The Journey of Ibn Fattouma (Arabic:رحلة ابن فطومة) is an intermittently provocative fable written and published by Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz in 1983.
[2] 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.
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.
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.
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.
With Samia's reluctant approval, Qindil decides to continue his journey before war makes such travel impossible.
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.
As Qindil descends to continue his journey, the story ends leaving the reader to surmise whether or not he reached the city.
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.
Mashriq employs a very basic religion based on worship of the moon, and incorporates primal, tribal, values representative of early human development.
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.
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.
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.
Driven to bring his son up on the principles of Islam, he runs afoul of local customs and is arrested and deported.
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.
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 gives the call to prayer in the streets and tells Qindil that in the land of Halba, people preached that Islam encouraged homosexuality.
[7] Throughout his ensuing journey, Ibn Fattouma undergoes many struggles both on an existential and intellectual level as he attempts to determine the meaning of life in relation to who he is.
Themes present in Journey of Ibn Fattouma revolve around how to correctly organize a society and his personal existential struggles.
The story relies heavily on self-interpretation creating a path to discovery for Qindil and the reader leaving everyone to question what the real journey was.
On a scale of A-F, complete-review.com gave Journey of Ibn Fattouma an A−, stating that it is “a clever...parable of different forms of governments and societies.”[12] “The style of the Arabic original is descriptive, sensuous, and sometimes moving.
The translation, coming from the pen of an experienced translator, is meticulously faithful to the original while maintaining complete idiomatic English that flows smoothly.”- Issa Peters, World Literature Today As said by The Complete Review, “The Journey of Ibn Fattouma is a clever if occasionally too simplistic parable of different forms of government and society, seen especially -- and very effectively -- in relation to Islam (both theoretical and the less-than-perfect real-life examples of Islamic states).
War breaks out several times too often; presented as it is, it comes to look like an inevitability in practically each of these situations, which doesn't seem to be what Mahfouz means.
Erik is an Adjunct Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, as well as a member of EPPC's board of directors.
Based on the title, The Journey of Ibn Fattouma, Naguib Mahfouz clearly wants readers to be aware of the medieval work while reading his novel.
Ibn Fattouma's critiques of Islam seem to create the basis of his journey, as he searches for a place where life is far more ideal than his homeland.
This fuels his journey and creates a more complex character than if the story was simply following Ibn Battuta, blindly mimicking his every trait.
The revolution of 1919 in Egypt influenced Mahfouz and inspired him to place a symbol of rebellion in the lands Qindil visits.
Qindil travels to Mashriq, and discovers the underlying rules and restrictions of the seemingly free and open land.
While The Journey of Ibn Fattouma symbolizes the development of human history, it also reflects the author and his connection to the Egyptian Revolution.