Andaluzijska književnost
Andalusian literature

Summary/Abstract: Andalusia, the Iberian peninsula, the Arab island, Arabic Spain, the Pyrenean peninsula – these are just some of the names that have been applied to this peninsula in historical and other sources. The Arabs came to the peninsula in 711 CE and remained there until they were expelled in 1492. The vestiges of their culture are still visible in Spain to this day. They introduced Greek culture and civilization to Europe. The European Renaissance would probably have been delayed by several centuries had it not been for this corridor via which the scientific thought of the east reached the west. The paper deals with only one aspect of the cultural heritage of the Arabs in the peninsula: the Poetics of Andalus, which was long marked by imitation and retention of the poetics of the Arabic east, until its proponents shook off the shackles of tradition in the 11th century and turned to independent, original creation. It was then that strophic poetry differing from that of the Arabic east appeared, and was to have a major influence in form and content on the emergence of troubadour poetry in Europe. The prose writing of the Spanish Muslims, too, took its models from the Arabic east. When Sahib ibn ‘Abbad saw Al’Iqd al-farid, one of the most important works of the Arabic west, which became part of the world treasury of literature, he said: “Hadhihi bida’atuna ruddat ilayna” (See, our own things have returned to us). All this is to be observed both in oratory (khitabat) and epistolography (resayl) and in the literary critical genre. Finally, the names of writers encountered in the curricula of the east, and to some extent here too, are given.

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