16 aprilie 2018

Book Review: Anthology of Islamic Literature " From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times" by James Kritzeck


For a long time, I didn't write in my blog. I want to write something intersting to share with you.  But for a long time, I want to read a book from Arab Literature.  I had lucky to found Anthology of Islamic Literature " From  the Rise of Islam to Modern Times". I was intersted to read the Anthology of Islamic Literature "From the Rise of Islam to Modern Times" Scripture, Prose, Proverbs, and Drama-Selected, Edited and Introduced by James Kritzeck, it publised 1964.
The author James Kritzeck is talking and describes each chapter separately.
Two of the most popular examples of Islamic Literature known to the  West are the  Rubaiyat of Umar Khayyam and the "Arabian Nights". Yet in the Islamic world these works considered inferior when compared to the cost body of Islamic Literature.
Anthology of Islamic Literature presents a representative and rich sampling of some thirteen centuries of great Islamic Literature. More than forty selection span the  period from the rise of Mohammed and the Age of Cliphs(632- 1050) to the new world of Islam, which was inaugurated in 1350 by such master poets and chroiclers as Hafiz, Ibn Battutah, and Ibn Khaldun. The book closes  with Mughal poetry of India and Ottoman poetry at the end of the eighteenth century.

James Krittzeck provides a general introduction in which he outlines, briefly, the history of Islamic Literature. He discusses the various translations that have come down  to us,  and he speaks of the connections between poetry and prose throughout Islamic Literature. In addittion , each of the works is provided with  an introduction that enables the reader to place the work in its proper historical perspective.
In recent years considerable number of masterpieces of Islamic literature have individually displayed their merits through translation into  Western  languages, but few of them  have become widely known.
The term" Islamic literature"requires and explanation, if not and apology. Islam  is not the name of a language or group of languages. It is  the name of religion, the religion often but offensively called Mohammedanism, which was instituted in Arabia in the seventh century of our era and which today enjoys the adherence of nearly four hundred million  persons calling themselves Muslims, approximately one-seventh of the total estimate population of the earth.

Islamic culture is unquestionably one of the grater cultures in the history of mankind and of the world today. Within Islamic culture, many ancient cultures have found a species of imortality; to it, many peoples, including non Muslims, have  contributed; from it, many ideas and other benefits have radiated to  other cultures, including especially our own. Visually it is  represented by many beautiful  monunments, from  the Alhambra in Spania to the Taj Mahal in India, from the crumbling domes of Samarkand to the rising domes of Kano.

Islamic literature can be, and usually is, subdvided according to languages. Principal among them are Arabic, Persian and Turkis; but Berber, Hause, Swahili, Somali, Albanian, Kurdish, Uzbeck, tadjick, Pashto, Baluchi, Urdu, Panjabi, Bengali,Gajarati, Sindhi, Telugu, Tamil, Malay, Javanese,Cham, and good many others must pe added. Many of these languages have nothing, linguistically speacking, in common.
None of the three translation is really outstanding. In this anthology, a new and, I firmly believe, better translation has provided. It is regrattable that the same thing cannot be said for all of the  selections.
In fact, there are many grwat works of Islamic literature which have not yet been  translated at all, and that is more the pity.