 | This article contains close paraphrasing of a non-free copyrighted source, https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~rallen/ ( Copyvios report ).(November 2023) |
Roger Allen is an English scholar of Arabic literature. He has translated several Arabic works of literature into English, and has also written scholarly works on Arabic literature. [1]
He was the first student at Oxford University to obtain a PhD degree in modern Arabic literature, which he did under the supervision of Muhammad Mustafa Badawi. His doctoral thesis was on Muhammad al-Muwaylihi’s narrative Hadith Isa ibn Hisham (Isa Ibn Hisham’s Tale), and was later published as a book titled A Period of Time (1974, 1992).
At the request of Dr Gaber Asfour, the Director-General of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt, he later prepared an edition of the complete works of Muhammad al-Muwaylihi (2002), and that of his father, Ibrahim al-Muwaylihi (2007).
In 1968, Allen moved from Bristol to Philadelphia to take up an academic position at the University of Pennsylvania, where he subsequently taught generations of students and Arabic scholars. He co-wrote an Arabic textbook with Adel Allouche, and was engaged with Arabic pedagogy throughout his career. After a 43-year career at UPenn, he retired in 2011, serving as chair of the Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations for the last six years.
As a translator, Allen has brought forth into English numerous works of contemporary Arabic literature, a list of which is given below. His translations of Naguib Mahfouz were instrumental in bringing the Egyptian writer to global attention, and Allen also played a critical role in the nomination process that eventually led to Mahfouz winning the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
One of his key works is The Arabic Novel: an historical and critical introduction (1st edition 1982), which initially took the form of a series of lectures at the University of Manchester. He also wrote a book on the Arabic literary tradition as a whole, titled The Arabic Literary Heritage (1998), which later appeared in shortened paperback format under the title An Introduction to Arabic Literature, which was itself translated into Arabic and published in Cairo in 2003. This is now regarded as the standard work in the field. For the series The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, he edited the volume spanning 1150 to 1850, which was titled The Post-Classical Period (2006). He has contributed to many other scholarly ventures in his field. Beyond UPenn, he has been involved in academic activities in Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco, and has participated in the conferences of the Supreme Council for Culture in Egypt . His former students prepared a three-part festschrift in his honour in 2008-2009.
Naguib Mahfouz Abdelaziz Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Basha was an Egyptian writer who won the 1988 Nobel Prize in Literature. Mahfouz is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers in Arabic literature, along with Taha Hussein, to explore themes of existentialism. He is the only Egyptian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. He published 35 novels, over 350 short stories, 26 screenplays, hundreds of op-ed columns for Egyptian newspapers, and seven plays over a 70-year career, from the 1930s until 2004. All of his novels take place in Egypt, and always mentions the lane, which equals the world. His most famous works include The Cairo Trilogy and Children of Gebelawi. Many of Mahfouz's works have been made into Egyptian and foreign films; no Arab writer exceeds Mahfouz in number of works that have been adapted for cinema and television. While Mahfouz's literature is classified as realist literature, existential themes appear in it.
Arabic literature is the writing, both as prose and poetry, produced by writers in the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is Adab, which is derived from a meaning of etiquette, and which implies politeness, culture and enrichment.
Denys Johnson-Davies was an eminent Arabic-to-English literary translator who translated, inter alia, several works by Nobel Prize-winning Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz, Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, Palestinian poet Mahmud Darwish and Syrian author Zakaria Tamer.
Abū Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Hishām ibn Ayyūb al-Ḥimyarī al-Muʿāfirī al-Baṣrī, or Ibn Hisham, was a 9th-century Muslim historian and scholar who is known for editing the biography of Islamic prophet Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq. He grew up in Basra, in modern-day Iraq and later moved to Egypt.
Islamic literature is literature written by Muslim people, influenced by an Islamic cultural perspective, or literature that portrays Islam. It can be written in any language and portray any country or region. It includes many literary forms including adabs, a non-fiction form of Islamic advice literature, and various fictional literary genres.
Bensalem Himmich is a Moroccan novelist, poet and philosopher with a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Paris, who teaches at the Mohammed V University, Rabat. He served as Minister of Culture from 29 July 2009 to 3 January 2012.
