Arab culture is the culture of the Arabs, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the east, in a region of the Middle East and North Africa known as the Arab world. The various religions the Arabs have adopted throughout their history and the various empires and kingdoms that have ruled and took lead of the civilization have contributed to the ethnogenesis and formation of modern Arab culture. Language, literature, gastronomy, art, architecture, music, spirituality, philosophy, and mysticism are all part of the cultural heritage of the Arabs.
The countries of the Arab world share a common culture, traditions, language and history that give the region a distinct identity and distinguish it from other parts of the Muslim world.
Literature Arabic literature is the writing produced, both prose and poetry, by speakers of the Arabic language. The Arabic word used for literature is adab which is derived from a word meaning "to invite someone for a meal" and implies politeness, culture and enrichment. Arabic literature emerged in the 6th century, with only fragments of the written language appearing before then. The Qur'an, from the 7th century, had a long-lasting effect on Arabic culture and literature.
The Mu'allaqat (Arabic: المعلقات, ) is the name given to a series of seven Arabic poems or qasida that originated before the time of Islam. Each poem in the set has a different author, and is considered to be their best work. Mu'allaqat means "The Suspended Odes" or "The Hanging Poems," and comes from the poems being hung on the wall in the Kaaba at Mecca.
The seven authors, who span a period of around 100 years, are Imru' al-Qais, Tarafa, Zuhayr, Labīd, 'Antara Ibn Shaddad, 'Amr ibn Kulthum, and Harith ibn Hilliza. All of the Mu’allaqats contain stories from the authors’ lives and tribe politics. This is because poetry was used in pre-Islamic time to advertise the strength of a tribe's king, wealth and people.
The One Thousand and One Nights ( ʾAlf layla wa-layla), is a medieval folk tale collection which tells the story of Scheherazade, a Sassanid queen who must relate a series of stories to her malevolent husband, King Shahryar (Šahryār), to delay her execution. The stories are told over a period of one thousand and one nights, and every night she ends the story with a suspenseful situation, forcing the King to keep her alive for another day. The individual stories were created over several centuries, by many people from a number of different lands.
During the reign of the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid in the 8th century, Baghdad had become an important cosmopolitan city. Merchants from Persia, China, India, Africa, and Europe were all found in Baghdad. During this time, many of the folk stories are thought to have been collected orally and later compiled into a single book. The compiler and ninth-century translator into Arabic is reputedly the storyteller Abu Abd-Allah Muhammad el-Gahshigar. The frame story of Shahrzad seems to have been added in the 14th century.
An example of modern poetry in classical Arabic style with themes of Pan-Arabism is the work of Aziz Pasha Abaza. He came from Abaza family which produced notable Arabic literary figures including Ismail Pasha Abaza, Fekry Pasha Abaza, novelist Tharwat Abaza, and Desouky Bek Abaza, among others.
Music
Arabic music is the music of Arabs, especially those centered around the Arabian Peninsula. The world of Arab music has long been dominated by Cairo, a cultural center, though musical innovation and regional styles abound from Tunisia to Saudi Arabia. Beirut has, in recent years, also become a major center of Arabic music. Classical Arab music is extremely popular across the population, especially a small number of superstars known throughout the Arab world. Regional styles of popular music include Iraqi el Maqaam, Algerian raï, Kuwaiti sawt and Egyptian el gil.
"The common style that developed is usually called 'Islamic' or 'Arab', though in fact it transcends religious, ethnic, geographical, and linguistic boundaries" and it is suggested that it be called the Near East (from Morocco to Afghanistan) style.van der Merwe, Peter 1989, p. 9
Habib Hassan Touma lists "five components" which "characterize the music of the Arabs:Touma 1996, p.xix-xx The Arab tone system (a musical tuning system) with specific interval structures, invented by al-Farabi in the 10th century (p. 170). a) Rhythmic-temporal structures that produce a rich variety of rhythmic patterns, awzan, used to accompany the metered vocal and instrumental genres and give them form. b) Musical instruments that are found throughout the Arabian world and that represent a standardized tone system, are played with standardized performance techniques, and exhibit similar details in construction and design. c) Specific social contexts for the making of music, whereby musical genres can be classified as urban (music of the city inhabitants), rural (music of the country inhabitants), or Bedouin (music of the desert inhabitants). d) A musical mentality that is responsible for the aesthetic homogeneity of the tonal-spatial and rhythmic-temporal structures in Arabian music, whether composed or improvised, instrumental or vocal, secular or sacred.
