Arab Women Writers

A Critical Reference Guide, 1873-1999

Radwa Ashour, Ferial Ghazoul, Hasna Reda-Mekdashi, Radwa Ashour, Ferial Ghazoul, Hasna Reda-Mekdashi

• Publisher: The American University in Cairo Press
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781617975547
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire pour les femmes auteures

Arab women's writing in the modern age began with 'A'isha al-Taymuriya, Warda al-Yaziji, Zaynab Fawwaz, and other nineteenth-century pioneers in Egypt and the Levant. This unique study-first published in Arabic in 2004-looks at the work of those pioneers and then traces the development of Arab women's literature through the end of the twentieth century, and also includes a meticulously researched, comprehensive bibliography of writing by Arab women. In the first section, in nine essays that cover the Arab Middle East from Morocco to Iraq and Syria to Yemen, critics and writers from the Arab world examine the origin and evolution of women's writing in each country in the region, addressing fiction, poetry, drama, and autobiographical writing.The second part of the volume contains bibliographical entries for over 1, 200 Arab women writers from the last third of the nineteenth century through 1999. Each entry contains a short biography and a bibliography of each author's published works. This section also includes Arab women's writing in French and English, as well as a bibliography of works translated into English.With its broad scope and extensive research, this book is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in Arabic literature, women's studies, or comparative literature. Contributors: Emad Abu Ghazi, Radwa Ashour, Mohammed Berrada, Ferial J. Ghazoul, Subhi Hadidi, Haydar Ibrahim, Yumna al-'Id, Su'ad al-Mani', Iman al-Qadi, Amina Rachid, Huda al-Sadda, Hatim al-Sakr.

1 Lebanon

Yumna al-‘Id

Introduction

As a poet, al-Khansa’ was held in high esteem. She had her own place in the ‘Ukaz market next to the equally renowned poet al-Nabigha, and the Prophet attested to her poetic superiority by dubbing her “the best poet” (notably, not the best female poet). Critic and grammarian al-Mufaddal al-Dabbi (d. 786) was of the opinion that among all the Arabs, al-Khansa’ had composed the best line of auto-panegyric, while in his Kitab al-Aghani (Book of Songs) tenth-century scholar Abu-l-Faraj al-Isfahani includes her among those poets whose verses were chosen for the one hundred songs sung in the days of Harun al-Rashid. But when the Umayyad poet Jarir was asked who the best poet was, he responded, “Me, were it not for that devious woman.”¹ Jarir’s description of al-Khansa’ as “devious” implicitly attests to her superiority even as he rejects it. Women were not usually superior; therefore, al-Khansa’ is devious, or somehow underhanded.

Fuhula, or poetic virility, was a value that inhabited the popular consciousness, referring to that which ensured the continuity and sovereignty of the tribe. Poets who composed satirical lampoons or panegyric, for themselves or others, were valued over those who composed elegiac or lyric poetry, just as those who waged war and fought were held in more esteem than those who lovingly and with a willing spirit produced with their hands, served, educated, and raised children. Such values, grounded in social or historical conditions, sanctify the continuity of power and justify its authority, despite changing conditions and historical developments. The injustice they entail is great for the ruled, and even greater for women, who are twice burdened, once by their sex and again by their social status as part of the ruled.

Realizing the strong links between the political, the literary-cultural, and the social, women at the beginning of the Arab renaissance understood that their own liberation was dependent on liberating the collective consciousness from traditional values that sanctified their inferiority and made them, according to ‘Anbara Salam al-Khalidi (1898–1986) in her memoirs, hostages to “imprisoning walls” and “draping curtains.”² For the same reason, men of the renaissance also realized that national liberation and societal development were vitally dependent on women’s emancipation, which would bring them out of a seclusion that strangled their abilities to a world which they could take part in shaping. In both cases—women’s desire for their own liberation and men’s desire for national liberation—women were seen as the cornerstone of the construction and advancement of society. The school, as a means of instilling and disseminating knowledge, was thus the starting point of the renaissance in the Arab East. In Lebanon, foreign missions were active in establishing schools early on. The first was the Anglican mission, which established what later became known as the American University in 1820. More schools followed, and by 1860 there were thirty-three, most of them in Beirut.

Beirut was well situated to be the link between East and West, a free space for cultural dialogue, open to the West and its rationalist civilization. With the escalating Druze-Christian sectarian conflict in Mount Lebanon from 1840 and the 1860 massacres, there was a marked increase of foreign communities in Beirut, and Western consulates and the main mission schools relocated there.³ It was in these foreign, religious schools that most female pioneers were educated. They were Christians, and they represented the minority that came from educated, well-off, enlightened households. Initially, education was not within the reach of the poor and it was not for girls. The few national schools that existed were established for boys, and people saw no good in sending their girls to school.

The first pioneer, Zaynab Fawwaz (1846–1914), did not go to school. Chance alone gave the child—born into a modest, rural home—the opportunity to learn to read and write. Fatima Khalil, the wife of ‘Ali Bey al-As‘ad, then the feudal lord of Mount ‘Amil, taught the young Zaynab. With her intelligence and zeal, Zaynab read voraciously and eventually stepped into the spacious world of knowledge in Egypt.

