Historical roots of the “Sira” genre in Arabic literature

The roots of Arabic literature, which is an inseparable part of world culture, go back to the most ancient times. One of the legends that have survived to this day confirms this idea: “Adam, who is the ancestor of man on earth, Ras said his the first verse is revelation over the lifeless Abel's body " (5, 3). Although this legend is far from the truth, it is an allusion to the antiquity of the historical roots of Arabic literature . As can be seen from the sample, the historical roots of Arabic literature go back to the art of the spoken word - legends, historical traditions.

The famous Arabic scholar Hanna al- Fa Khuri divides the development of national Arabic literature into five stages: 1. Pre-Islamic period (475-622); 2. Omeyad period (622-750); 3. Abbasid period (750-1258); 4. The period of Turkish domination (1258-1798); 5. The period of cultural upsurge (late XVII - early XX centuries ) (7, 1-6).

The roots of the sira genre in Arabic literature coincide with one of the five stages on the who are famous Arab scientist Hanna al - Fa - khuri divided the development of Arabic literature - Pre-Islamic period om ( 475-622 ), i.e. period of Jahiliyya. Despite the fact that most of the literary works of the first stage, which is called Pre-Islamic or Jahiliya, were poems, the art of the oral word, through the events taking place between ignorant people, intertribal socio-political events, created its rudiments from this period, along with poetry on language of the people, samples of oral folk literature, especially dastans, epics, folk novels, begin to be created. The main theme of folk novels, sira, the beginnings of which fall on the period of Jahiliya, was connected with the life and life of the Bedouins. And the desert and its harsh nature were the main decoration of this theme. The literary language of the Jahiliyya period was considered the most transparent and pure. The purity and clarity of the language of Arabic folk novels were shrouded precisely in the purity, ignorance of the people of that period, having gone through the difficulties of long years, underwent numerous changes and reached our days.

Studies show that the art of storytelling entered the life of the Arabs from a very ancient period, from pre-Islamic times. Bedouins, after tiring campaigns, robberies, hunting, a day spent in the pasture, resting around a fire lit in the evening, usually had fun listening to stories consisting of stories about great intertribal battles, heroes who, with their courage, generosity, loyalty to a given word, intelligence and military cunning won fame. Due to the fact that the legends that the nomads heard from the Iranians, Syrians, Jews, who are neighboring peoples, were shrouded in these narratives, in the Bedouin tales, along with the ancient Arab heroes Imruulkais, Antar, Hatim at-Tai, the names of Alexander the Great, Sasanian shahs, Byzantine emperors and Prophets from the Bible .

Main text.

Outstanding orientalist I.M. Filshtinsky shows that in Arabic literature , which is the richest and most ancient literature , examples of the art of the oral word are approximately two thousand years old. And the first perfect examples of written literature in Arabic were created in the 5th - 6th centuries. ad. Already during these centuries, Arabic poetry was established in terms of content and form, its size, rhyme system, means of artistic expression, thematic shades were formed. These works of art, created before Islam, are called the literature of the epoch of jahiliyya ( Phil sh . I v. p. 8).

The first period of Arabic literature , which developed during the Middle Ages, is also associated with oral folk art. Only a certain part of the pre-Islamic (jahiliyya period) literature has survived to this day. Samples of literature of this period were translated into written form only in the VIII - X centuries. In the study of pre-Islamic Arabic history, sources that were created orally during the jahiliyyah period are considered reliable sources. The Arabic folk novel, which initially developed orally, after the emergence of the Islamic religion and the formation of the Arab Caliphate, began to take shape and entered the path of its written development.

The emergence of the Islamic religion and its spread in neighboring countries created broad conditions for the development of Arabic literature. The appearance of the Koran gave impetus to the rise of Arabic literature, especially prose, the emergence of new areas of science.

The well-known orientalist Malik Makhmudov writes: “The Islamic religion completely changes the consciousness of ignorant people, directs their skills , moral principles, way of life, psychological world in a completely new direction. This gives impetus to the renewal of literature, and poetic thought, and literary searches, their direction in a different direction. Opens the way to create a great and magnificent culture called Islamic culture. The Arabic literature of the Islamic period, too, at different times is distinguished by peculiar characteristic features. In this regard, the literature of this period is divided into several stages. The literature of the period that followed after the period of Jahiliyyah is called the literature of the period of the rise of Islam and Caliph al-Rashid. This period covers approximately 620-660s. (6, 7).

After the creation in the 7th century of the Arab state - the Caliphate , with the development of urban life, evening conversations - musamarats spread in cities and also penetrate into the palace of the caliph. Due to the fact that representatives of the palace nobility knew that the rulers and their deputies highly valued interesting stories and their expressive telling with fine skill, there is no doubt that in order not to miss the opportunity to distinguish themselves in front of their own and their masters, they tried to preserve what they saw and heard in your mind. The themes of the stories expanded due to new impressions that were associated with the Arab conquests, covering vast territories in the direction of the east and west.

