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COMMENT ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE ARABS TO MEDIEVAL LITERATURE AND ARCHITECTURE
ARABS CONTRIBUTION TO ARCHITECTURE

The beautiful Islamic architectural art was born after their conquests of the Eastern Mediterranean countries. Once it was established it quickly spread throughout the vast empire of the Caliphs.

The Abbassid capital Baghdad was a miracle of beauty in its monuments. Unfortunately no trace was left of these monuments which were destroyed by the Mongol's invasion. Only descriptions of these palaces can evoke the splendors that belonged to the Thousand and One Nights. Also the remaining palaces in Alhambra and Alcazar in Spain reflect the luxurious refinements of the other palaces that disappeared forever.The art is characterized with distinct mosaics and arabesque designs.

LITERARY WORKS

The most well known fiction from the Islamic world was The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), which was a compilation of many earlier folk tales. The epic took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. All Arabian fantasy tales were often called “Arabian Nights” when translated into English, regardless of whether they appeared in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, in any version, and a number of tales are known in Europe as “Arabian Nights” despite existing in no Arabic manuscript.

 
“Ali Baba” by Maxfield Parrish.This epic has been influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland.Many imitations were written, especially in France. Various characters from this epic have themselves become cultural icons in Western culture, such as Aladdin, Sinbad and Ali Baba. However, no medieval Arabic source has been traced for Aladdin, which was incorporated into The Book of One Thousand and One Nights by its French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard it from an Arab Syrian storyteller from Aleppo. Part of its popularity may have sprung from the increasing historical and geographical knowledge, so that places of which little was known and so marvels were plausible had to be set further “long ago” or farther “far away”; this is a process that continues, and finally culminate in the fantasy world having little connection, if any, to actual times and places. A number of elements from Arabian mythology and Persian mythology are now common in modern fantasy, such as genies, bahamuts, magic carpets, magic lamps, etc

A famous example of Arabic poetry and Persian poetry on romance (love) is Layla and Majnun, dating back to the Umayyad era in the 7th century.

Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) was a pioneer of the philosophical novel. He wrote the first Arabic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus), which told the story of Hayy, an autodidactic feral child, living in seclusion on a desert island, being the earliest example of a desert island story.A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail’s Hayy ibn Yaqdhan first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first novel in English. Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist.The story also anticipated Rousseau’s Emile: or, On Education in some ways.

There were several elements of courtly love which developed in Arabic literature. The notions of “love for love’s sake” and “exaltation of the beloved lady” have been traced back to Arabic literature of the 9th and 10th centuries. The notion of the “ennobling power” of love was developed in the early 11th century by the Persian psychologist and philosopher, Ibn Sina (known as “Avicenna” in Europe), in his treatise Risala fi’l-Ishq (Treatise on Love). The final element of courtly love, the concept of “love as desire never to be fulfilled”, was at times implicit in Arabic poetry.

Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi, “The Book of Muhammad’s Ladder”concerning Muhammad’s ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi


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