Discover Oman : Literature (Comics / News)

Between fiction and reality

On paper, the Sultanate of Oman has everything to serve as the backdrop for the most beautiful of plots, rich landscapes with colourful nuances, places whose names stir the imagination, and even a history that is full of distant influences. Persia in ancient times, impregnated by Islam during Mohammed's lifetime, partially subjugated by the Portuguese in the 16th century and then under British protectorate at the end of the 19th century, the country experienced a coup d'état in 1970 in which Qaboos ibn Said dethroned his own father. He remained in power until his death in January 2020, bringing an end to a reign of exceptional length, to say the least. Then one imagines everything that evokes the Middle East, the secret intrigues of the palaces, the impossible loves and the grace of poetry declaimed in the shade of the palm groves. However, few stories, real or fantasized, have found their way into the pages of books, and no writer seems to have had the slightest possibility of conquering international readers for the time being. Thus, we hardly mention the tutelary figure of Khalil ibn Ahmad, who was born in the south of Arabia - today Omani territory - around 718, but above all spent his life in Iraq, occasionally denying Ibadism, the third path of Islam embraced a long time ago in the region that interests us, to follow the path of Sunism. Nevertheless, we owe him the first Arabic dictionary, nicknamed the Source Book (Kitab al-Ayn), the statement of the diacritical system (a system of characters accentuating the letters of an alphabet) and some poems, the French version of which would be very difficult to find. Although native writers seem rare, there is a myth that Sohar, a northern port city and ancient capital, saw a fictional character, Sinbad the sailor, set out to conquer the world. His Seven Journeys were incorporated into the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights by the initiative of Antoine Galland, an 18th-century French orientalist and translator who no doubt wanted to prolong the sad life of Scheherazade. Sheherazade, fearing that the Sultan would assassinate him at the end of a single shared night, kept death away every evening by maintaining through her marvellous tales a suspense that no man, even a sovereign and murderer, could have resisted. Having said that, other cities claim this noble origin, but the legend was too beautiful not to be told

If the voices of Omani writers do not currently resonate beyond the borders, at least we can rely on the voices of travellers who have had the chance to explore the country and whom we are still hearing. A priori the oldest of these stories is that of Émile Allemann, a naval officer rich in the enthusiasm of his 28 years, who landed in Oman in 1898. His pleasure in discovering new landscapes seems to be equalled only by the enchantment he feels in contact with the natives. His prose in its entirety can be found at Magellan & Cie. In the first half of the twentieth century, the British Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003), who, according to legend, was born in an Ethiopian hut, travelled the Saudi desert in all directions during his many journeys. There is no doubt that he at least allowed himself a few Omani jaunts. Finally, the Welshwoman Jan Morris, born in 1926 and whose style has been distinguished by the Royal Society of Literature, offered herself, among other unforgettable journeys, an intimate discovery of the vast Omani territory alongside the sovereign, a privilege that is devoured under the title Sultan in Oman, published by Nevicata

From secrecy to censorship

If the literature of the Sultanate of Oman seems inaccessible to Westerners, it is perhaps because it responds to a certain jealously guarded secret, as maydān seems to prove, a poetic genre that Omanis claim as purely national, and which takes on its full scope during performances called fann. To date, the few attempts to document this practice have led to a plethora of questions, firstly because the people interviewed seem to have their own definitions - of metrics, for example, or of the rules of jousting, secondly because the space of representation, maqām, is strictly forbidden to anyone who is not invited to it, and thirdly because the use of dialects does not simplify transmission. Those interested in the subject of this long and precious oral tradition can refer to the fascinating work of Claude Audebert and Mohamed Bakhouch, L'Énigme du Maydān : présentation d'un genre poétique omanais, put online in 2015.

The Sultanate of Oman was the guest country at the 2019 edition of the Paris Book Festival. On this occasion, it was nevertheless possible to learn that although Omani literature was too little known, since the intervention of Sultan Qaboos in the 1980s, this thousand-year-old heritage had finally been protected, and that the country had some 40 publishing houses, including Baït Ahghasham, whose director claimed to have published 600 books in seven years. Unfortunately, Sultan Qaboos has since lost his life on 10 January 2020, his cousin, Haïtham ben Tariq - Minister of Heritage and Culture - succeeded him. So, obviously, from books to literature, there is sometimes a step to be taken to include in the definition of literature something other than the novels or collections of poems that we instinctively think of. A glance at the Omani collections held by the Institut du Monde Arabe or by the Bibliothèque nationale de France confirms that they are rather made up of historical documents or elements relating to ibadism. Nevertheless, this approach remains interesting from a documentary point of view. In French, the editions L'Harmattan, in particular, offer enlightening essays. For example, we could cite Sultanate of Oman - Return to History, published in 2000 under the direction of two fine connoisseurs of this region of the world, Jean-Paul Charnay and Yves Thoraval, who discusses the history of the country, from ancient Muscat to contemporary Oman. More recently, La Femme omanaise sur le chemin de la parité, a book coordinated by Georges Sassine and published in 2019, explains how Qaboos, the modernist Sultan, focused his progressive vision on the fundamental role played by women in society.

Perhaps a glimmer of hope for the progressive emergence of the fiction genre lies in the prestigious Man Booker International Price awarded in 2019 to Jokha Alharti, the first Omani woman to have her work translated into English. The prize went to her novel Celestial Bodies, which tells the story of three sisters living in the village of al-Awafi. He was warmly applauded by Saif al-Rahbi, a poet born in 1956 in Oman, where he will only resettle after many years abroad. He is the author of The Bells of Rapture (1985) and founder of the cultural magazine Nizwa