Egyptian Literature

 Objectives:
1. Characterize Egyptian Literature
2. Trace the historical background of
Egyptian Literature
3. Enumerate and identify the different
forms of Egyptian Literature
4. Discuss religious literature
5. Find pleasure in reading their literary
pieces
 INTRODUCTION
Egypt

Official Name : Arab Republic of Egypt

Capital : Cairo
Population : 54.6 million (2001)
Currency : Egyptian Pound
Official Language :Arabic
 Occupying the northeast corner of Africa,
Egypt is bisected by the highly fertile Nile
valley which separates its arid western desert
from the smaller semi-arid eastern desert.
Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel brought
security, the return of the Sinai, and large
injections of U.S. aid. Its essentially pro-
Western military-backed regime is now
being challenged by an increasingly influential
Islamic fundamentalist movement.
 Facts about Ancient Egypt
 Egyptian men and women wore makeup. It was thought to
have healing powers, plus it helped protect their skin from
the sun.
 They used moldy bread to help with infections.
 They were one of the first civilizations to invent writing. They
also used ink to write and paper called papyrus.
 The ancient Egyptians were scientist and mathematicians.
They had numerous inventions including ways to build
buildings, medicine, cosmetics, the calendar, the plow for
farming, musical instruments, and even toothpaste.
 Ancient Egypt plays a major role in the bible.
The Israelites were held captive there as
slaves for many years. Moses helped them
escape and led them to the Promise Land.
 The Pharaoh kept his hair covered. It was
not to be seen by regular people.
 Cats were considered sacred in ancient
Egypt.
 EGYPTIAN LITERATURE

Ancient Egyptian literature is

characterized by a wide diversity of types
and subject matter. It dates from the old
Kingdom (2755-2255 B.C) into the
Greco-Roman period (after 332 B.C)
Such literary devices as simile,
metaphor, alliteration, and punning are
found.
RANGE OF LITERARY FORMS
The religious literature of ancient Egypt
includes hymns to the gods, mythological and
magical texts, and extensive collection of
mortuary texts. The range of secular literature
includes stories; instructive literature, known as
“wisdom text”; poems; biographical and historical
texts; and scientific treatises, including
mathematical and medical texts. Notable also are
the many legal, administrative, and economic
texts and private documents such as letters,
although not actually literature.
 The individual authors of several
compositions dating from the Old
Kingdom and the Middle Kingdom were
revered in later periods. They came from
the educated class of upper-level
government officials, and their audience
was largely educated people like
themselves.
Historical Background
A. Old Kingdom - Very few literary texts survived
from the Old Kingdom. Among the most
important works of the period were: Pyramid
texts which include nonliterary and highly
poetic spells; Cannibal texts , a vivid bits of
poetry representing the dead King attaining
power in the afterlife by devouring the gods;
and the Proverbs of Ptahotep, a book of sound
but worldly advice.
B. Middle Kingdom - This is the classic age of
Egyptian literature which saw the flourishing
of works which became popular for
hundreds of years. Among these are: Tale
of Senuhe, which relates the flight of a
refugee courtier, Sinuhe, from Egypt to Syria
for political reasons, his life in exile and his
homecoming; the Shipwrecked Sailor, a
simple folk tale of a sailor who meets an old
fatherly serpent on an island; and King
Cheops and the Magicians, several folk tales
given in a frame work story.
C. New Kingdom - During this period, the style of
writing changed and the language of the day was
used, which brought forth a more natural
manner of writing, replacing the artificialities of
the Middle Kingdom. Among the famous
writings of this period were: The Story of King
Apohis and Sekenenre, which concerns war
expelling the Hykos; Voyage of Wenamon, a
tale of an official sent to Lebanon for cedar
wood; The Tale of the Two Brothers; The
Enchanted Prince; Hymn to the Sun, to name a
few. The new Kingdom saw increased concern
over the dangers after death and many spells and
rituals were composed for use of the dead.
D. Late Period - The literature of the late
period differs greatly from that of the
earlier times because it was written in
demotic, the simplified egyptian language
of that time. Works like The Lamentations
of Isis and Nephtys and Setna and The
Magic Book were popular during this
period.
Types of Egyptian Literature

