Literature
A huge volume of literary works written in Arabi-Malayalam have not been translated to Malayalam, and some estimates put the number at almost 90 percent. These works contain the greatest literary achievements by Mappilas over the centuries. Romantic ballads, folk tales and battle songs have found a place in Arabi-Malayalam literature. While Arabi-Malayalam literally denotes Arabic influence in Malayalam, the vocabulary used in Arabi-Malayalam works often included Sanskrit, Persian and Tamil.
The first Arabi-Malayalam novel, Chahar Dervesh, a translation of a Persian work, was published in 1883, six years before O. Chandhu Menon's Indulekha.
Moyinkutty Vaidyar and others translated important works of Sanskrit into Arabi-Malayalam. Major works translated thus were Astangahridaya, Amarakosha, Panchatantra and even stories about King Vikramaditya.
Sanskrit medical texts were also translated into Arabi-Malayalam by authors like Abdurahiman Musaliar of Ponnani Puthiyakath. These included the Upakarasara, Yogarambha and Mahasara.
Arabi-Malayalam periodicals played an important role in social reform movements of the Mappilas in the early 20th century. Al-Irshad, published in 1923 by the Muslim Aikya Sanghom played an important role in explaining the tenets of Islam to the common man and distinguishing between religious practices and superstitions.
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Famous quotes containing the word literature:
“The use of literature is to afford us a platform whence we may command a view of our present life, a purchase by which we may move it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Converse with a mind that is grandly simple, and literature looks like word-catching. The simplest utterances are worthiest to be written, yet are they so cheap, and so things of course, that, in the infinite riches of the soul, it is like gathering a few pebbles off the ground, or bottling a little air in a phial, when the whole earth and the whole atmosphere are ours.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation’s heart, the excision of its memory.”
—Alexander Solzhenitsyn (b. 1918)