The Christian nature of education at the foreign missions meant that enlightened Muslims who were willing and able to educate their girls refrained from sending them to the foreign schools, fearing that the wider public would accuse them of blasphemy and that their daughters would be harmed or humiliated as a result. Thus, while Warda al-Yaziji (1838–1924), Labiba Mikha’il Sawaya (1876–1916), and Labiba Hashim, for example, went to American missionary schools, ‘Ali Salam, a prominent and enlightened Muslim of Beirut, sent his daughter ‘Anbara to a shaykha (learned woman) who taught girls basic reading skills. The writer ‘Anbara Salam al-Khalidi related later how, when she was ten years old, people would shout at her, “Go home!” as she was on her way to her lessons. She spoke of how Professor ‘Abd Allah al-Bustani was persuaded by her father to teach her the principles of Arabic at home and how prominent Muslims convinced one another that “the advancement of the community starts with the education of girls,”⁴ which prompted them to establish a girls’ school in Beirut.

It was forbidden for a girl to appear in a public place, and her voice was taboo. The day that ‘Anbara Salam stood on the podium to speak, wearing her full veil, one of the men spoke up, “What an inauspicious disgrace! How can her father allow his daughter to speak before a gathering of men? By God, by God, I’d like to shoot her and spare the world from her.”⁵ The young ‘Anbara had to wait until 1928 to remove her face veil, while Warda al-Yaziji, older than her, had left hers behind decades earlier.

There was thus a vital need to establish national schools for girls and awaken public opinion as to the importance of girls’ education. Both Christian and Muslim women pioneers in Lebanon stepped up to the task. In 1881, Emily Sursuq and Labiba Jahshan jointly founded the first institute for girls’ education. It was, as Salma al-Sa’igh said, a model for the establishment of institutes in the East and in “preserving the national language most perfectly.”⁶ In addition to schools, pioneering women founded women’s associations and salons to support the women’s awakening, give them a space in society, and contribute to their advancement. In 1914, women in Beirut established a women’s association called the Vigilance of the Arab Woman. In 1917, a girls’ club was opened which soon became a literary and social salon that received distinguished writers, poets, and doctors passing through Beirut. The women were not intimidated by rumors at the time that “mixed dances were constantly held [in the club].”⁷After the First World War, Julia Tu‘ma Dimashqiya, a Christian married to a Muslim, established a women’s association for women of both confessions whose objective was “elevating women’s cultural level.”⁸

Women pioneers of the renaissance in Lebanon were mindful of discrimination between Christians and Muslims, sought to strengthen the Arabic language as part of the liberation project from Ottoman tyranny and Turkization, and took Arab nationalism as their national identity.

In 1928, a number of women’s associations from Syrian and Lebanese cities met to form the Women’s Union, and the union’s first conference was held the same year, achieving its aspirations for religious and national inclusiveness. The conference cemented the literary status of women, embodied in the first female pioneer to revive Arabic poetry, Warda al-Yaziji: to mark the occasion, a commemorative portrait of her was unveiled on a wall in Beirut’s National Library next to other prominent Lebanese writers. ‘Anbara Salam was named the representative of women at the conference as an expression of the Muslim-Christian concord: Salma al-Sa’igh commented, “She’s a Muslim and al-Yazijiya is a Christian! Literary ties are the strongest bonds, and devotion to knowledge is like devotion to religion. God created people of knowledge, like people of religion, to serve the truth.”⁹

Lebanese women also played a notable role in establishing and writing for newspapers and magazines. Alexandra Khuri Averino founded Anis al-jalis in 1898, followed by Labiba Hashim’s Fatat al-sharq in 1906 and ‘Afifa Karam’s al-Mar’a al-Suriya in 1911. Most of them settled in Egypt or the Americas, like many male Lebanese writers and intellectuals, searching for spaces of freedom, and this was a decisive factor in establishing their presence as writing women.

Zaynab Fawwaz, the first to write of women’s issues in the Egyptian press, first and foremost in al-Nil, considered girls’ education “the primary foundation” for the improvement of young people. According to Fawwaz, a child raised by an ignorant mother learns all the faults that stem from this ignorance, and no teacher or school can correct them, just as one cannot shore up an unstable building. Fawwaz concluded that the benefit of educating women accrues to men in particular in “childrearing, housekeeping, and companionship to the husband.”¹⁰ In highlighting women’s role in social improvement, Zaynab Fawwaz reconsidered the work that women do in the home—work that is deemed worthless and insignificant by men. In her newspaper articles, Fawwaz was keen to stress equality between men and women: “Know that the spirit is an abstract essence, neither male nor female, but it is influenced by the physical form, and thus the capacities of men and women differ. Each one is half the world, and the importance of their positions derives from this equal proportion.”¹¹

Mayy Ziyada (1886–1941) also made substantial contributions to newspaper writing. Ziyada came to Egypt from a convent school in Nazareth. Since her father was an editor for the Cairo-based al-Mahrusa, she met many writers and journalists. After studying Arabic and the Arabic literary tradition, she gave lectures and speeches, and her literary salon attracted intellectuals, writers, and poets. Most of her lectures were published as articles in the press. In her articles and talks, Mayy Ziyada evinced a deep awareness of the right of human beings, particularly women, to freedom and justice. She went beyond the liberation of Arab or Eastern women in her writings to address the institution of human slavery in history, linking it to systems of human governance. She believed that in liberational revolutions, like the French revolution, women found the opportunity to rise “from under the feet of the crushing master.”¹² In the family, she maintained, the master is the father; he rules over the members of the family much as his leader rules over him.¹³ Ziyada defined nationalism as a human concept that went beyond religious identity and social and religious differences and gave everyone his or her due.¹⁴ On the basis of this definition, Ziyada engaged those who disregarded the Arabs’ rights and saw them only as desert-dwellers who are good at nothing “save plundering, theft, and destruction.”¹⁵ She highlighted the value of Arab civilization and its contributions to the world and discussed the importance of Arabic, seeing in its emergence “a link of goodness and light between the empty ages and the modern centuries.”¹⁶

Like other writers of her era, Mayy Ziyada addressed two major issu...