Most of the Egyptian writings

fall into one of the five types:
Wisdom literature, religious
literature, tales, love lyrics, and
pessimistic literature.
Religious Literature
Religious literature predominates in Egypt.
This is always the case when the priest are the
only persons who can write and make records
and it is rare that any secular literature survives
from an early period. In Egypt, the earliest
body of texts that can be called literature is
entirely religious and comprises a series of
hymns and spells sculptured on the walls of
the burial chambers in the pyramids of the five
kings of the sixth dynasty.
 These are known as the pyramid text.
They have clearly been copied and recopied
so many times that often the language is too
corrupt to be comprehensible. It is however,
possible to translate the greater part of the
inscription though many of the allusions are
baffling.
The Pyramid Texts consist of hymns and
spells for the benefit of the dead, and as they
are the earliest literary liturgy and exposition
of religion in the world, they throw a great
light on the primitive beliefs and official
creeds.
 The knowledge of them was handed
down undoubtedly by words of mouth till
the time of the 12th dynasty when many of
the texts appear on the printed and
sculptured coffins of the period. These we
now call the Coffin Texts. The early
spells occur in the interesting compilation
to which the misleading title of the Book
of the Dead was given by early
Egyptologists.
Some of the Surviving Literary Pieces
of the Egyptians
1. The Book of the Dead (religious)
2. Hymn to the Sun-God Ra (Religious)
3. Hymn to Osiris (religious)
4. The Tale of Two Brothers (Tale)
5. Maxims and Instructions (Wisdom Lit.)
6. The Teaching of Amenomopet (Wisdom Lit.)
7. The Story of the Eloquent Peasant (Tale)
8. Dialogue of a Pessimist with His Soul
(Pessimistic Lit.)
9. Admonition of an Egyptian Sage ( Pessimistic
Lit.)
10. Bridal Songs ( Love Songs)
 To Whom Should I Speak Today?
By: T. Eric Peet
To whom should I speak today?
Brothers are evil;
The friends of today love not.

To whom should I speak today?

Hearts are covetous
Every man plundereth the goods of his fellow.

To whom should I speak today?

The peaceful man is in evil case;
Good is cast aside everywhere.

To whom should I speak today?

Yesterday is forgotten;
Men do not as they were done by nowadays.
 T o whom should I speak today?
The righteous are no more;
The land is given over to evil-doers.

To whom should I speak today?

There is lack of confidants;
Men have recourse to a stranger to tell their troubles.

To whom should I speak today?

