The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (Arabic:رحلة ابن فطومة) is a fable written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1983. It was translated from Arabic into English in 1992 by Denys Johnson-Davies and published by Doubleday.
Plot summary Ibn Fattouma, more commonly known by his birth name Qindil Muhammad al-Innabi, is a Muslim man disillusioned by the corruption in his home city. When he asks his teacher why a land whose people obey the tenets of Islam suffers so, Qindil is told that the answer he seeks lies far away from the city, in the land of Gebel; the land of perfection. The teacher encourages Ibn Fattouma to seek the land of Gebel, where such problems have been solved. The teacher attempted to journey there himself, but civil war in neighboring lands and the demands of family ultimately prevented him from completing the journey. Further complicating Qindil's impending expedition, no documents exist about the land and no one is known to have returned from Gebel.
Qindil is determined to embark on the journey, for he feels betrayed by his mother, who remarried, and his lover, who was stolen by the sultan. He gives his farewells to his family and proceeds on a caravan out of his home city to the land of Mashriq. In this sexually libertine society, the women and men do not marry; rather, they share each other's partners. The religion of Mashriq is primitive and pagan; the moon is worshiped as a god. Qindil questions the land's customs, but he soon acculturates to their ways. He settles in Mashriq with a woman named Arousa and they have five children. Because of Qindil's insistence upon teaching his eldest son Islam, he is exiled from Mashriq and prohibited from seeing Arousa or their children again.
Qindil then travels to the land of Haïra. The invasion of Mashriq by militaristic Haïra further separates Qindil from his family, and when the annexation of Mashriq is finished, Arousa is brought to Haïra as a slave, who is then bought by Qindil. The chamberlain of the god-king of Haïra desires Arousa as a wife and arranges Qindil to be jailed. Twenty years pass in Haïra in jail before the god-king is overthrown, and the chamberlain, who is also later jailed, tells Qindil to look in the neighboring land of Halba for Arousa and children. In Halba, the freedom of the individual is the most important value. All religions peacefully coexist and Halba openly encourages freedom of inquiry. The Halbans are also aggressive promoters of their philosophy of life in other nations; preparations are underway as Qindil arrives for a war with neighboring Aman. There, Qindil meets and marries Samia, an intellectual Muslim pediatrician in Halba's hospital. Qindil reunites with Arousa, who thought he was lost and had since married a Buddhist man. With Samia's reluctant approval, Qindil decides to continue his journey before war makes such travel impossible.
In the land of Aman, justice is held as the most important value. To maintain order, he leaves just as Aman and Halba prepare to fight. His next stop, the land of Ghuroub, finds Qindil questioned to the depths of his being. Does he earnestly desire to go to Gebel, and why? Qindil states as he has many times before that he seeks to learn Gebel's secret of perfection in life and share it with the people of his homeland. He and the other seekers of Gebel are driven from Ghuroub by an invading army from Aman, and after months of travel, they sight Gebel itself from a mountain peak. As Qindil descends to continue his journey, the story ends leaving the reader to surmise whether or not he reached the city.
Setting The setting of the story is not clearly spatial or temporal; the journey moves through a space that can represent the historical Middle East, an analogical space of different periods of history or a simply imaginary space. It can be viewed as some combination of these spaces.
The story may be allegorical for the rise of Human Civilization. Qindil starts his adventure from his homeland, the Dar al-Islam, which practices traditional, familiar Islamic values but imperfectly, and with a great deal of corruption. When Qindil sets out, the first land he visits is the Land of Mashriq. Mashriq is the land of the sunrise, and may represent early civilization; particularly that of pre-Islamic Arabia. Mashriq employs a very basic religion based on worship of the moon, and incorporates primal, tribal, values representative of early human development.
Haira may thus represent the rise of human civilization and the chaos that accompanied it. Haira means “confusion” in Arabic and features the rule of a divine king and frequent wars. Its values seem to reflect those of absolutism; though without any clear historical period in mind. Qindil travels to the Halba following Haira, Halba is the land of freedom. Halba may represent Western civilization, and includes democracy, wealth, and sophistication. Halba eventually conquers both Mashriq and Haira; plausibly mirroring the historical rise of the West.
Qindil then travels to Aman; the land of security and total justice. Aman employs communism and is engaged with a struggle for influence against Halba; an interesting parallel to the time the book was written in 1983. Finally Qindil stops at Ghuroub; the land of the sunset. Ghuroub is interesting, as it has no obvious parallel in the real world. It is a transitory place, where people train to go forth to the land of Gebel. Qindil then journeys to the Land of Gebel, which is at the top of a mountain. Gebel symbolizes heaven on Earth. No man has ever returned from Gebel, the land of perfect society.
Some of the places mentioned in the book, such as Gebel, Haira and Mashriq were names of historical kingdoms in the Classical and Medieval Middle East. They are not just analogies but also references to the real, if much mythologised past.
