As Abu Rakwa made his way out of the main gate of the castle, his face-was radiant and uplifted. He mounted his finest horse and gave al-Fadl’s avenging angels a look of mercy and forgiveness. Once he was level with them, he took off at a gallop with them following in sheepish silence.
Abu Rakwa’s rebellion is given a prominent place in Himmich’s narrative. Historical accounts suggest that such prominence is fully justified when we bear in mind the central place it occupied within al-Hakim’s reign (see, for example, the article on “Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., 1954 et seq.). Within the context of a novel that portrays such a disastrously complex ruler, one can almost term Abu Rakwa the “hero” of the narrative; that is certainly the way in which the historical method of the third chapter chooses to depict him.
On the question of al-Hakim’s demise (or disappearance), uncertainty brings the principles of history and fiction close together. The second section of the fourth chapter of Himmich’s narrative cites historical sources to the effect that al-Hakim was murdered on the orders of his beautiful and accomplished sister, Sitt al-Mulk, who assumed power for a period following her brother’s “death.” What is clear is that al-Hakim’s mental illness had become progressively worse during the course of his reign. Many of his decrees (duly recorded within the text of this narrative) were justifiably unpopular: the banning of the pilgrimage, for example, the total sequestration of women, the killing of dogs, the requirement that Christians and Jews wear marked clothing, and the destruction of churches and synagogues. Toward the end of his reign, he ordered his troops to set fire to the old (southern) section of Cairo known as Fustat, apparently desiring revenge for the derisory comments made about him by the inhabitants of this quarter. Later he claimed that he had never given such orders. In any case, his regular habit of riding his donkey into the Muqattam Hills to observe the stars and enter a state of private contemplation clearly provided an excellent opportunity for those who eventually came to the conclusion that, whether divinely appointed caliph or not, enough was enough.
Himmich’s narrative assembles for its readers a montage of different situations and sessions, and the texts — authentic and imagined pre-modern and modem — to go with them. The resulting narrative is thus not chronological, nor indeed is the style intended to be consistent. The actual content of the texts in the different chapters varies from the apparently clear logic and style of historical accounts, to the image-laden and ecstatic utterances to be found in other chapters where the mode of expression is characteristic of a mind that is often being torn apart by the ravages of mental illness. (I re-enter this text as translator here to note that amazing juxtapositions of objects, sentiments, and images are an intrinsic feature of certain sections in the original Arabic text of this novel. In the process of translating them into English, I have made no attempt to change what I understand to be their effects.) Such a varied and categorical method of textual organization is, it needs to be added, a central feature of classical Arabic works of adab, the many and often enormous collections of information and anecdote which the intellectual elite (and especially the bureaucrats and scribes of the court) prepared for their own reference and edification. One must assume that in The Theocrat Himmich is consciously setting out to utilize such an indigenous approach to narrative structure by imitating its mode of compilation, one that allows him to assemble in discrete chapters decisions and incidents from the entire reign of a ruler whose tyranny and capricious conduct has become a byword in the region’s history.
The diagnosis of illnesses and their treatment, and most especially changing altitudes to mental disease, are prominent topics for modern analysis; indeed in the works of Michel Foucault they enter the realms of literary discourse. The question as to “What is madness?” is one that many modern Arab authors have posed. Naguib Mahfouz and the Syro-Lebanese poet, Adunis, are two such. What Himmich explores in this remarkable novel shares many of the concerns voiced in the theme of the play and film by Alan Bennett, The Madness of King George, namely the disastrous consequences of now diagnosable mental illness on an individual ruler and his people and on the way that history deals with such eras. Himmich makes no attempt to spare his readers the full horror and tragedy of al-Hakim’s reign, but his narrative’s multitextual approach succeeds brilliantly in using different genres to paint a portrait of a character whose sheer unpredictability throws into relief the qualities of those who find themselves forced to cajole, confront, or oppose him.
The resort on the part of Arab novelists to history as a means of addressing contemporary issues is, needless to say, part of a much wider cultural phenomenon. To cite just one relatively recent work on the subject, David Cowart’s History and the Contemporary Novel:
The increasing prominence of historical themes in current fiction suggests that the novel’s perennial valence for history has acquired new strength in recent years. Produced by writers sensitive to the lateness of the historical hour and capable of exploiting technical innovations in the novel, this new historical fiction seems to differ from that of calmer times. A sense of urgency — sometimes even an air of desperation — pervades the historical novel since mid-century, for its author probes the past to account for a present that grows increasingly chaotic.
More recently, the British novelist-critic A.S. Byatt has published a volume of essays in which she delves further into this linkage of history and fiction and the hybrid forms that emerge from their fusion. Interestingly entitled On Histories and Stories, the work explores the motivations that lead novelists in this direction. Among them she identifies a desire “to find historical paradigms for contemporary situations,” an esthetic need “to write colored and metaphorical language,” and an eagerness to escape the self as subject matter.
Himmich’s novel then is part of a trend in fiction writing that is very much a feature of current literary interest. Yet, while he may partake in and contribute to a broader fictional endeavor, his choice of subject and his means of depicting it in narrative form are not merely indigenous to the cultural world of Arabic but also thoroughly innovative. In his case (and that of the Arab world in general) it scarcely needs to be added that the invocation of history also becomes a method whereby topics that, for obvious political reasons, would be virtually undebatable can be presented in fictional form — such as the nature of absolute power (in a region within which such governmental systems are the norm rather than the exception). In this context therefore, it needs to be made clear to readers of this translation that, in crafting this complex “novel of historical fiction,” Himmich is well aware of not only what he is writing and why, but also what are the principles and methodological background to the entire endeavor. He has himself written several articles on the novel and historical writing. In them he reveals not merely the breadth of his reading in literature and philosophy, but, more specifically, his familiarity with the interesting generic blending that is reflected in current discussions of historical fiction and, as he aptly notes, in any investigation of classical adab (mentioned above) and its esthetic criteria. That process of “blending” is, of course, a primary feature of this novel. One of the many works that he cites in an article in the Moroccan journal, Prologues/Muqaddimat (Summer-Autumn 1998) is Umberto Eco’s renowned novel. The Name of the Rose. It is therefore interesting to note that this same novel is also discussed in David Cowart’s study cited above, as an example of his fourth category of historical novel, namely “fictions whose authors project the present into the past.” Cowart points out that this fourth category offers the richest possibilities in writing historical fiction, since it “makes special demands on the ingenuity of novelists” (and, he might have added, of readers and, in my case, of translators as well). The “desire to mirror the present in the past finds expression most easily in a skewed or legendary or fabulous history more amenable than real history to the allegorical projection of the present.” Himmich illustrates these very principles in a statement in the article noted above, when he alludes to traditional forms of narrative within the Arabic literary tradition before pointing out that “authentic writing can only interact with precedents and those forms and styles that emerge from them, not so much in order to imitate them, but rather to place them within the fulcrum of change and thus to enrich them with the added value of modernity.”