Salaam - Rethinking the idea of a ‘lost century’ in Arabic literature
As-salamu alaykum - Arabic literature’s story has long been told using a European view from over a century ago, but new scholarship is changing that picture.
The usual tale starts in the eighth century, with Baghdad under the Abbasids as a centre of learning, poetry and science - the golden age of Muslim civilisation. Poets like Abu Nuwas and Al-Mutanabbi and thinkers such as Al-Farabi and Avicenna became symbols of that rich intellectual life.
But 19th-century European scholars framed what followed as a long decline after the 11th century, an 800-year gap before Europe’s Renaissance. Modern researchers now say that view is too simple and shaped by Orientalist bias. Arabic literature never really fell silent.
At a recent panel connected to a major book award, linguists and historians pointed out that writing, copying, recitation and translation kept literary life moving even when later historians didn’t always note it. Scholars such as Beatrice Grundler, Hakan Ozkan and Maurice Pomerantz argue that Arabic letters continued to develop across the centuries.
Grundler calls the “lost century” a myth. Her work on the rise of the Arabic book describes a lively ninth-century Baghdad with professional copyists, bookshops and readers - a scene that feels familiar to anyone who’s walked through a busy souq or book market. That challenges the idea that publishing only began with Gutenberg in Europe.
The centres of literary activity shifted - Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Andalusia - but the conversation kept going. Poems were copied and reinterpreted, genres changed and language adapted to new places. Ozkan’s research into zajal, a dialectal form of poetry once dismissed as lowbrow, shows it evolved and flourished long after the Abbasid era. He describes some of it as rule-breaking, playful and very much alive - like a local voice answering and teasing older traditions.
Projects such as NYU Abu Dhabi’s Library of Arabic Literature are helping restore works from these supposed “lost” centuries by editing and translating them for wider readers. As one editor put it, working on these texts is joining a conversation that never ended: generations of writers, commentators and translators talking back and forth across time.
A big reason the decline story spread was access: if texts aren’t translated or promoted, they stay invisible to the wider world. That’s why awards, translations and public programming matter - they bring these works into schools, stages and public life so the idea of a gap doesn’t get recycled.
In short, our literary heritage kept moving even when outsiders said it paused. Remembering that continuity helps us appreciate the rich, ongoing conversation of Arabic letters across centuries.
Jazakum Allahu khayran for reading.
https://www.thenationalnews.co