"Rihla" Genre Features in Youssef Zeidan’s Novel “Azazel”

Vlasova Yuliya Evgenievna ORCID: 0000-0003-4311-3403 PhD in Philology Associate professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba 117198, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 10/2, office 502 vlasova-yue@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

Vavichkina Tatiana Anatolevna ORCID: 0000-0003-3474-5820 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia named after Patrice Lumumba 117198, Russia, Moscow region, Moscow, Miklukho-Maklaya str., 10/2, office 502 vavichkina-ta@rudn.ru Other publications by this author

Man has long been attracted to distant countries. In search of new experiences, he rushed across the seas and oceans and discovered new lands. The described pictures of what he saw formed into notes, diaries, travel essays and memoirs. The critic V. M. Guminsky defined this genre as follows: "Travel is a genre of describing information about little–known lands and peoples" ^{[1, p. 315]}. The author's task is to explore the world and share knowledge and impressions from trips with others. In the lands of Mesopotamia, a poem arose about King Gilgamesh, who went to the edge of the world in the distant Levant to defeat the monster Humbaba. The inhabitants of the land of the Pharaohs have composed a "Shipwrecked Tale" in which the hero sails across the Red Sea to the land of Punt for incense. Epics, legends, novels about the wanderings of people around the world nourished people's minds and developed their imagination.

In 2008, another novel by the Egyptian writer, manuscript researcher Yusuf Zeidan (born 1958) "Azazel" was published ^[2]. The book was a great success and was translated into various languages, including Russian ^[3]. In 2009, Zeidan was awarded the Arabic Booker Prize. The literary critic M. N. Suvorov called "Azazel" a hymn to individual freedom in a postmodern appeal to the theme of early Christianity ^{[4, p. 24]}. Following him, the Arabist and translator V. N. Zarytovskaya found in the work the features of a historical novel about the confrontation between the first Christians and pagans ^{[5, p. 75]}.

But not only the historical past is drawn by an expert in Coptic, Aramaic, Latin and ancient Greek. Zeidan, an expert in ancient history, reconstructed the life of a dozen major cities in Egypt and Asia Minor on the pages of the novel. To do this, the writer adopted the techniques of the traditional Middle East genre of "rihl", which means "journey" in Arabic, continuing the traditions of scholars of the Arab Caliphate, who traveled not only around the Muslim world, but also traveled beyond its borders. Researcher D. M. Zaitsev writes that these people have developed "a separate genre of notes about the journey to the holy places of "richlya". The most famous of these writers are the Arab travelers from Muslim Spain and North Africa of the XII–XIV centuries Ibn Jubayr and Ibn Battuta" ^{[6, p. 17]}. An outstanding monument of this genre was the famous "Travels of Ibn Batutta", who made four pilgrimages and left memories of visiting Africa, Arabia, Mesopotamia and the Golden Horde, and then dictated his lengthy stories to Ibn Juzaya, secretary of the Marinid Sultan Abu Inan. Giuzaia edited the essays entitled "A Gift to the Contemplative about the curiosities of cities and the wonders of travel" ^[7].

And researcher M. A. Dubovitskaya gave as an example of the genre of Arab travel a book by the Egyptian educator of the XIX century Rifaat at-Tahtawi "Grains of gold in the sights of Paris", in which "the famous journey undertaken to familiarize with the civilization of the West resulted in arguments about Egypt, not about Paris" ^{[8, p. 17]}.

The Arabist T. A. Shumovsky found elements of "richle" in Arabic folklore. In particular, in seven stories about the travels of the hero of the Book of One Thousand and One Nights by Sinbad the Sailor, the reader "sees the entire water area of the Indian Ocean, as it seemed to the merchants of the first millennium AD, heading to the settlements of South Asia and East Africa" ^{[9, p. 20]}.

Among the distinctive features of the genre of "richly" can be distinguished: the descriptive nature of the narrative, the presence of toponyms, documentality (links to real events), cartography, the involvement of real-life characters (rulers, church fathers, scientists) as witnesses.