I am laden with misery.
And am without a comforter.
Guide Questions for the poem
1. Enumerate the reasons why the poet distrusts
his fellowmen?
2. Today, do we have to trust or distrust our
fellowmen? Support your answer.
3. Cite instances/practical situations why our
brothers are considered evil?
4. Can we still rectify these problems in human
relations? How?
5. Dramatize/role play some evils of our society
and the corresponding remedy or remedies to
those maladies.
 Egyptian
“The Book of the Dead”
 Book of the Dead is the common
name for ancient Egyptian funerary
texts known as The Book of Coming
or Going Forth By Day. The name
"Book of the Dead" was the invention
of the German Egyptologist Karl
Richard Lepsius, who published a
selection of some texts in 1842.
 The Books were text initially carved on the
exterior of the deceased person's sarcophagus,
but was later written on papyrus now known
as scrolls and buried inside the sarcophagus
with the deceased, presumably so that it
would be both portable and close at hand.
Other texts often accompanied the primary
texts including the hypocephalus (meaning
'under the head') which was a primer version
of the full text.
 Books of the Dead constituted as a
collection of spells, charms,
passwords, numbers and magical
formulas for the use of the deceased
in the afterlife. This described many
of the basic tenets of Egyptian
mythology.
 They were intended to guide the dead
through the various trials that they would
encounter before reaching the
underworld. Knowledge of the
appropriate spells was considered essential
to achieving happiness after death. Spells
or enchantments vary in distinctive ways
between the texts of differing "mummies"
or sarcophagi, depending on the
prominence and other class factors of the
deceased.
 Books of the Dead were usually illustrated
with pictures showing the tests to which the
deceased would be subjected. The most
important was the weighing of the heart of the
dead person against Ma'at, or Truth (carried
out by Anubis). The heart of the dead was
weighed against a feather, and if the heart was
not weighed down with sin (if it was lighter
than the feather) he was allowed to go on. The
god Thoth would record the results and the
monster Ammit would wait nearby to eat the
heart should it prove unworthy.
 The earliest known versions date from the
16th century BC during the 18th Dynasty
(ca. 1580 BC1350 BC). It partly
incorporated two previous collections of
Egyptian religious literature, known as the
Coffin Texts (ca. 2000 BC) and the
Pyramid Texts (ca. 2600 BC-2300 BC),
both of which were eventually superseded
by the Book of the Dead
 The text was often individualized for the
deceased person - so no two copies contain the
same text - however, "book" versions are
generally categorized into four main divisions -
the Heliopolitan version, which was edited by
the priests of the college of Annu (used from
the 5th to the 11th dynasty and on walls of
tombs until about 200); the Theban version,
which contained hieroglyphics only (20th to the
28th dynasty); a hieroglyphic and hieratic
character version, closely related to the Theban
version, which had no fixed order of chapters
(used mainly in the 20th dynasty); and the Saite
version which has strict order (used after the
26th dynasty).
 Itis notable, that the Book of the
Dead for Scribe Ani, the Papyrus
of Ani, was originally 78 Ft, and
was separated into 37 sheets at
appropriate chapter and topical
divisions.
 This is a beautiful color version of the
Papyrus of Ani, one of the books of the
dead which were often buried with the
dead person who could afford to have one
written, to ease his/her way into eternal
life. Above is a picture from the book.
Ani (man with his wife bowing to the
gods), while Anubis weighs his heart
against Maat's feather of truth, and Thoth
records the event, and Ammit the
devourer waits patiently.
 There are several books by E. W.
Budge about this papyrus. But
Faulkner's version is better and more
beautiful. And, considering the page
after page of beautiful color pictures,
this paperback version is amazingly
inexpensive. You may find yourself
just sitting and marveling at it for
hours and hours, maybe years and
years.
 The Book of the Dead, the
ceremonies, rituals and magic were all
done in the hopes that one could
reach the Land of the West and a
happy afterlife, filled with good things.
To live forever with the gods. To,
once more, come forth by day as a
living man would awaken with the
sun.
Part 3. Asian Literature
Objectives:
1. To recognize Asia as a unique
continent of the world
2. Identify and enumerate the
outstanding characteristics of Asian
Literature
3. Find pleasure in reading Asian
Literary masterpieces.
 Introduction to Asia
A. Land
Area : 44,444,100 sq.km( 17,159,995 sq. miles);
33% of the world’s land area
Elevation : Highest- Mt. Everest 8, 848 m. or 29,028 ft)
Lowest- Dead Sea, shore 395 m 1296 ft
below sea level
B. People
Population : 3,392,300,000 including European Turkey
and excluding Asian Russia
Largest City : Tokyo
Populous Country: People’s Republic of China
Busiest Ports : Singapore, Hong kong, Yokohama,
Bombay
