Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Leg over Leg.

• Author: Kilpatrick, Hilary
• Position: Book review

Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, Leg over Leg. Edited and translated by HUMPHREY DAVIES. 4 vols. Library of Arabic Literature. New York: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2013-2014. Pp. xl + 365; vii + 443; vii + 393; viii + 571. $125 (set); S40 each.

With this impressive edition and translation, Humphrey Davies has rendered one of the most challenging texts of Arabic literature, al-Shidyaq's al-Saq 'ala l-saq, accessible to a wide range of readers for the first time. Most histories of modern Arabic literature mention it, but what they say is generally based on impressions, if only because to read it conscientiously from cover to cover takes weeks or months rather than days. Now an enormous obstacle has been removed from the path of all those wanting to read and study this work.

Following the established format of the Library of Arabic Literature (LAL), the text and the translation on the facing page are preceded by a foreword, here contributed by Rebecca C. Johnson, a specialist in modern Arabic literature. It situates al-Saq 'ala l-saq in the general context of the nahda, the cultural awakening (or risorgimento, strictly speaking the equivalent of nahda) of the Arab world, which is customarily seen as starting in the nineteenth century and centered in Egypt. It outlines the life of (Ahmad) Faris al-Shidyaq from his birth in 1805 or 1806 in Lebanon to his death in Istanbul in 1887 and sketches the economic, social, and cultural changes taking place in his time, notably the development of printing. It then turns to al-Saq 'ala l-saq, which, with its very diverse types of text, cannot be assigned to any genre, and identifies the two main areas of investigation that the work announces: the Arabic language with its vast riches and women in all their variety. Johnson brings out well the "multi-register and multi-lingual cacophony" of the work. She also discusses its remarkable openness toward women and gender issues, even though she apparently follows Kamran Rastegar in seeing al-Fariyaqiyya, the main character's companion, as an abstract "Fariyaqness" (vol. 1: xxix), rather than as a personal name, the Lebanese dialect feminine form of al-Fariyaq (as pointed out by Boutros Hallaq, in Histoire de la litterature arabe moderne, vol. 1: i800-1945, ed. idem and Heidi Toelle [Arles: Sindbad/Actes Sud, 2007], 243).

In a subsequent note, Davies explains the minimal changes to the original 1855 edition that was printed under al-Shidyaq's supervision. Unlike other editors, he has followed it faithfully. Thus, he has retained the order of the chapters and also the orthography, although it does not always conform to current convention. Since there is no readily available complete text of the original Arabic, the editors of LAL might think of publishing the Arabic text separately, as they regularly do with the English translations in the series.

The reader is then plunged into al-Shidyaq's critical, humorous, uninhibited, sometimes bitter but profoundly humane, and utterly original masterpiece. The volumes are all constructed according to the same general scheme: twenty chapters, of which chapter thirteen is a maqama. In the fourth...