In the twentieth century, the famous Egyptian writer, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988, Naguib Mahfouz published a philosophical novel called "The Journey of Ibn Fattuma" (1983), an allusion to the wanderings of the famous medieval pilgrim ^[10]. There he wrote a chronicle of the journey of Qandil Muhammad al-Inabi, known as Ibn Fattuma ^[11]. Imitating the style of the writings of the legendary medieval traveler Ibn Batutta, Mahfuz created an imaginary world and showed the wanderings of the human soul in search of truth and happiness. Following him, Zeidan in 2008 came up with and embodied the image of the wandering monk Gipa, who is looking for his way in life.

The compatriot of the Nobel laureate Yusuf Zeidan in the novel "Azazel" also resorts to the motive of travel. He leads his young hero strictly by compass: from the south of Egypt to the north along the Nile River by boat, then from west to east from Africa to Asia via Sinai on a donkey. Hiking in Palestine and Syria led an inquisitive young man to Byzantium. At the same time, the sharp-eyed young man snatches out, describes in detail the speech, and the hand carefully records the features of the structure of houses in cities and villages. The reader is interested to know what the inhabitants of a particular region wear and eat. This is how a country guide turns out. There you can find the towns of Nubia and Upper Egypt, where the traveler comes from, for example, Ahmim, Nag Hammadi, the island of Elephantine, the city of Esna. The cities of Lower Egypt and the Nile Delta are also represented in the manuscript: Heliopolis (Cairo), Alexandria and Damietta. In the list of Palestinian geographical names, the caves of the Dead Sea, Cana, Nazareth, Sidon, Jerusalem. The toponyms of Greater Syria are Damascus, Aleppo and the Mountain Monastery near the village of Sarmada. Byzantine cities – Antioch, Ephesus, Constantinople.

To create the effect of authenticity, the author uses a frame composition, gradually immersing the reader in the depths of centuries. The outer frame is limited to the date of publication of the manuscript entitled "Azazel": April fourth, two thousand and four. This is followed by a layer – the date of discovery of the parchments: nineteen ninety-seven. And finally, the inner frame is the beginning of the fifth century AD. Three layers of time separate the reader from the characters of the work. The narration is conducted on behalf of the narrator-translator, who bequeathed to publish the manuscript after his death. The book was found in ruins near Aleppo on the way to Antioch. The excavations were conducted by a certain father Valim Kazari. With the help of these details, a sense of authenticity is created of a document written on parchment sheets in Aramaic, that is, the ancient Syriac language in which Jesus Christ spoke and the Bible was written.

It is clarified that the scrolls were kept in a locked wooden pencil case. In the margins, marks and comments in Arabic written by "naskh" were found, presumably made by a Nestorian monk from Edessa. The narrator reports that he spent seven years translating the parchment from Syrian to Arabic.

The history of the monk Gipa occupied thirty parchment leaves, written in the handwriting of "estrangelo". It should be noted that the narrator broke the pages of the manuscript into parts and titled them. He diligently renamed the place names: Panopilis – Ahmim in southern Egypt, Germanica – Marash in Syria, the desert of Skintis – Wadi Natrun in northwestern Egypt, Nicaea - modern Iznik in Turkey.

Continuing the conversation about the documentary nature of the work, we note that on its pages there are real historical characters who lived in the fifth century AD, from the Emperor of Byzantium Theodosius to the prefect of Alexandria Orestes. As a translator, the main character communicates with the heads of Christian churches and denominations. The position of the excommunicated Bishop of Antioch Nestorius is close to him. He condemns the methods of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, who brutally dealt with the scientist Hypatia and other non-Christians. And finally, the young man honors the mind and greatness of Bishop Theodore of Mopsuestia.

The main character is a healer, a monk, a thinker who called himself Gipa, he is thirty–five years old. Yusuf Zeidan forces Gipu to record the events that took place around him and inflamed the fears in his chest. The story begins on September twenty-seventh of the one hundred and forty-seventh year of the era of the Martyrs (according to the Coptic calendar), that is, in the four hundred and thirty-first year of our era. That year Bishop Nestorius was excommunicated from the church and the pillars of faith were shaken.