 Government
Political Divisions: 49 entire countries;
part of Russia; part of Turkey; part of Egypt.
The nations of Asia are usually grouped
into five main geographical and political-
cultural subdivisions:
1. Southwest Asia- Afghanistan, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cyprus, Georgia, Iran,
Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman,
Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen plus
Asian Turkey and Egypt east of Suez Canal
2. South Asia- Bangladesh, Bhutan, India,
Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka
3. East Asia- China, North Korea, Japan, South
Korea and Taiwan.
4. Southeast Asia- Brunei, Burma, Indonesia,
Kampuchea, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines,
Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
5. Central and North Asia- Kazakhstan,
Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Tajikistan,
Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan plus Asian
Russia(Siberia) and three of the five
autonomous regions of China.
Racial and Ethnic Groups
Asia has a great diversity of ethnic
groups, with two-thirds of all Asian
peoples belonging to the Mongoloid
group. The Largest ethnic group is the
Han Chinese, who constitute about 94%
of the total population of China and
dominate the eastern half of that nation.
Languages
Chinese, spoken by more than 1 billion
people in China, Southeast Asia, and other
parts of the continent, is the language most
widely spoken in Asia: It includes Mandarin
Chinese, and many distinctive dialects including
Cantonese, Wu, Min and Hakka. Hindi, spoken
by more than 215 million people, is the second
most widely used language; it is spoken mainly
in Southwest Asia, is the third major language
and Russian, widely spoken and used as a
second language in former Soviet Asia, is the
fourth.
Religion
The principal Asian religions are
Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism. Hinduism
has a following of about 520 million and is
the main religion of India. Islam, with an
estimated 430 million adherents in Asia, is
the principal religion in Southwest Asia,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
Malaysia, and Indonesia.
 Large Muslim minorities exist in India, the
Philippines, and Central Asia. Buddhism
,which developed in India is no longer
important in that country but has a following
of about 250 million in other regions of Asia
and constitutes the principal religion in
Burma.
 Kathy Song (1955)
Contemporary Writer
 Poet Cathy Song, a Hawaii native and
daughter of a Chinese orphan, draws
not only on her rich Korean and Chinese
ancestry but on her experiences as a
woman born and raised an American in
verses that have been compared by
critics to the muted tints of watercolor
paintings.
 Song has consistently maintained that the rich
world she creates within her narrative poetry
transcends her own ethnic and regional
background, and resists classification as an
"Asian American" or "Hawaiian" writer, calling
herself "a poet who happens to be Asian
American." Her first volume of poems, Picture
Bride, earned Song the 1983 Yale Series of
Younger Poets Award and was also nominated
for that year's National Book Critics Circle
Award. The volume's success carried the young
poet to national recognition, and other awards
followed.
 Encouraged to write even during her
childhood, Song left Hawaii to attend college
in New England. It was in Boston that she
met her husband, a medical student at Tufts
University who was originally from New
Mexico. The couple moved to Denver,
Colorado, in 1984 while he completed his
residency at Denver General Hospital, and
there Song wrote Frameless Windows,
Squares of Light and began a family. In 1987
they returned to Honolulu, where she now
combines her writing with teaching creative
writing to students at several universities.
 Ikebana
by Cathy Song
To prepare the body,
aim for the translucent perfection
you find in the sliced shavings
of a pickled turnip.
In order for this to happen,
you must avoid the sun,
protect the face
under a paper parasol
until it is bruised white
like the skin of lilies.
Use white soap
from a blue porcelain
dish for this.
 Restrict yourself.
Eat the whites of things:
tender bamboo shoots,
the veins of the young iris,
the clouded eye of a fish.
Then wrap the body,
as if it were a perfumed gift,
in pieces of silk
held together with invisible threads
like a kite, weighing no more
than a handful of crushed chrysanthemums.
Light enough to float in the wind.
You want the effect
of koi moving through water.
 When the light leaves
the room, twist lilacs
into the lacquered hair
piled high like a complicated shrine.
There should be tiny bells
inserted somewhere
in the web of hair
to imitate crickets
singing in a hidden grove.
 Reveal the nape of the neck,
your beauty spot.
Hold the arrangement.
If your spine slacks
and you feel faint,
remember the hand-picked flower
set in the front alcove,
which, just this morning,
you so skillfully wired into place.
How poised it is!
Petal and leaf
curving like a fan,
the stem snipped and wedged
into the metal base—
to appear like a spontaneous accident.

