Mahjar

The Mahjar (Arabic: المهجر, romanized: al-mahjar, one of its more literal meanings being "the Arab diaspora"[1]) was a movement related to Romanticism migrant literary movement started by Arabic-speaking writers who had emigrated to the Americas from Ottoman-ruled Lebanon, Syria and Palestine at the turn of the 20th century and became a movement in the 1910s.[2][3][4][5] Like their predecessors in the Nahda movement (or the "Arab Renaissance"), writers of the Mahjar movement were stimulated by their personal encounter with the Western world and participated in the renewal of Arabic literature,[5] hence their proponents being sometimes referred to as writers of the "late Nahda".[6] These writers, in South America as well as the United States, contributed indeed to the development of the Nahda in the early 20th century.[7] Kahlil Gibran is considered to have been the most influential of the "Mahjari poets".[4][3]

  1. ^ Hans Weh. Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic (4th ed.). p. 1195.
  2. ^ Badawi, M. M. (1975). A Critical Introduction to Modern Arabic Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 179–203. ISBN 0-521-20699-5.
  3. ^ a b Jayyusi, Salma Khadra (1977). Trends and Movements in Modern Arabic Poetry. Vol. 2. Leiden: E. J. Brill. p. 362. ISBN 90-04-04920-7.
  4. ^ a b Fairbairn, Anne (1989). Feathers and the Horizon. Leros Press. ISBN 9780949264565.
  5. ^ a b Archipel (in French). 2008. p. 66. Les écrivains du Mahjar sont les écrivains de langue arabe ayant émigré en Amérique. Comme leurs aînés de la Nahda, ils sont stimulés par leur rencontre personnelle de l'Occident et participent largement au renouvellement de la littérature arabe.
  6. ^ Hanssen, Jens; Weiss, Max (2016). Arabic Thought beyond the Liberal Age. Cambridge University Press. p. 179. ISBN 9781316654248.
  7. ^ Somekh, "The Neo-Classical Poets" in M.M. Badawi (ed.) "Modern Arabic Literature", Cambridge University Press 1992, pp. 36-82.