The reader will learn that the homeland of Gipa is the south of Egypt, the city of Aswan on the Nile River. He studied at Nag Hammadi and Ahmadim until the age of eleven, then moved to the north and Alexandria.

And the real monk is a stone cell two meters high, like a grave. The essence of the found manuscript is the biography of a monk who left his hometown to achieve perfection in the art of healing and theology, and then fled his homeland in search of the true faith, wandered for a long time, but never found shelter and answers to his tormenting questions. His experience could be useful to other people.

The notes of a wandering monk allow you to create pictures of life in different places of the fifth century AD. The life of people of different classes is recreated on parchment sheets, so this information is an interesting historical and ethnographic material. For example, the reader learns that "the physique of the Alexandrians is much denser than that of the inhabitants of the south of the country, and the skin looks whiter" ^{[3, p. 147]}.

 The route of the first river trip for knowledge ran from the south to the north of Egypt and was the standard way for people of that time to get to Alexandria. Yusuf Zeidan, an expert in the history of Ancient Egypt, carefully draws the details of the July journey from Akhmim to Assiut along the Nile: the sun, river boats and sailing barges, sugar dates. "Assiut is a very large city, the majority of whose inhabitants were Christians, although there were also idolaters. In general, the population was welcoming, and the dwellings built next to each other were spacious. At the time, I thought it was the largest city in the world. I have not yet visited Alexandria, Jerusalem and Antioch..." ^{[3, p. 65]}.

The young man spent several weeks in various monasteries and churches, and then sailed to Alexandria with a caravan of small traders from Heliopolis. He writes warmly about the vast expanses: "There is not a single hill in the Nile Delta that the eye could catch, only an endless plain covered with a dense veil of vegetation. Hardworking men and women worked in the fields" ^{[3, p. 69]}.

With a letter of recommendation from a priest from Akhmim to the priest of St. Mark's Church, Yuannis, a modest southerner reached the city of gold of Alexandria in eight days. Outside the city walls, naked people were sheltered in shacks and tents. A dense stream of people, consisting of the poor, went to the gate. The streets of the city were paved with cobblestones, sidewalks were laid along the houses. "In my homeland, I heard that Alexandrians are not like us: they prefer to stay awake at night and do not like to get up early... The city was striking in its elegance. But this screaming beauty everywhere did not give rise to the feeling of that great divine Alexandria, as it was called… I would call it a human hail!" ^{[3, p. 69]}. Zeidan dedicates seven of the thirty chapters of his novel to this city.

The reader will learn that Kanopskaya Street stretches from the Moon Gate to the Sunny One, it divides the city into two parts: the northern one, where wealthy citizens live, and the southern one, where the poor settle. Everything is built up with beautiful houses. Once in the house of a Sicilian merchant, the young man found not only delicious food and pleasant evenings in the neighborhood of the ardent Octavia, but also a huge library of her owner, full of works on history and literature: copies of Aesop, poems of the philosopher Heraclitus and the epistles of Origen.

"The Capital of salt and Cruelty" is the name of the third parchment, the third chapter of the novel. Firstly, the salt hints that Alexandria is a seaport city, and secondly, a city whose citizens cry salty tears. Scenes of joy and admiration (architecture, a lecture by a female teacher Hypatia) alternate with scenes of fear and disgust (the brutal murder of Hypatia and Octavia by fanatics). Overcoming the temptation to be more famous than Galen, Hippocrates and Aesculapius, defeating the passions and temptations of a young woman, Hypa chose faith.

It is noteworthy that Yusuf Zeidan gives the young man the opportunity to choose, offering him two ways: to leave secular life and become a hermit monk, or to stay in the city and be a doctor, but lead an ascetic lifestyle, read a lot and constantly reflect on death, like a Sicilian merchant, the owner of Octavia.

Shaking with fear, tormented by remorse and feeling a sense of shame from seeing the execution of innocent people, the young man fled from Alexandria. The great city has become the abode of ghouls. The wanderer directed his steps not along the course of the Earth's movement to the west to the blessed Libyan Pentapolis, but to the east into the desert: "In my wanderings I was like the Jews during their endless wanderings in the Sinai Desert" ^{[3, p. 184]}.

