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Show I UCLI, L-UVVO, IVIUOIU , West Borrows From Wear East 1 against a. world which haH w forced upon it as colonizer the pretext of improving ,h fI and protecting it against 'f aggression! The Arabs tried Z sohdate their causes around S national, religious and secular alties to free themselves, and i t given a self-governing status! authority; and they had a "sti bargaining position from which? enforce its demands. It holds J! ly half the oil reserves of thewo and is, geographically, the strati ' bridge between East and The West therefore had to deal win the Arabs for its own sake. Mr. Crandall adds: "Actual, the Arabs' are people who haw something distinctive and positf, to offer to the world community Some people would probably ft, agree with him, but it is the mon responsibility of 'the West to rende a just response to the Arab's worii citizenship on the basis of equalit, ! . ' i ies, particularly those of the "Thousand "Thou-sand and one Nights," are found in the popular writings of Germany, Fiance, Italy, and England. Chaucer's Chau-cer's "Squire's Tale" and Boc-cacic's Boc-cacic's "Decameron" are both indebted in-debted to this source, as are probably prob-ably "Robinson Crusoe" and "Gulliver's "Gul-liver's Travels." The poetical talents tal-ents and aspirations, the mystical approach of the Arabs influenced even Goethe, Schiller and continental conti-nental Romanticists. Dante Dante, the very epitome of Medieval Med-ieval spirit, combined Christian mysticism with some of the richest and most spiritual features of Is- . lamic religious experience, in his "Divina Comedia." He was probably prob-ably influenced by Islam both in the schematic framework and the philosophical content of his thought. In "Paradiso:" "Action, allegorical allegor-ical purpose, the concept of an astronomical as-tronomical architecture of heaven and the speres, the didactic moral and many literary devices were revealed re-vealed to be almost identical in Dante and in Muslim legends. The analogy of the episodes of both Ibn 'Arabi and Dante may be elucidated eluci-dated by quoting some concrete examples. Throughout the two . texts, both Muhammad and Dante are made to narrate their eschato-logical eschato-logical experiences in the world beyond. Both begin the journey at night.- In the Moslem version, a lion and a wolf bar the road to hell ; and in Dante's poem, a leopard, a lion and a she-wolf impede his progress." pro-gress." West Becomes Independent Meanwhile, the West was developing develop-ing its own renaissance, and after Medieval lethargy, it had recovered its own heritage of classical religious relig-ious traditions, and its schools and scho'ars had come of age so that they no longer needed to rely on Arab sources. The Arabs until now had supplied the West through translations of Classical Greek works on politics, philosophy and medicine. As the West reached for its own stature, it forgot its contacts con-tacts with the Arabs; and the Arabs were content to let the West go by. Industrialization The Arabs did not care for the new forms of western life which developed with the commercial and industrial revolutions in Europe. It closed its doors to the West as long as possible; but the West, spearheaded by Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, began to force open the doors. It threw the products pro-ducts of its industries on the mar: kets of the East. It cut the Suez Canal through Islamic territory to serve their expansion. Westerners laid railways and airlines across the countries planning only for their own interests, and at the same time often gave the impression of believing that their civilization was the highest ever attained. The Arab World is now reacting Editor's Note: This is (ho second in a series of articles written by foreign students in connection with International Week. For details of today's activities see box below story. By VOUSEF SAAD The territorial area of the Near East extends roughly from the river valley of the Tigris and the Euphrates to the shores of Morocco on the Atlantic ocean. After World War II the area consisted of the following countries: Syria, Lebanon, Leban-on, Iraq, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt, the Sudan, the Arab Kingdom of Lybia and the various states of Arabia proper: Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Ku-wait, the Yemen, and the other frontier principalities. For geographical, geo-graphical, cultural and religious factors, the three Western Arab territorities of Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, have become closely connected con-nected in sentiment and foreign policy with the Arab states. One God In time past, while countries like Egypt, Syria and Lebanon cradled a great deal of Western thought, it had also witnessed the passing parade of the great civilizations: Egyptian, Assyrian, Phoenician, Persian, Greek, Roman, Arabian, Byzantine, Turkish, English and French. From Thebes, Egypt, "the first great monumental city of the ancient world," emanates "the world idea" or inter-nationalism, quite naturally for the first time in human experience, the idea of a "world god"; this was the earliest "one-godism ... a kind of far-seeing far-seeing universalism, that brought with it monotheism centuries before it appeared anywhere else." (James Brested) Justice Babylon had given to the old world the great code of Hammurabi and established "justice" among people. The new system had advanced ad-vanced far beyond tribalism and recognized no blood feud, private retribution or marriage by capture. cap-ture. The Phoenicians were probably the first great navigators, who discovered dis-covered the Western Mediterranean and even went as far away as the Atlantic coast of Spain. Their maritime mar-itime power led to the establishment establish-ment of the colony of Carthage, which was later to become the greatest and most dangerous rival of Rome. Later, the Arabs, kins to the Phocnieans, quite rapidly occupied all Near Eastern countries. coun-tries. They fostered Mediterranean cities with Islamic culture. Music It would be an ideal attempt to survey Arab culture in the short space allowed here, but on the whole, the Arabs, with the rise of Islam, had been challengers and contributors to Europe in practically practic-ally every field arts, medicine, science, religion and commerce. For instance, the contribution of Islam to music was both practical and theoretical. The practical was "diffused by the minstrels of Spain and southern France, even though we may not accept the derivation of troubadour from the Arabic tar-rab tar-rab 'minstrel.' The musical instruments instru-ments bequeathed by the Arabs to Europe are numerous. The lute, rebec, guitar, naber, timbal and kanoon or psaltery derive from the Arabic al-'ul, rabab, quitara, naq-quaru, naq-quaru, al-tabl, and qanun, which are said to have registered the em-. em-. ployment of the major mcde for Europe. Poetry In poetry, the Arab had a definite contribution to form as well as to content. The perfect rhyme was predominantly imbued with a type of Platonic love: the pure devotion of the lover to a conventionally idealized and physically unattainable unattain-able beloved. There was in early Baghdad 'love aplenty for water, wine, gardens bright and faces fair' (Abu Nuwas), yet there was also a poetic cult of singers of the truly martyr spirit of enraptured lovers living and dying chaste. This type of poetry was destined later to affect the West as peculiar expression ex-pression of knightly virtue, "as mystic compensation, at the lowest, low-est, for fleshly self denial, and at the highest, as the realization of the. Divine Beloved" (John Archer). Influence On West Also, the influence of Arabic poetry is evident in the songs of the Spanish troubadours. The Pro-vencial Pro-vencial poets, such as William of Poitiers, also adopted many of the metrical forms of the Spanish Muslims. Mus-lims. Episodes form eastern stor- |