders illustrated in his research that although computer and internet is used to facilitate the learning, it has found to gain effectiveness in oral achievement and proficiency (Sanders, 2006). Text-based CMC including email, chat room, etc. appears to offer several different advantages over oral discussion and writing. Students who completed the tasks of text-based CMC shown to produce an average of 58% more words during oral testing.

CMC is the process by which people create, exchange, and perceive information using networked telecommunications systems that facilitate encoding, transmitting, and decoding messages (December, 1996). Examples of CMC are e-mail, chat room, bulletin boards, computer conferencing environments, and the growing number of Web-mediated manifestations of these types of communication (Romiszowski & Mason). Some forms of CMC are purely synchronous - parties communicating at the same time such as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - some purely asynchronous – parties communicating with a time delay such as Email, web-based bulletin boards and news group- while others discussing the possibility of combining the capabilities of virtual environments with capabilities of CMC tools to allow collaborative learning within a distributed virtual world as both facilitate the learning task (Dalgarno, 2001).

CMC justified the notion of Communicative approaches stressed that learning was a creative process of discovery, expression and development where computer based activities should focus on the use of forms rather than the forms themselves. Other than that, according to Underwood (1984), communicative CALL should also focus on teaches grammar implicitly rather than explicitly and allow student to generate original utterances rather than the prefabricated language.

 Communicative CALL allows instructor not to judge student’s performance and avoid telling what is wrong and right in language use. While practicing the target language on screen will also encourage students to create an environment which using target language feels natural in face to face communication too. Discovery learning not only focuses on finding the right answer but also to stimulate student’s discussion, writing skills, and critical thinking. New way of learning motivates students to participate in class discussion, improve writing skills and develop new ideas by using computers.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the chat room as one of the tool tool of CMC aided developmental of oral proficiency as the online discussion group showed significant gains when compared to the face-to-face discussion groups. The participants in chat room were conscious of the language they produced as they able to revise what they typed and that conversations in chat rooms may help students with lower memory capacities because the text remains available for review during chat sessions.

 This early reseach has been discussed by previous studies by locating students in the same room while later an increasing number of CMC studies focus on allocating students from different physical locations to investigate the distance learning environments as well. Unfortunately, studies of distance learning generally show many weaknesses in reliability and validity such as a failure to control for extraneous variables and subjects who are not randomly assigned Chenoweth& Murday (2003) similarly found in this Sander’s research.

Bibliography

Dalgarno, B. (2001). Intrepertation of Constructivism and Consequences for Computer Assisted Learning. British Journal of Educational Technology , 32 (2), 183-194.

mkoehler.educ.msu.edu. (n.d.). Retrieved February 14, 2011, from Computer- Mediated- Communication:http://mkoehler.educ.msu.edu/OtherPages/Courses/CEP_909_FA02/Readings/CMC.pdf
N. A. Chenoweth & K. Murday (2003). Measuring Student Learning in an Online French Course. CALICO , 20 (2), 285-314.
Sanders, R. (2006). A Comparison of Chat Room Productivity: In Class Versus Out-of- Class. CALICO , 24 (1), 59- 76.