Where the Nile delta meets the sea, the wanderer threw off his cassock and performed the rite of self-baptism. Endowed with mysterious grace, the young man born for the second time named himself Hypa in memory of the mathematician and philosopher Hypatia. The pilgrim decided to go to the place where faith originated.

On the way, for three months, the young man worked as a carpenter at the shipyard and treated people in the city of Damietta. He compared his boss to the Apostle Peter, who also fished in the sea. On the eve of Sinai, where one desert gives way to another, showing the world its poor decoration: desolation, infertility and scarcity, Gipa came across a modest monastery, standing alone in the middle of a sandy plain. There he realized that "monasticism is transitory, like everything in life" ^{[3, p. 191]}. The abbot advised the traveler to look for the source of faith in caves near the Dead Sea among the Essenes, since Judaism is the root. He suggested how to find the cave of the hermit Khariton.

On the back of a donkey, armed with a loaf of bread and a fur with water, as well as knowledge of the geography of Sinai, gleaned from the book of Claudius Ptolemy, for two months Gipa traveled through the desert, contemplating mirages. On the way, he met nomadic Bedouins, then a caravan of pilgrims. The third memory was of an attack by a pack of wolves that ate his donkey. 

To the inhabitant of one of the caves in the vicinity of the Dead Sea, monk Khariton, local peasants brought a jar of water and a bundle with a bread cake every week. The elder talked with Gipa about the origins of faith and advised her to go to Jerusalem for worship. So the young man made a pilgrimage to the places of the deeds of Jesus Christ.

In the city of the Holy Sepulchre, other monks helped the emaciated wanderer regain his strength. There he realized that "no matter how weak each person and all of us put together, our strength lies only in love" ^{[3, p. 199]}. Talking with the villagers, Gipa learned about different cities. Bishop Nestorius spoke about Antioch, what sciences are taught in its schools, about the rich episcopal library, about ordinary people from the surrounding villages. The monk, in turn, told him about his native Akhmim, a large city on the banks of the Nile, about its majestic temple, where giant figures of pharaohs rise at the entrance. Gipa received a letter of recommendation from Nestorius to the abbot of the Mountain Monastery, located north of Aleppo, one of the quietest and most beautiful places on earth.

On the way to the north, Gipa met with the caravaneers. They were Arab merchants. Taking the opportunity, Yusuf Zeidan inserted a few words about the Arabic language: "although it is close to Syrian, it does not have a written form. Those who speak it do not adhere to the same faith: Jews, Christians, pagans. It is said that the Arabs are descendants of Ismail and are mentioned in the Torah" ^{[3, p. 214]}. Together with the Arab caravan, Gipa visited a large Damascus surrounded by gardens, standing under a high mountain. Then the mountainous terrain was replaced by a vast plain.

Two weeks later, the travelers found themselves in wonderful Aleppo, where many Arabs, Syrians and Greeks live. Some of them migrated from Palmyra. According to the memoirs of a traveler in Aleppo, "there are no city walls, and houses are scattered around low hills, in the center of which stands one huge hill. The ruins of an ancient citadel with dilapidated gates and high walls have been preserved on its top" ^{[3, p. 215]}.

After spending the night in a hospice and transferring from a camel to a mule, loading books on the second, Gipa drove to his refuge – the Mountain Monastery. The journey to the monastery in northern Syria took half a day. It ran through green fields and sandy hills. Through the local cemetery. Gipa's new shelter stood on the ruins of a Byzantine structure. Once there was a fortress or manor of a nobleman. And there was an ancient temple nearby, stone walls and a marble altar were preserved.