 Kathy Song 1983

Some Asian Writers
 ABRAHAM VARGHESE (1955-....)
 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth: Ethiopia
 Works:
 1) My Own Country

 Name : AMITAV GHOSH (1956-....)

 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth: Calcutta, India
 Works:
 1) The Shadow Lines 2) The Circle of Reason 3) In
An Antique Land 4) The Calcutta Chromosome
 Name : AMIT CHAUDRI (1962-....)
 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth: Calcutta, India
 Works:
 1) A Strange Sublime Address 2)
Afternoon Raag
 Name : ANITA DESAI (1938-....)
 Sex : Female
 Place of Birth: Calcutta,India
 Works:
 1) Cry the Peacock 2) In Custody 3) Fire
on the Mountain 4) Where Shall We Go
This Summer 5) Voices in the City 6) Bye,
Bye Blackbird 7) A Village By the Sea 8)
Baugmarten's Bombay 9) Clear Light of
Day 10) Games at Twilight and Other
Stories 11) Journey To Ithaca
 Name : AUBREY MENEN(1912-1989)
 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth : Born in London of Indian and Irish parents
 Works:
 1) The Prevalence of Witches 2) The Stumbling Stone
3) The Backward Bride 4) The Duke of Gallodoro 5)
The Abode of Love 6) SheLa- a satire 7) A Conspiracy
of Women 8) The Space Within the Heart: An
Autobiography 9) Four Days of Naples 10) The
Ramayana, as told by Aubrey Menen 11) The Fig Tree
12) The Great Cities (Time Life Series) 13) The Baroque
and Mr) Waugh 14) Dead Man in the Silver Market 15)
Fonthill; a comedy 16) The Mystics 17) Presenting
Robert Cormier 18) Upon this rock


 Name : Catherine Lim (1942-....)
 Sex : Female
 Place of Birth: Penang
 Life : She moved to Singapore to persue her
doctoral degree. The former project director at
the Curriculum Development Institute of
Singapore, she has also worked at the
SEAMEO Regional Language Centre.
 Works:
 1) Little Ironies: Stories of Singapore 2) Or
Else, the Lightning God and Other Stories 3)
The Shadow of a Shadow of a Dream - Love
Stories of Singapore 4) Deadline for Love &
Other Stories 5) O Singapore!
 Name : M. G. VASSANJI (1950-....)
 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth: Nairobi, Africa
 Works:
 1) The Gunny Sack 2) No New Land 3)
Uhuru Street 4) The Book of Secrets
 Name : MICHAEL ONDAATJE (1943-....)
 Sex : Male
 Place of Birth: Sri Lanka (lives in Canada
and the Caribbean)
 Works:
 1) The English Patient 2) The Cinnamon
Peeler 3) Secular Love 4) There's a Trick
with a Knife I'm Learning to Do 5)
Elimination Dance 6) Rat Jelly 7) The
Collected Works of Billy the Kid 8) The
Man with 7 Toes 9) The Dainty Monsters
Prominent Filipino Writers
JOSE GARCIA VILLA with
Dame Edith Sitwell and
Others (11/9/48) (Villa is
seated in the back, coat
open, showing a vest)
BIENVENIDO. N. SANTOS
F. Sionil Jose
Nick Joaquin (Literature 1976)
 Part 4. Arabian Literature
 Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula is a peninsula in
Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa
and Asia consisting mainly of desert. The
area is an important part of the Middle
East and plays a critically important
geopolitical role because of its vast
reserves of oil and natural gas.
 The coasts of the peninsula land,
on the west, the Red Sea and Gulf of
Aqaba; on the southeast, the Arabian
Sea (part of the Indian Ocean); and
on the northeast, the Gulf of Oman,
the Strait of Hormuz, and the Persian
Gulf.
 Its northern limit is defined by the
Zagros collision zone, a mountainous
uplift where a continental collision
between the Arabian Plate and Asia
is occurring. Geographically, it
merges with the Syrian Desert with
no clear line of demarcation.
 Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula
includes parts of Iraq and Jordan. Politically,
however, the peninsula is separated from the
rest of Asia by the northern borders of Kuwait
and Saudi Arabia.
The following countries are politically
considered part of the peninsula:-
 Bahrain
Kuwait
Oman
Palestine
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
United Arab Emirates
Yemen
Modern history
 The oil boom in Kuwait converted Kuwait
City from a small city to a financial
hub.The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers
the greater part of the peninsula. The
majority of the population of the peninsula
lives in Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. The
peninsula contains the world's largest
reserves of oil.
 It is home to the Islamic holy cities of
Mecca and Medina, both of which are in
Saudi Arabia. The UAE and Saudi Arabia
are economically the wealthiest in the
region. Qatar, a small peninsula in the
Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is
home of the famous Arabic-language
television station Al Jazeera and its
English-language subsidiary Al Jazeera
English.
 The peninsula is one of the possible original
homelands of the Proto-Semitic language ancestors
of all the Semitic-speaking peoples in the region —
the Akkadians, Arabs, Assyrians, Hebrews, etc.
Linguistically, the peninsula was the cradle of the
Arabic language (spread beyond the peninsula with
the Islamic religion during the expansion of Islam
beginning in the 7th century AD) and still maintains
tiny populations of speakers of Southern East Semitic
languages such as Mehri and Shehri, remnants of the
language family that was spoken in earlier historical
periods to the East of the kingdoms of Sheba and
Hadramout which flourished in the southern part of
the peninsula (modern-day Yemen and Oman).
 The initial Muslim conquests (632–732), also
referred to as the Islamic conquests or Arab
conquests, began after the death of the Islamic
prophet Muhammad (pbuh). He established a new
unified political polity in the Arabian peninsula which
under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad
Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of
Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in
the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area
of influence that stretched from northwest India,
across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa,
southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the
Pyrenees.

