Faces & TraesNaguib Al-Kaylani, a theorist of contemporary Islamic literature [Archives:2008/1120/Culture]
Prepared by Eyad N. Al-Samman
Faces & Traces is a cultural series of concise biographies of local or international famous and obscure personalities in fields such as literature, arts, culture and religion in which these individuals contribute affirmatively. It is a short journey in contemporary history, attempting to tackle numerous effective characters in human civilization.
Naguib Abdul-lateef Al-Kaylani was an Egyptian novelist, short story writer, poet, critic and playwright.
Born in June 1931 in Shirshabah village in Egypt's Al-Gharbiyah governorate, at age 4, Al-Kaylani began attending elementary school to memorize the Qur'an and the Hadith, as well as the fundamentals of reading and writing.
He then moved to the Elementary School of the American Mission in Sunbat village and then to Tanta City, the capital of Al-Gharbiyah governorate, where he completed high school.
In 1951, he enrolled at King Fuad I University (now Cairo University) to study medicine while being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement at the same time. During his college studies and because of his political activities, Al-Kaylani was arrested in 1955, prosecuted and sentenced to 10 years in Asyut Prison before being banished to Cairo Prison, where he spent four years in prison before being released in mid-1959 due to his poor health.
He returned to Cairo University to complete his studies, graduating as a physician in 1960, after which he worked for several Egyptian hospitals. However, he was rearrested in 1965 and remained in prison until 1967.
After his final release in 1968, Al-Kaylani left Egypt and traveled to Dubai to work as a manager in the Emirati Health Ministry's Health Education Department. He stayed in the United Arab Emirates until his retirement, when he returned to settle in Egypt.
Considered one of Egypt's most prolific writers, many of Al-Kaylani's novels have been translated into more than 10 languages and numerous academic dissertations at Arab and European universities were submitted regarding his literary works.
His first literary attempt, a divan entitled, “Toward the Top,” came in 1950 during his senior year of high school in Tanta City. He penned his first novel during his stay in Asyut Prison from 1955 to 1959. Entitled, “The Long Night,” it was published after his banishment to Cairo Prison.
Discussing Egypt's struggle against the 1956 Tripartite Invasion by Britain, France and Israel, the novel won the 1958 Egyptian Ministry of Education award and approved for secondary school curriculums in 1959.
Also in prison, Al-Kaylani wrote his first historical novel, “Signs of the Dawn,” portraying the struggle of Egypt's Rosetta City against the English invasion. His other winning literary works in 1958 included “The Ill Society,” which portrayed prison culture, and his memoir, “Shawqi in the Immortals' Procession.” Al-Kaylani was granted the Mohammed Iqbal gold medal for his 1957 memoir, “Iqbal, the Revolutionary Poet.”
Al-Kaylani's fictional productions were in four phases, the first of which was the romantic novel expressing the people's concerns and the different social states between them. These novels include 1988's “Story of Jad-Allah” and “Virgin of the Village.”
In a slightly different vein, his socio-romantic novel, “The Slaves' Night,” discussed aspects of administrative, political and social negative attitudes in modern society. That novel was turned into a movie entitled, “Night and Bars,” and won first prize at the 1964 Tashkent Film Festival.
Al-Kaylani's historical novels generally tackled the prophetic memoir and other phases of Islamic history. Among them are “The Land of Prophets” and “The Quarter of Jews.” His historical novel, “The Light of Allah,” is considered one of his masterpieces in the field of Islamic literature, depicting the era of the Islamic religion's emergence and Muslims' battles and victory against unbelievers led by the Prophet Mohammed (pbuh).
The third phase of Al-Kaylani's fiction was the perceptive novel, in which he expressed the concerns of forgotten Muslims living outside the bounds of the Arab world. “Virgin of Jakarta” (1974) and “Giants of the North” are among this genre.
The events of his novel, “Nights of Turkistan,” take place in the lands of Islamic Turkistan, in which the author predicts the collapse of communism.
The last phase of Al-Kaylani's fictional career involves the realistic Islamic novel and deals with the social causes of the working class in their homelands.
Among these novels is his Abdul-Mutajalli trilogy consisting of “Abdul-Mutajalli's Confessions,” “Abdul-Mutajalli's Wife” and “Abdul-Mutajalli's Immigration,” which he didn't write due to severe illness.
One of his best realistic novels, 1991's “Malikat Al-'Ainab,” (The Queen of Grapes) tackles social and economic events during the Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Al-Kaylani also wrote 10 short story collections, including “The Narrow World” and “Tales of a Physician.”
In the field of poetry, Al-Kaylani penned eight divans, including “The Strangers' Songs” (1963), “The Martyrs' Age” (1978), “City of Obscenities” (1988), “Songs of the Long Night” (1990), and his last, “Pearl of the Gulf.”
As a playwright, Al-Kaylani wrote two plays: “On the Walls of Damascus” (1958) and “Sarajevo, My Sweetheart” (1995), which deals with the tragic situations in Bosnia and Herzegovina during the 1992 civil war.
As a critic, Al-Kaylani penned several books, including 1963's “Islamism and Literary Ideologies” and 1985's “My Journey with Islamic Literature.”
Suffering from pancreatic cancer, Al-Kaylani died in Tanta City on March 6, 1995. However, he occupies an eminent standing in Islamic literature for having introduced the true image of such literature and proving that it is relevant to real life and stands proud among other international literature.
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