what is Iraqi literature?
Arguably, Iraq is a country to be associated with the oldest literature on Earth--, at least the oldest recorded literature on Earth. It dates back to Sumerian times. Our perception of the antiquity of the Sumerian literature is due to the early invention of cuneiform writing. The oldest form of Sumerian proto-writing dates back to the 30th century BC; it spread in the 3rd millennium BC. On the other hand, the religious writings and stories of Sumer were preserved by the successor civilisations of Akkad and Babylon. They still cultivated Sumerian as an official, written language, even after it disappeared from popular use.
This is how the Epic of Gilgamesh, considered today as the oldest literary text, could be preserved till our times. It is by no means an isolated text; there exists a larger corpus of literature dealing with the origin of the world, the gods and the lives of heroes, as well as moral teachings. Those narrations, apart from Gilgamesh, deal also with Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, Adapa (a mythical hero who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality), the kings Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, etc.
Also the literature that may be directly connected to the present-day Iraqi identity is very old. It dates back to the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age, with the Abbasid dynasty and Baghdad as the literary and intellectual centre of the Eastern world, attracting people of the most varied origin, such as Al-Jahiz and Omar Khayyam. Baghdad had its House of Wisdom as well as its lodges and places of informal literary gatherings, its high tradition and its mujun ("libertine" style). No wonder that many stories of One Thousand and One Nights speak of the city and its ruler, Harun al-Rashid.
There was a great rupture in this history of excellence. It happened with the Mongol invasions that marked the end of the great Arabic-speaking civilisation. Later on, both in Ottoman and colonial order, Iraq ceased to be the capital district of the world. This peripheral status of the country was preserved in the Nahda period, that essentially happened elsewhere. Finally, the 20th-century Iraqi literature emerges with the educator and literary scholar, also considered as a "poet of freedom", Maruf Rusafi (1875-1945).
This is how the Epic of Gilgamesh, considered today as the oldest literary text, could be preserved till our times. It is by no means an isolated text; there exists a larger corpus of literature dealing with the origin of the world, the gods and the lives of heroes, as well as moral teachings. Those narrations, apart from Gilgamesh, deal also with Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, Adapa (a mythical hero who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality), the kings Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, etc.
Also the literature that may be directly connected to the present-day Iraqi identity is very old. It dates back to the beginning of the Islamic Golden Age, with the Abbasid dynasty and Baghdad as the literary and intellectual centre of the Eastern world, attracting people of the most varied origin, such as Al-Jahiz and Omar Khayyam. Baghdad had its House of Wisdom as well as its lodges and places of informal literary gatherings, its high tradition and its mujun ("libertine" style). No wonder that many stories of One Thousand and One Nights speak of the city and its ruler, Harun al-Rashid.
There was a great rupture in this history of excellence. It happened with the Mongol invasions that marked the end of the great Arabic-speaking civilisation. Later on, both in Ottoman and colonial order, Iraq ceased to be the capital district of the world. This peripheral status of the country was preserved in the Nahda period, that essentially happened elsewhere. Finally, the 20th-century Iraqi literature emerges with the educator and literary scholar, also considered as a "poet of freedom", Maruf Rusafi (1875-1945).
I have readZoltan Szombathy, Mujun: Libertinism in Medieval Muslim Society and Literature (2013)
Marek Dziekan, Historia Iraku (2007) Abū Nuwās ... |
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I have written... nothing ...
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trying to understand the deep time of Iraq
the oldest literature on Earth
For a long time, Comparative Literature lived in a relatively shallow time perspective, if I dare say so. Greek and Latin texts, very well assimilated, constituted at the same time a temporal frontier and a familiar territory. There was nothing older than one's own Homer, an author with whom critics like George Steiner were familiar since their early childhood. Myself, I could read it only in Polish, having no possibility, not even a dream, of learning Greek, but it was all there, at least roughly speaking.
Nonetheless, as Comparative Literature is today, after David Damrosch and so on, literature older than Homer is in fact a must. There is at least the epos of Gilgamesh. But I wonder how much farther one may go in this direction, And what is the weight of such a time perspective on the subsequent literary creation. Is it a forgotten past, unearthed and appropriated by white, colonial archaeologists? What does this time depth does to a contemporary Iraqi writer?
Nonetheless, as Comparative Literature is today, after David Damrosch and so on, literature older than Homer is in fact a must. There is at least the epos of Gilgamesh. But I wonder how much farther one may go in this direction, And what is the weight of such a time perspective on the subsequent literary creation. Is it a forgotten past, unearthed and appropriated by white, colonial archaeologists? What does this time depth does to a contemporary Iraqi writer?