The author deliberately describes in detail the surroundings of the monastery and its interior. Twelve chapters are devoted to the prison. It turns out that there are many ancient Roman columns in this hilly area. The entrance to the monastery was on the south side, through a gap in the old partially preserved wall. It is impossible to climb the hill from three sides – there are steep slopes. The monastery seemed to be a high-altitude nest ^{[3, p. 224]}. To the right stood the barracks of soldiers to guard against thieves and highwaymen. As in a movie, the reader is presented with terraced gardens (like those of Babylon), in the center of which is a hut. An entire chapter is devoted to the description of the Mountain monastery: a well–kept courtyard, western buildings – a library, eastern buildings - a church, a warehouse, cells, a kitchen and a refectory. Opposite is a poultry house, a barn. There's a vacant lot on the other side. The northern part is the church and the wing of the rector. In the far corner of the courtyard on the east side there is a "castle" – a house without windows and doors. Such detail hints that the hero plans to stay in this shelter of body and soul for a long time. Gipa compares the richly dressed and bursting with health abbot and other inhabitants of the Mountain monastery with the gaunt fasting faces of the Egyptian schemers.

Yusuf Zeidan casually reminds the reader that it was the Egyptians who gave monasticism to the world. Egyptian monks observe a stricter rule and a harsh rite (the ability to sleep sitting down, laconicism, unsociability).

Having put his thoughts and feelings in order and calmed his soul, Gipa set up a library in the monastery, organized a doctor's office and solved the mystery of the secret floors of the castle tower. He broke up an apothecary's garden and restored an old well for watering crops. When Bishop Nestorius visited Gipa in a Mountain monastery, he learned that barbarians and northern tribes were attacking the outskirts of the empire, and the Kurds in the east would not calm down. The Goths are rising in Galia. And the largest Christian cities are gripped by ferment, turmoil and foreboding. Nestorius himself took the rank of Bishop of Constantinople. Gipa lived peacefully and happily.

 The next trip is a trip to Antioch to the local cathedral. The hero dreamed of seeing this cradle of Christian theology, and with it the capital of the Byzantine Empire, the great Constantinople, as well as the homeland of his spiritual mentor Bishop Theodore – Mopsuestia. At this council, Gipa witnessed the split of the church, the bishops of which could not agree on the Virgin Mary of the Virgin Mary or the Virgin Mary. The persecution of the Arians (the Church of the Pure) began, and Arias himself was anathematized.

Along the way, the wanderer reflected that the Romans, who built good roads in Asia Minor, did not do this in Egypt because they were interested in it only as a "wheat granary and supplier of grape wine" ^{[3, p. 265]}.

From Gipa's notes on Antioch, one can learn that Antioch is larger than Jerusalem, but smaller than Constantinople. The residents are not hostile. "They seem to be more joyful and friendly than the Alexandrians, but less sad and angry than the Egyptians" ^{[3, p. 267]}.

The peace of mind was disturbed by the schism of the Christian Church. The Monophysite Egyptians claimed that God is one hypostasis, one person, one nature, man and God, son and Lord. The Holy Virgin is the Mother of God. Nestorians believed that God had chosen Christ as his witness, and in the name of the invisible God, people worship the incarnate Christ, realizing that they are different beings. The essence is subtle and confusing. Gipa was faced with a choice of which path to follow. The first path of Elder Khariton is immersion in oneself, the grace of solitude. The second way of the Antiochians is the search for a miracle, faith in a divine miracle. The third way of Bishop Cyril of Alexandria is to eradicate paganism and plant Christianity with fire and sword. The light of faith began to dim. The monk realized that faith is a heavy burden. He prophetically concludes that in the future everyone will have their own. Staying in a Syrian monastery, a Coptic monk, after much thought, comes to the conclusion that the gods are not in temples and giant structures, but in the hearts of people who believe in them. "My faith rests on doubts" ^{[3, p. 223]}.