People:
NOt ALL ARABS ARE...ARABS!
The terms "Arab", "Arabian" etc. were meant
to refer to people living in the Arabian Penisula
and Gulf (Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE,
KSA, Oman, Yemen), and with the born of the
Arabic Union, Arabs became all the people who
live in the Arab countries, even the African ones,
French speaking, Mediterraneans ...
(Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya,
Egypt, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Comoros <==
Africa. Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, KSA,
Oman, Yemen, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan and
Syria.)
 To many people, the real Arab countries are
still the Gulf Arab countries, because that's
the "base", as many peoples can't feel
themselves Arabs (e.g. Comoros people are
African, so are Djibouti, Somalia....).
 Many Arabs in countries like USA,
Australia, Europe.... look bad
because of that, although they did
nothing wrong, but before even
coming they are persecuted, and
actually, some other Arabs in these
countries are the reason for that, we
can't blame racists ;-) )
 Nobody should feel offended by being
called an Arab, if you don't like it, you may
suggest we call ourselves Middle Eastern,
or each by his country, but we all know
the truth, and that's it! (No offence proud
Arabs)...

Note from the author….

Government
Saudi Arabia is a monarchy and the
laws of Islam(Sharia) form the
constitution. The king has the both
executive and legislative power,
although an appointed council of
ministers performs some of these
functions subject to royal veto.
 Almost all the key government positions
are held by members of the Saud family, the
large, powerful ruling clan. There are no
political parties or legislators, although any
citizen can submit grievances or requests for
aid directly to the king at regular audiences
called majalis.
History of Arabian Peninsula
It is believed that Arabia is the
homeland of the Semites, a nomadic
tribal structure that existed over
Arabian Peninsula for thousands of
years of which many peoples of the
Middle East belong, with Arabs and
Hebrews as the most known.
 1st millenium BC: Minean kingdom in
southwestern Arabia. Mineans ecohnomy
was based upon nomadic lifestyles and trade
of incense.
 1st century BC: Nabatean kingdom
established to the north of the Minean. The
eastern parts of Arabia was dominated by
Dilmun, covering parts of the mainland and
the island of Bahrain.
 5th century AD: Mecca becomes the
leading city of the region.
 570: Birth of Prophet Muhammd, the later
Prophet of Islam.
 630: Mecca is conqured by Prophet
Muhammads men, and strong expansion is
started towards first the Arab peninsular,
later beyond in northern direction.
 1269: The region is subverted by the
Mamelukes of Egypt.
 15th century: Saud dynasty founded in the
region around today's Riyadh.
 1517: Control passes over to the Ottomans,
when they conquer Egypt, but they hold only
parts of the region under direct control.
 Mid 18th century: Time of Muhammad Ibnu
Bdi l-Wahhab, a relgious leader establishing
a sect that was supported by the Saudis.
This movement soon established a national
state in Najd, the centre of Arabia.
 1802: Mecca is conquered by the Wahhabis.
 1812: Wahhabis are driven out of Mecca by
the local population.
 1818: Wahhbis and Saudis found their
capital in Riyadh. Slow reconquering starts
from here.
 1865: Civil war, the dynasty falls apart, and
Arabia became divided between different
clans and the Ottomans.
 1902: Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud retakes Riyadh.
 1906: The Saudis have once again control over
Najd.
 1913: Conquering of Hasa, the region east of
Najd.
 1921: Conquering of Jabal Shammar, the region
northwest of Najd.
