The Death of Tragedy
The Mohammedan ﷺ slaying of despair.
Arabic equals Greek minus tragedy.
—Abdal Hakim Murad[1]
As I walked towards my house late at night, moments seemed to pass by me more slowly than usual. I had worked too much that day. Knackered, hungry, and delirious, I decided to sit on an empty bench in a run-down park. The stench of weed, absurd graffiti on the opposing wall, and ominous stillness of the park began to overwhelm me. Naturally, I sought refuge in nostalgia. Drifting with the stream of my memories, I saw myself sitting on a different bench, in a different park, on a different day. A day when the park seemed colorful, and the world meaningful. A joyful day spent in the warm embrace of a fair companion. I wondered, can such joy last? Certainly not. Time burns everything to ash. Life is as absurd as graffiti on a wall.
The above account epitomizes the erotic, yet elegiac, prologues, nasībs, of ancient Arabic love poems, qaṣīdas. Such prologues, the only genre of pre-Islamic Arabic poetry open to philosophical introspection,[2] depict “nature as a wasteland”[3] and “a landscape of ruins.”[4] Quite often, such prologues “culminate in the evocation of a writing on a rock, waḥy, which forces itself on the beholder without, however, disclosing its meaning to him.”[5] The relentless flow of time leading to existential angst and the consequent epistemological pessimism which characterizes nasībs, parallels similar motifs found in Greek tragedies. For instance, the illegible waḥy mirrors sphinx’s riddle and both reflect the absurdity of life as viewed by the ancient Arabs and Greeks respectively.
Greeks, like Aristotle, regarded tragedy as superior to the other genres of poetry prevalent in their culture.[6] Many key figures in the West have continued to maintain it in high regard. While Nietzsche viewed it as emerging from the spirit of music,[7] Roger Scruton thought of it as a formal reflection of human suffering.[8] The likes of Jordan Peterson even seem to suggest that it reflects human life itself.[9] These perspectives seem to allege the universal “reality of drama and tragedy in the spiritual, or transcendental, or inner life of man.”[10] Furthermore, they lead people to claim that since tragedy reflects man’s life, it deserves preeminence over other artforms. In our modern age, such a view of the tragic has indeed spread far and wide.
Prevalence of this view, however, does not determine its truth or falsehood. Although, we must acknowledge that the parallels between nasībs and tragedies, poetic forms emanating from deserts of Arabia on the one hand and mountains of Greece on the other, certainly show that distinct cultures and civilisations have historically had an appreciation for the tragic. This certainly gives at least a semblance of credence to the universal value of the tragic. But can this view bare serious scrutiny?
The Islamic tradition offers us a clear counterexample to this view. According to Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, the tragic finds no expression in the Quran; for, in every Quranic story “the good people win.”[11] Moreover, Shaykh Naquib Al-Attas makes the same claim about Islamic cultures in general.[12] Even Rumi, the quintessential Islamic poet, does not have a tragic bone in his body. Furthermore, most Muslim cultures around the world, artistic produce of whom is second to none, do not seem to have any fixation on the tragic. Artistic heritage of the Islamic tradition, therefore, refutes anyone claiming the complete universality and preeminence of tragic artforms.
A mere counterexample, however, rings hollow; since, a question remains unanswered. As described above, ancient Arabs did have a prevalence of the tragic in their poetry and culture. How, then, the Islamic tradition, which seemingly emerged from the tragedy-struck desert of Arabia, suddenly change the nature of Arab artistic expression? What led to the sudden death of tragedy in the Arab; and later, the broader Islamic world?
These questions have troubled many orientalists over the past few centuries. For Angelika Neuwirth, the Quran appears “seemingly out of a void.”[13] She points to the complete lack of discursive speech and theological concerns in pre-Islamic poetry and then mentions “one important exception;”[14] the exception of poetic nasībs which, as mentioned above, are uniquely open to poetic and philosophical introspection. Being the only philosophical artistic expression of the ancient Arabs, nasībs reflected their worldview which saw life as absurd, and the world as a concatenation of illegible symbols, waḥys.
The advent of Quran, therefore, led to a radical semantic inversion of the linguistic space of ancient Arabs which codified and expressed their worldview. The existential angst emanating from a severe epistemic pessimism which so seminally characterized their tragic worldview collapsed under the weight of the Quranic rhetorical and philosophical intervention. In particular, and most importantly, the Quran replaced the illegible waḥys, with intelligible āyāt.[15] It turned the world from a concatenation of absurd symbols to a tessellation of meaningful signs. Furthermore, in the Quran, “God Himself takes the role of fate and restructures the time of man;”[16] and, in doing so, inverts the prevalent conception of time which viewed fate and providence as ultimately arbitrary.
The appeal of the tragic, therefore, emerges out of existential despair, and it can only take root in cultures where such despair is prevalent. With the advent of Islam, however, tragedy died in Arabia; or rather, was slain by the just blade of Muhammad ﷺ, the blessed prophet of Arabia and beyond.
Bibliography:
[1] Shaikh Abdal-Hakim Murad, “Contentions 6,” MishkatMedia, March 8, 2017, https://mishkatmedia.com/contentions-6/.
[2] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:16:21, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.
[3] Zadie Smith, The Qurʾān in Context: Historical and Literary Investigations into the Qurʾānic Milieu (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 773.
[4] ibid.
[5] ibid.
[6] Aristotle, Poetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[7] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, trans. Douglas Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[8] Roger Scruton, “Faking it,” in Confessions of a Heretic (New York City: New York Review Books, 2021).
[9] Jordan B. Peterson, “Everyone’s Life Is A Tragedy,” Jordan Peterson Fan Club, YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcxPHGngSN8.
[10] Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism (Kuala Lumpur: Art Printing Works Sdn. Bhd., 1993), 135.
[11] Hamza Yusuf, “Don't Be Sad - Hamza Yusuf,” Blue Peace, YouTube video, 0:00:20, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqfP4ADWHEQ.
[12] Al-Attas, Islam and Secularism, 136-137.
[13] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:11:40, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.
[14] Angelika Neuwirth, “By the Pen and What They Write: Angelika Neuwirth,” VCUArts, YouTube video, 0:10:38, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrO87uve9Ag.
[15] Angelika Neuwirth, “Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (Part 1),” American University of Beirut, YouTube video, 0:29:25, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4r0Lg3gT0.
[16] Angelika Neuwirth, “Scripture, Poetry, and the Making of a Community (Part 1),” American University of Beirut, YouTube video, 0:28:54, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uS4r0Lg3gT0.
Still remember when I read this to you with your trademark qoute unqoute…fav piece ❤️
i thoroughly enjoyed reading this, you write so beautifully 💗