TRADITIONAL FORMS OF DRAMATIC ENTERTAINMENT

In spite of several well-intentioned attempts to prove the contrary, classical Arab literature did not know drama as it was conceived in the west from the times of the ancient Greeks to the present, namely as an art form in which an action is ‘imitated’ through dialogue spoken by human actors on a stage. True enough, a specifically Arabic literary form, the maqāmah, developed in the tenth century, generally assumed to be the invention of al-Hamadhānī (969–1008): a tale in elaborate euphuistic rhyming prose intermixed with verse, often relating the adventures of an eloquent vagabond who ekes out a living by impersonating other characters and fooling people. It is a unique form, incorporating both narrative and dramatic elements without being either a short story or a drama proper. Clearly, out of the maqāmah grew the Arabic shadow play (khayāl al-ẓill), probably under Far Eastern influence, in which human characters are represented by shadows cast upon a screen by flat, coloured leather puppets held in front of a torch and manipulated by a hidden puppet master (khayāliyy or rayyis), who also introduced the characters and delivered dialogue and songs with the help of associates.

The shadow play, particularly in its earliest (and, as it happens, most sophisticated) surviving examples, namely the work of Ibn Dāniyāl (1248–1311), is the closest thing in classical Arabic literature to western drama, even though the actors are only puppets.