Arabic epic literature

In the 13th century, an Arabic epic poem entitled Antar was created based on Antarah ibn Shaddad, a pre-Islamic Arabian-Abyssinian warrior-poet.

The extant versions were mostly written down relatively late on, after the 14th century, although many were undoubtedly collected earlier and many of the original stories are probably pre-Islamic.

Arabic short stories scripts was discovered in 1933 when Hellmut Ritter, a German orientalist, stumbled across it in the mosque of Ayasofya and translated it into his mother tongue.

The sultan celebrated his victory by taking Arabic manuscripts and then shipped to Istanbul and distributed among the city’s mosques.

[7] Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before[9] as Liber scalae Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi.

Fictional Arab people South Arabian deities Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (The Treatise of Kamil on the Prophet's Biography), known in English as Theologus Autodidactus, written by the Arabian polymath Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288), is one of the earliest known science fiction novels.

Rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using his own extensive scientific knowledge in anatomy, biology, physiology, astronomy, cosmology and geology.

One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam, and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction;[12] along the way, he encounters societies of jinns,[13] mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life.

[14] "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition[15] across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that Solomon once used to trap a jinn,[16] and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants,[17] lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings,[18] and a brass horseman robot who directs the party towards the ancient city.

[21] Other examples of early Arabic proto-science fiction include Al-Farabi's Opinions of the residents of a splendid city about a utopian society, and elements such as the flying carpet.