After the assassination of the last caliph Rashidi, Imam Ali alayhissalam in 661, the power passes into the hands of the Syrian governor Muawiyah, and thus the period of the reign of the Umayyads begins, which lasts until 749. During this period, the Arabs had already established their empire from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Peninsula, and in this territory the Islamic religion became the dominant religion. During this period, which spanned approximately 90 years, significant changes took place in the socio-political and cultural life of the Arabs. The Umeyads tried to preserve the Arabic language and culture, the rulers of the dynasty invited Arab narrators, poets and orators to the palace, took care of them, rewarded them for their work, patronized the samples of Arabic folk art and poetry. Literature, from the point of view of the theme, the genre of form, became even more stout, enriched, embarked on a new path of development, which gives impetus to the development of the sira genre.

The Abbasid period of Arabic literature, both in terms of time and successes achieved in the social, political, economic, scientific, literary, cultural and other spheres, was the longest summer period , which was in the center of attention, in the history of the Arab Caliphate. The Abbasid dynasty comes to power in 750. The Abbasids were in power for about five hundred years. During the Abbasid period, Arabic literature went through a very important development. However, the literature of this period does not always remain at the same level, does not rely on the same aesthetic principles, from an artistic, ideological point of view, it is extremely improved. Ultimately, this literature turns into a general Muslim literature and rises to the world level. In the middle of the VIII century, when the Arab conquests were basically completed, a brilliant stage in the development of Islamic culture begins, the period of its highest flowering falls on the 9th - 10th centuries. The Arabs who entered the world stage included the cultural achievements of their neighbors, annexed to the caliphate, as well as the peoples living in the lands they conquered, into Islamic culture. It was during these centuries that the Hellenic and Indo-Iranian cultural influence left its mark on Islamic culture and merged with it. The advent of the Abbasids to power contributed to fundamental changes in the public life of the caliphate. Despite the fact that during the period of the Umayyads opposed marriage on the non-Arabs, the reverse process began during this period. Especially, as a result of the marriage of Arabs to Persian, Roman and Byzantine women, a completely new generation appeared. The Arab, who was very attached to his customs and traditions, the science of akhbar, poetry and genealogy, after the hard life of the desert, met with the full entertainment life of the urban environment. The new social conditions threw the Arabs, accustomed to the hardships of Bedouin life, into the arms of revelry. The sympathy for the concubine increased, which during the war was captured as booty or in peace conditions was bought as a thing. Even marriage to a concubine spread to such an extent that the concubines began to have authority in the palace and the children born from them began to rule the state. Of the caliphs al-Mansur (774-775), ar-Rashid, al-Ma'mun and al-Motasim (833842) are proof of what we have said.

In everyday life, everyday life, clothing and food , imitation began Persians . Void in convictions inherent in a certain stratum of society, in turn, led to the spread of godlessness, unbelief and religious heresy (8, 2/22). All these factors no doubt soon had their effect on literature, including poetry. The new culture, which was formed under the influence of the Sasanian, ancient Greek and Indian culture, became a common Muslim culture. Literature, which appeared precisely in such conditions, reflected the climate of the new period. Paying great attention to translation Caliph Harun al-Rashid (786-809) and his son Caliph al -Mamun (813-833) attracted specialists to translate magnificent works from Syriac, Greek, Persian into Arabic.

In addition to translations, the business of collecting and translating into the written form of native Arabic heritage . Scientists philologists went to the desert to the Bedouins, who are the bearers of the oral tradition, and wrote from their language poems of famous poets, stored in the memory of generations, ancient legends, kalams of wise people.

When the era of written literature began, the role of prose works increased. This was helped by the principles of Arab aesthetics, which entered the general system of the Muslim worldview of the Middle Ages and was established under the influence of Hellenic rationalism. Arab philosophers mastered the idea of the leading role of knowledge, the mind, which firmly entered the basis of Muslim culture: the creation of the whole world is subordinate to it, and the structure of the whole society and the activity of each person individually must also obey it, because the human mind is nothing but a throne divine knowledge. “Permissibility” in front of literary creativity: the dissemination of knowledge and propaganda of permissibility were at the heart of medieval Arabic aesthetics, which set as its main task assisting the improvement of the human personality and human society by subordinating the chaotic principle in man - the soul to the mind. This idea has firmly entered the foundations of the Arab-Muslim culture. In the X - XIII centuries. these demands put their stamp on all the monuments of medieval prose and introduced some instructive shade into them (6, 6–7).