The Arab musical mentality is defined by the maqām phenomenon; the predominance of vocal music, the predilection for small instrumental ensembles, the mosaiclike stringing together of musical form elements, that is, the arrangement in a sequence of small and smallest melodic elements, and their repetition, combination, and permutation within the framework of the tonal-spatial model; the absence of polyphony, polyrhythm, and motivic development. Arabian music is, however, very familiar with the ostinato, as well as with a more instinctive heterophonic way of making music; the alternation between a free rhythmic-temporal and fixed tonal-spatial organization on the one hand and a fixed rhythmic-temporal and free tonal-spatial structure on the other. This alternation... results in exciting contrasts."
Arab music is characterized by an emphasis on melody and rhythm rather than harmony, which makes it homophonic in nature. Some genres are polyphonic (as the instrument Kanoun is based upon the idea of playing two-note chords) but quintessentially, Arabic music is melodic. The basis of Arabic music is the maqam (pl. maqamat). The maqam has a "tonal" note on which the piece must end (unless modulation occurs).
The maqam consists of at least two jins, or scale segments. "Jins" in Arabic comes from the ancient Greek word "genus," meaning type. In practice, a jins (pl. ajnas) is either a trichord, a tetrachord, or a pentachord. The trichord is three notes, the tetrachord four, and the pentachord five. The maqam usually covers only one octave (two jins), but sometimes more. Like the melodic minor scale and Indian ragas, some maqamat have different ajnas, and thus notes, while descending or ascending. In practice most musicians agree on the 8 most frequently used ajnas: Rast, Bayat, Sikah, Hijaz, Saba, Kurd, Nahawand, and Ajam — and a few of the most commonly used variants: Nakriz, Athar Kurd, Sikah Beladi, Saba Zamzama. Mukhalif is a rare jins used exclusively in Iraq and does not occur in combination with other ajnas.
The main difference between the western chromatic scale and the Arabic scales is the existence of many in-between notes, which are sometimes referred to as quarter tones for the sake of practicality. However, while in some treatments of theory the quarter tone scale or all twenty four tones should exist, according to Yūsuf Shawqī (1969) in practice there are many fewer tones.Touma 1996, p. 170 In 1932, at International Convention on Arabic music held in Cairo, Egypt (attended by such Western luminaries as Béla Bartók and Henry George Farmer), experiments were done which determined conclusively that the notes in actual use differ substantially from an even-tempered 24-tone scale, and furthermore that the intonation of many of those notes differ slightly from region to region (Egypt, Turkey, Syria, Iraq). The commission's recommendation is as follows: "The tempered scale and the natural scale should be rejected. In Egypt, the Egyptian scale is to be kept with the values, which were measured with all possible precision. The Turkish, Syrian, and Iraqi scales should remain what they are...".translated in Maalouf 2002, p. 220 Both in modern practice, and based on the evidence from recorded music over the course of the last century, there are several differently tuned "E"s in between the E-flat and E-natural of the Western Chromatic scale, depending on the maqam or jins in use, and depending on the region.
Musicians refer to these in-between notes as "quarter-tones" ("half-flat" or "half-sharp") for ease of nomenclature, but perform and teach the exact values of intonation in each jins or maqam by ear. It should also be added, in reference to Touma's comment above, that these "quarter-tones" are not used everywhere in the maqamat: in practice, Arabic music does not modulate to 12 different tonic areas like the Well-Tempered Klavier, and so the most commonly used "quarter tones" are on E (between E-flat and E-natural), A, B, D, F (between F-natural and F-sharp) and C.
The prototypical Arab ensemble in Egypt and Syria is known as the takht, which includes, (or included at different time periods) instruments such as the 'oud, qanún, rabab, nay, violin (which was introduced in the 1840s or 50s), riq and dumbek. In Iraq, the traditional ensemble, known as the chalghi, includes only two melodic instruments—the jowza (similar to the rabab but with four strings) and santur—with riq and dumbek.
Dance Arab dance, also referred to as Oriental dance, Middle-Eastern dance and Eastern dance, refers to the traditional folk dances in Arab world (Middle East and North Africa). The term "Arabic dance" is often associated with the belly dance. However, there are many styles of traditional Arab dance, and many of them have a long history. These may be folk dances, or dances that were once performed as rituals or as entertainment spectacle, and some may have been performed in the imperial court. Coalescence of oral storytelling, poetry recital, and performative music and dance as long-standing traditions in Arab history. Among the best-known of the Arab traditional dances are the belly dance and the Dabke.
Belly dance, also referred to as Eastern dance (), is an Arab expressive dance, which emphasizes complex movements of the torso. Many boys and girls in countries where belly dancing is popular will learn how to do it when they are young. The dance involves movement of many different parts of the body; usually in a circular way.
Family honor