 1923: Great Britian stops transferring money to
both Abdul Aziz and the Hashimite king of Hijaz,
the Sharif. This tilts the power balance in favour
of Abdul Aziz.
 November 20: On this day, the first day in
the Muslim calendar's year 1400, a group of
Sunni Muslims barricaded themselves inside
the Holy Mosque of Mecca. They claimed
that the promised Mahdi was among them.
They held out in 15 days (until December 4)
and as much as 200 seems to have been
killed. The true identity of the rebels is still
not fully known.
 1980: Saudi Arabia takes full control over
Aramco.
 1982: King Khalid dies. He is succeeded by
King Fahd.
 1987 July 31: 400 Iranian pilgrims are killed
after clashes with Saudi security forces in
Mecca.
 1990 July: 1,400 pilgrims dies after a bridge
and tunnel accident.
 August 2: The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was
dramatic to Saudi politics and security. Saudi
Arabia allowed hundreds of thousands of
foreign troops (mainly US) to be stationed on
their own soil.
 1992: Constitutional changes, where
a consultative council, shura, is
established, along with a bill of rights,
and the rules of succession for the
king.
— Relations with Jordan deteriorates,
as Jordan questions Saudi
supremacy as protector of the Holy
places.
Arabian Literature:
Situated at the crossroads of Africa,
Asia, Europe and the
Mediterranean...the Arab World is not
only a meeting point of cultures, but
above all, with all its diversity, is a
cultural representation to what we look
for today in just simply having a good
time.
 Arabian Nights in D.C
(One Thousand And One Nights)
What is Arabian Nights?
It is a collection of Middle Eastern and South
Asian stories and folk tales compiled in
Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is
often known in English as the Arabian
Nights, from the first English language
edition (1706), which rendered the title as
The Arabian Nights' Entertainment
 This is introduced to Europe
through Antoine Galland’s French
Translation but the best known
English version is by the explorer Sir
Richard Burton, who published the
complete version.
 The original concept is most likely
derived from an ancient Sassanid Persian
prototype that relied partly on Indian
elements,[2] but the work as we have it was
collected over many centuries by various
authors, translators and scholars across
the Middle East and North Africa. The tales
themselves trace their roots back to ancient
and medieval Arabic, Persian, Indian,
Egyptian and Mesopotamian folklore and
literature
 In particular, many tales were originally
folk stories from the Caliphate era, while
others, especially the frame story, are
most probably drawn from the Pahlavi
Persian work Hazār Afsān (Persian lit.
Thousand Tales). Though the oldest
Arabic manuscript dates from the 14th
century, scholarship generally dates the
collection's genesis to around the 9th
century.
 Some of the best-known stories of The
Nights, particularly "Aladdin's Wonderful
Lamp", "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves"
and "The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the
Sailor", while almost certainly genuine
Middle-Eastern folk tales, were not part of
The Nights in Arabic versions, but were
interpolated into the collection by its early
European translators
Some Important masterpieces of
Arabian Literature:
1. The Lady and He Five Suitors ( excerpt from
Arabian Nights)
2. The Prophet ( Poetry by: Kahlil Gibran)
3. Simon who was called Peter ( Short Story by:
Kahlil Gibran)
4. Dates (Poetry)
5. The Bewildered Arab (Poetry)
6. The Food of Paradise ( short story by: Ibn
Amjed)
7. The Greedy Jackal ( short story)
8. Count Not Your Chickens Before They Be
Hatched ( Tale )
Film Showing of the movie…

End of Part 4