The principle of permissibility also influenced the choice of works for translation from other languages: the medieval Arabs turned not to idolatrous Greco-Roman ancient literature, but to Persian adaptations of Indian classical literature, and, in turn, re-developed these works in the spirit of the requirements established in medieval Muslim literature. ethics. Subsequently, the appearance in Arabic literature of a number of monuments that won fame in the world happened precisely in this way. For example, the book “Kalila and Dimna”, the origin of which goes to the border, i.e. a collection of stories within a story, fairy tales and fables called Panchatantra (Five Books); based on "Sinbadnam" "The Tale of the Seven Viziers", etc. The very ancient work of Assyro-Babylonian origin translated at that time, “The Wisdom of Hikara” (“The Tale of Akira the Wise”), can also be attributed to this series. These works entered Arabic literature in an organic form and played their role in the development of literary taste and artistic means. In particular, the habit of giving a story within a story, which we saw in the fairy tales “A Thousand and One Nights”, as a literary form, originated in Arabic literature precisely from the translation of Indian classics.

In the Arab environment, the perception of these works was facilitated by the possession of these stories of obvious folklore origin. The compilers only emphasized the instructive nature of their meaning or subordinated the legend or anecdote to the general content of the book and simply composed an “instructive” work.

This literature is divided into three periods: Period I is known as the period of the renewal movement. In the literature of this period, the poets tried to move away from the old traditions, conservative style, standard means of artistic expression and image, create simplicity in the language and style of the poem. This movement covers an approximately 70-year period and begins in the second half of the VIII century and continues until the 20-30s. ninth century. Starting from 820, the conservative trend in poetry and literature again goes on the attack and requires poets and writers to renounce a number of principles of the renewal movement. The simplicity, vitality, naturalness inherent in the poetry of renewal is again replaced by a magnificent, solemn style. The technique of writing, the area of meaning and content of the Arabic poem of previous centuries is moving to a dominant position in literature. And therefore, the literature of this period is called the literature of the period of return to traditions. This stage lasts for approximately one century. From the 30s. X century, he is forced to give way to another literary movement. The period of literary synthesis in literature begins. The process of artistic and philosophical knowledge, generalization, which shows itself in the literature of the period of return to traditions, turns into the main aesthetic idea of poetic thinking in the period of literary synthesis. During this period, which lasted approximately until the end of the reign of the Abbasids, the most valuable examples of Arabic poetry, Arabic prose, were created. A characteristic feature of the literature of this period is that the author renounces individual feelings makes efforts to take a critical look at their environment, time , society. Reporting the position of society, its philosophical picture to readers with high artistic generalizations becomes the main goal of literature (2, 8-9).

During this period, oral folk literature takes more important steps, Arabic folk novels were fairy tales “1001 Nights”, “Hamza al - Pakhlavan ”, “Ali Zibek ”, “Antar”, “Abu Safe”, “ Saif zu-Yazan”, “Zat- al -Khimma”, “ Az-Zahir-Baybars”, “Banu Hilal” and other works written in the sira genre . Such a fatalistic idea as religious, mystical thinking, submission to fate, share, hopelessness, resentment, indifference, indifference to real life, anger, hatred and hostility to the world, to live in dreams about the afterlife, the desire to find happiness and prosperity in the afterlife is manifested , as a leading quality in the poems of poets of that period (9, 9 s ).

In the history of Arabic literature we read: “In the VIII-IX centuries. and slave prose made great progress, so the ground was prepared for it to be translated into written the form of ancient dastans, the study of the Koran, the translation of multi-colored scientific and fiction literature from Syriac, Middle Persian and Greek into Arabic. In the historical literature just created at that time, in bright images traditions , legends and individual historical episodes, as well as in geography , literature, which included the stories of merchants and travelers about distant lands , also had elements of fiction. Artistic prose was also enriched with epistolary and speech styles: in business correspondence, the art of rhetoric and sermons . (khutba) some authors have achieved great expressiveness and skill. During this period, Arabic folk novels, having made the transition to written literature, developed, trying to create conditions for the development of prose.

Al-Masudi (died in 956) created vivid historical and geographical works. A translation into Arabic of the Persian collection (“Khezar Efsane ”) entitled “A Thousand Tales to ”, which was the prototype of the tales “A Thousand and One Nights” , appears . The ancient saj (rhyming prose) is widely circulated in secular literature. As a result of the stage of evolution , passed in three stages in about a thousand years period, in the composition of the collection “ A Thousand and One Nights” three layers appeared - the Indo-Iranian, Baghdad and Egyptian layer. Although these layers do not exist in the monument in their pure form, their differentiation became possible on the basis of leading thematic elements, historical and geographical realities, plot and compositional elements . Because, fairy tales in each layer, despite subsequent influences and additions, carry the social conditions of the environment in which they were formed, the stamp of cultural traditions, way of life and thinking.