The American University in Cairo Press is the leading English-language publisher in the Middle East.
The Banipal Prize, whose full name is the Saif Ghobash–Banipal Prize for Arabic Literary Translation, is an annual prize awarded to a translator for the published English translation of a full-length literary work in the Arabic language. The prize was inaugurated in 2006 by the literary magazine Banipal which promotes the diffusion of contemporary Arabic literature through English translations and the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature. It is administered by the Society of Authors in the UK, and the prize money is sponsored by Omar Saif Ghobash and his family in memory of Ghobash's late father Saif Ghobash. As of 2009, the prize money amounted to £3000.
The Arab Writers Union is an association of Arab writers, founded in 1969, in Damascus, Syria, at the initiative of a group of Arab writers including Syrian novelist Hanna Mina. In 2008, the union was moved from Damascus to Cairo and in 2015 to Abu Dhabi. Its current president is Dr. Muhammad Al-Hourani.
William Maynard Hutchins is an American academic, author and translator of contemporary Arabic literature. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.
Hartmut Fähndrich is a German scholar and translator, specialising in translation of Arabic literature into German. He was born in Tübingen and studied at the universities of Tübingen, Münster, and UCLA. He obtained an MA in comparative literature and a PhD in Islamic studies from UCLA. In 1972, he moved to Switzerland where he has lived ever since. He has taught at the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich.
Nancy N. Roberts is a translator of Arabic literature. She won the University of Arkansas Translation Award for her translation of Ghada Samman's Beirut '75. She also received a commendation from the judges of the 2008 Banipal Prize for her translation of Salwa Bakr's The Man from Bashmour.
Issa J. Boullata was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
The Project of Translation from Arabic is an academic project initiated by Dr Salma Khadra Jayyusi in 1980 in order to translate, and publish, works of Arabic literature into the English language. The stated goal of PROTA is "the dissemination of Arabic culture and literature abroad". The project had its genesis in the late 1970s when Columbia University Press invited Jayyusi to prepare a large anthology of modern Arabic literature. Funding came from the Iraqi Ministry of Information and Culture. Two major anthologies came out of this early endeavour: Modern Arabic Poetry (1987) and The Literature of Modern Arabia (1988).
The instance that marked the shift in the whole of Arabic literature towards modern Arabic literature can be attributed to the Arab World-West contact during the 19th and early 20th century. This contact resulted in the gradual replacement of Classical Arabic forms with Western ones. Genres like plays, novels, and short stories were coming to the fore. Although the exact date in which this reformation in literary production occurred is unknown, the rise of modern Arabic literature was "inseparable" from the Nahda, also referred to as the Arab Renaissance.
Dar Shorouq is an Arabic publishing house based in Beirut and Cairo. It publishes books in politics, biographies, memoirs, history, philosophy, social sciences, religion, nationalist thought, and art as well as children's books.
Qismati and Nasibi is a short story written by a Nobel Prize winner, the Egyptian author Naguib Mahfouz. It was included in the short story collection Ra’aytu fima yara al-na’im published in 1982. It was included in a collection of short stories written in Arabic Modern Arabic Short Stories: A Bilingual Reader, edited/translated into English by Ronak Husni and Daniel Newman. The title in Arabic means "My Fate and My Destiny." It is frequently interpreted to be an allegory of the Palestinian-Israeli situation.
Al Muqattam was an Arabic newspaper which was published in Cairo, Egypt, between 1888 and 1952. It was one of the leading papers until its closure by the Egyptian government in 1954. The title of the paper was a reference to a range of hills outside Cairo.
Hadith Isa bin Hisham, or "A Period in Time" is a work of literature by Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī first published in serial form between April 1898 and August 1903 in the Egyptian newspaper Misbah ash-Sharq . The serialized pieces were compiled and published in a book in 1907.
Muḥammad al-Muwayliḥī was an Egyptian author and journalist of the Nahda. He edited Misbah ash-Sharq and published Fatra Min az-Zamān, a serialized literary work of social and political satire, compiled and published as a book entitled Hadith Isa bin Hisham in 1907.
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