Analysis Mahfouz turned away from Western literature and looked to Arabic modes for narrative inspiration. Medieval Arabic influence was shown in the story's episodic style with little interest in a central plot. Mahfouz used the Journey of Ibn Battuta as an inspiration but his character, Ibn Fattouma travels through time, not space. Each land fits into the evolution of civilization. The Journey is an allegory for Mahfouz's search for a perfect socio-political system. Each land was named after its time in the history of man; Mashriq was sunrise, Haira bewilderment, Halba arena, Aman security, Ghuroub sunset, and Gebel mountain. This story ends in the present as it is fitting that it does not continue into the future. Mahfouz shows the progression of man from undeveloped to modern, developed civilizations.
The land of Mashriq (or Sunrise in the original text) represents the origin of human society. A tribal land, it has an animist religion and the people live comparatively simply to Qindil's homeland. Next in the progression is the land of Haira (or Bewilderment), a land representing the transition to absolute monarchies in the course of human civilization. Haira incites a war against Mashriq, triumphs and promptly takes over it, showing the spread of monarchy as well as the spread of these empires. Next is Halba (or Arena), a land of freedom, where all religions are tolerated and freedom of speech is guaranteed and practiced. However, it is plagued by crime. The democracy engages in war against Halba, succeeds, and takes over Haira, like the revolutions and change to democracy in much of the world in the 18th to 20th centuries. Next is Aman (or Security), a communist society in which equality is enforced and the government controls all aspects of society. The president, however, has absolute power and has a distinct social and monetary advantage over the commoners. A parallel in the world would be the Soviet Union. The land engages in a war with Halba and takes over Ghuroub out of fear of Halba taking it, much like the influence America and the Soviet Union had over other countries in the Cold War of recent times. The victor is left ambiguous, just as the victor of the Cold War was unknown in 1983, when the novel was written. Last is the land of Gebel (or Mountain); a utopia. It represents the climax of human society and the workings of the society are left unknown, just as the workings of a utopia today are unknown to humanity.
Characters Qindil Muhammad al-Innabi - The narrator and the main protagonist, he is the son of an eighty-year-old man, Muhammad al-Innabi, who fell in love with a seventeen-year-old girl, Fattouma al-Azhari. He was given the name 'Ibn Fattouma' i.e. 'son of Fattouma'. Arousa - The girl that Qindil falls in love with in the Land of Mashriq but the ways of the land are different and he can't marry (or purchase) her outright. But a union, of sorts, is established and Qindil settles down in the land, staying for years and fathering her children. Driven to bring his son up on the principles of Islam, he runs afoul of local customs and is arrested and deported. They are united momentarily after Mashriq is conquered are separated when Qindil is falsely arrested. Arousa then marries a Buddhist and sees Qindil in the Land of Halba in a jewelry shop that Qindil is working in. Ham - Qindil's mentor throughout the land of Haira, he is the owner of the inn for foreign travelers. Fam - Qindil's mentor throughout the land of Mashriq, he is the owner of the inn for foreign travelers. Halima Adlial-Tantawi - She is a young woman in Qindil's homeland whom he spots walking throughout the streets with her father who is blind. Immediately, Qindil starts to admire her and decides to ask for her hand in marriage. Qindil's mother is reluctant at first, due to the fact that Halima originates from a family that is of a lesser class and states that Qindil is too young and can marry any other woman but Qindil is insistent. Fattouma al-Azhari - When only seventeen, Fattouma al-Azhari married her husband of eighty years old. Qindil is given the name 'Ibn Fattouma' which means 'son of Fattouma' by his brothers as a means of "washing their hands of any possible relationship with them and casting doubts upon my mother." Muhammad al-Innabi - Qindil's father, who is eighty when he falls in love with Fattouma al-Azhari, Qindil's mother and had produced seven notable merchant sons before him. Samia - Qindil falls in love with her in the land of Halba. Qindil's relationships with Arousa and Samia over the course of his travels provide him with deep happiness and satisfaction. His greatest sorrows are in losing his two loves. Sheik Maghagha al-Gibeili - Qindil's teacher who made a journey himself but had to stop before he could visit the land of Gebel due to a war. He marries Qindil's mother as he "cannot bear his solitude any longer" at the same time as Qindil's marriage to Halima is arranged. He is the tutor who extols the virtues of travel as a way of finding the true meaning of life. Sheikh Hamada al Sabki - Qindil meets him in the land of Halba. He gives the call to prayer in the streets and tells Qindil that in the land of Halba, people preached that Islam encouraged homosexuality. Qindil is taken aback by this news and is disappointed by the New Islam that was manifesting itself in this country. Imam invites Qindil to his house and there, he introduces his daughter, Samia, to him. The Sage in the Land of Ghuroub - He is an Old man located in the forest. He is the instructor of those who are perplexed, and prepares those who desire to make the journey to the Land of Gebel.
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