In the translation activity , which is one of the important factors in the formation and progress of the Arab-Muslim syncretic culture , the emergence of a stage of social and cultural flourishing , called the “Muslim Renaissance” , a special place was occupied by the translation of samples of the literary and philosophical thought of Iran into Arabic, i.e. the translation of the collection “A Thousand and One Nights” from the Pahlavi language into Arabic and the acquisition of new qualities by it as a result of improvement was not a rare occurrence. Speaking about this factor, I.M. Filshtinsky writes: “In the second half of the 8th century, the Iranian current, which brought new genres and themes to medieval Arabic poetry, had a more radical influence on the development of prose. It was during this period that new prose genres appeared, the first samples of artistic prose were created in the true sense of the word, the founder of which is considered to be an Arab writer of Iranian origin, one of the most prominent personalities of the “golden age” of Arab culture, Abdullah ibn al-Mukaffa. (9, 88).

Having great merit in the history of Arabic literature, Ibn al-Muqaffa transmitted a rich historical, didactic and artistic heritage into the Arab environment , developed during the period of the Sasanian rulers in Iran, especially Khosrow Anushiravan (531-579), translated into Arabic “Kalila and Dimna”, the roots of which go back to the magnificent Indian monument “Panchatantra”, one of the main sources of “Shahnameh” by Firdo u si “Khuda th name”, as well as such valuable monuments as “Tajname” and “Ain - name” .

Studies show that individual narratives and episodes of the sira genre of Arabic oral literature are found in the works of medieval authors, including “Kitab al-Aghani” by Abulfa ra ja al -Isfahani, “ Iqd al-farid” by Ibn Abd Rabbahi, “Nishwar al -mukhazir” at-Tanukhi, “Kitab al-akhbar al-ezkiyya” by Ibn al-Jawzi , “ Masari al-ushsha k ” as-Sarra ja. It is interesting that the text of narratives and episodes in written monuments is very close to similar plots in folk literature, even completely coincides with them.

Collectors of Arabic oral stories and folk wisdom also acted in this way. In these collections, consisting of these materials, which had thematic sections and headings, readers could find and adopt useful information and instructions for all random occasions in life. Such types of novels, having developed in the 9th century, were read with interest for the Arabs in the Middle Ages.

Acquired as a result of the development of cities since the 15th century, extraordinary popularity among the middle class, partly the nobility , samples of folk literature, especially sirs, were performed in markets, caravanserais, shops and coffee houses. This performance acquired its originality thanks to memory, acting skills and oratory . abilities of a professional storyteller . In the conditions of a certain limited repertoire, the latter quality was of particular importance, and it was thanks to him that works of folk literature of a kind were created anew, thus appearing as products of the stage of collective creativity (8, 18 s ). The well-known Austrian orientalist J. Hammer- Purgstahl ( 1774-1856 ) who observed this stage in the same period can be said in all places of the Arab world - Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen: “The burning heat of noon, or when certain work in the city forced the traveler to stop his journey, the members of the caravan or the human mass in the market gathered under one tree or in the coffee shop around storyteller and listened to him . Hammer's words , along with professional storytellers , who constitute a special estate in the evolution of folk literature , put the role of two more classes - collectors and secretaries . As a result of the intervention of secretaries in the text, in accordance with their taste, samples of folk literature appeared. The use of written text in folk novels was reflected in the works of a number of European travelers and scientists. And this is natural, because it is not easy to memorize the countless episodes of the great folk novels of the sir, i.e. the translation of folk literature into written form, comes from the needs of storytellers who want to define the scope of the repertoire and, in a way, were carried out on their order. However, “the translation of this or that narrative into written form did not at all mean its canonization. The oral version of this narration, in accordance with the laws of folklore, continued to exist, i.e. passed from one country to another, translated from one language to another, subjected to changes depending on the taste of storytellers and the requirements of the audience. However, as long as its cell line, the main idea and the main theme were preserved, the plot could be recognized” (8, 3 s ).

Conclusion

Sometimes a sharp , and sometimes a negative opinion on a definitely cautious background about the language and style, artistic and aesthetic qualities ah Siry could not reduce the interest in samples of folk literature among the people. Readers bought the cheapest paperback books from stores. They were not interested in the cover of the book, but the value inside it. Due to the fact that famous folk novels were also printed in cheaper books, they were bought and read more. Therefore, among the Arab people there were no those who did not know the sira, everyone bought books consisting of samples of the sira and read them. The sirs, who have won over the masses of readers, have taken a position among the main genres of modern Arabic literature. Folk books should have the duty of clarifying moral, spiritual feelings, realizing their strength in them, awakening courage and love for the motherland. In the literary life of folk novels, pessimistic assessments of them date back to the 10th - 15th centuries. These centuries are traditionally considered a period of ups and downs. and ups in the life of the sire . The study of syrah since the 18th century was realized as a result of the joint efforts of European authors. Especially, in the first decades of the 18th century, serious research began in the field of folk literature (9, 5c).