It was at this difficult moment that Gipa decided to write down his thoughts. By the age of thirty-five, the man had formed his own worldview. The monk knew that in Egypt the beginning of hermithood and martyrdom for the faith was laid. The symbol of the cross was borrowed from the pharaohs. The triad was taken from Egyptian mythology: Osiris, Isis and Horus, which became the trinity of the Greek philosopher Plotinus – a Single, Divine mind and a Universal soul. Then it turned into a trinity among Christians – Father, Son and Holy Spirit. According to the monk, ancient civilizations exalted God, and the Jews reduced him to man with their Torah. Christianity elevated him with the help of ancient Egyptian legends. Wherever the hero was, he was drawn to his homeland, to distant Egypt, where the roots of everything were found: faith, hope and love. It is no coincidence that Egypt became a second homeland for Jesus Christ. But Gipa was afraid to end up in Alexandria, because the centuries-old history of this city is riddled with violence. To overcome his innate fear, the monk put the manuscript in a chest and buried it, burying all the old ideas with it. And he left to wander, becoming free.

Thus, the following features of the genre of "richly" can be distinguished:

· it has the form of notes, memoirs or travel diaries

· contains extensive descriptions of the landscapes seen,

· replete with geographical names,

· there are comparisons of natural and man-made beauties seen,

· the types of people, their clothes and speech are compared.

The Arab literary critic Ahmed Abu Saad wrote a monograph in 1961, which he devoted to the study of this popular genre in the Middle East. He highlighted the common features of the "richl" and examined them using the example of famous works of Arabic literature from the pre-Islamic period to the present day. The scientist counted more than thirty famous authors who wrote in this genre ^[12].

This genre has educational and entertaining functions. The author's goal is to transfer knowledge and share experience, as well as to get to know himself and test himself for strength. Describing Egyptian literature, and the genre of "richlya" in particular, literary critic A. A. Dolinina noted: "The need to record observations about the new arose, naturally, first of all, among the advanced people of the era, therefore the importance of these works for contemporaries was determined not only by the abundance of new information, but also by the novelty of ideas" ^{[13, p. 692]}. Yusuf Zeidan breaks the axiom that no one can comprehend what is hidden by time. He plunges the reader into the deep past in order to find answers to current questions in it.: who is a person, why does he live, what to do.

According to literary critics V. N. Zarytovskaya and A.M. Al-Rahbi, the writer does not turn to the topic of early Christianity by chance. This is a "time of troubles for the Arab world", when physical violence was used against non-Christians to convert them to Christianity ^{[14, p. 66]}.

Zeidan travels not only across countries and continents, he compares world religions. Researchers G. G. Tikaev and M. N. el-Gibali wrote: "In addition to the author's call for everyone to take a clear position in this world, Zeidan carefully draws an analogy between the Christian religion and Islam, thereby calling for tolerance. Zeidan unequivocally notes that "true religion is one, it has one foundation" [15. p. 170].

I. M. Filshtinsky, a major researcher of Arabic literature, characterizing the genre of "richlya", notes its popularity due to the fact that "historical, geographical, biographical and purely literary information is presented to the reader in an entertaining form, using the entire arsenal of classical rhetoric" ^{[16, p. 480]}.

Let us agree with the statement of the Arabist and translator V. N. Kirpichenko: "The richness of a hero on the scale of his own biography, the history of the country, and human civilization becomes more of a spiritual journey" ^{[17, p. 265]}.

Summing up, we note that the origins of the genre of "richly" lead to the distant past. In the Middle Ages, Arab scientists introduced a cognitive element to it. Nowadays, in addition to educational and entertainment functions, literature written in this style performs philosophical and psychological tasks. Modern Arab novelists often base the plot on the motive of travel, and the movement of the hero in space, through his own and other cities and towns, is combined, as a rule, with his movement in time. Nowadays, writers have added to these goals the search for themselves, their place in the world.

As a result of the analysis, it was proved that Yusuf Zeidan in the novel "Azazel" can reveal the features of the genre "richly". This work captivates the reader with the medieval history of the origin of monasticism and at the same time entertains him with stories about foreign curiosities. Before our eyes, an Egyptian young man turns into a mature husband who philosophizes, trying to solve the question of what faith is.  Hypa also engages in introspection, saving herself from phobias, false idols and sins. The Egyptian writer expanded the scope of the "richleh" genre, turning it from a pilgrimage journey through time and space into a journey into the depths of the human soul.

The authors hope that their research will be useful not only for literary critics who study Arabic literature, but also for all lovers and connoisseurs of Oriental culture.