Confronting the Symbol of the Intellectual: Sa’adallah Wannus's Historical Miniatures and the Legacy of Ibn Khaldun

57 Journal of South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Vol. XL, No.2, WINTER 2017 Confronting the Symbol of the Intellectual: Sa’adallah Wannus’s Historical Miniatures and the Legacy of Ibn Khaldun Nezar Andary* Historical figures like Ibn Khaldun have become symbols of past Arab’s intellectual grandeur on the global stage. The conferences, book editions, street names, and dedications with Ibn Khaldun’s name demonstrates that he is not only an intellectual to be studied, but also a figure to be manipulated. When Historical Miniatures (Munamnamaat Tarikhiyah) was first published in 1996, intellectuals from many parts of the Arab world were moved that a historical figure like Ibn Khaldun might be presented on stage, but more importantly that he could be criticized. The critics immediately tied Sa’adallah Wannus’ play to a chronic Arab condition. This paper argued that with Historical Miniatures, Wannus reevaluated a well-known historical event and symbol of Ibn Khaldun to define the role of intellectual in society. This revaluation provoked a cultural intervention that imagined a new way of confronting history and historiography itself. Background of Sa’adallah Wannus: Radical Playwright to Late Stylist Sa’adallah Wannus, who died in 2000, is a preeminent Arab playwright who wrote during the last part of the 20th century. Although his plays are still widely * NezarAnzary earned his PhD from UCLANezarAndary is anAssistant Professor of Film and Literature at Zayed University in the College of Humanities and Sustainability Sciences.  From 2012-2014 he served as co-chair of the Middle East Caucus for the Society of Cinema and Media Studies organization. He has published literary translations, poetry, articles on Arab documentary, and most recently worked on a narrative of teaching the book Orientalism in four different languages. Nezar directed a multilingual play for the Abu Dhabi Book Fair and organized an Environmental Documentary Series. He also directed a documentary theatre project, “Memories of Childhood,” worked as cultural mentor and producer for the Arab Film Studio. His article on well-known journalist Anthony Shadid will be published in Alif Journal in Spring 2017.    58 produced and ignite debate across the Arab states,1 the works of this intellectual have received little scholarly notice in English. Chosen as official spokesman for UNESCO International Theatre Day in 1996, Wannus addressed the importance of theatre, criticized the intellectual climate in the Arabic-speaking world and confronted the sense of failure commonly shared many intellectuals committed to theatre around the world. He tied the loss of theater to “part of a crisis that encompasses culture in general.” he saved a culture under siege as people embraced “a growing night life, colored screens, and packaged trivialities.”2 Prolificafterthe1967war,Wannustookahiatusfromwritingplays1979-1988. In one interview, he cited choosing 1988 as the year he returned to writing drama together with the fall of the Soviet Union and Francis Fukuyama’s statement on the end of History. He commented that he wanted to understand history better.3 Between 1988 and 1998, he wrote six plays confronting the crucial inability of Arab culture “to come to terms with its own failures, contradictions, and history.”4 His early plays Haflat Samar min ajl khamsa Hizayran (Evening Part for the fifthofJune)andAlfilyaMalakazzaman(It’stheElephant,DearKing)introduced radical structures into Arabic theatre. Wannus adopted “Experimental theater,” a form that had matured in Europe as exemplified by the works of Bertolt Brecht. However, experimentation was not adopted by Wannus in its original European forms. Unlike Samuel Beckett, Wannus chose not to be elitist and formal; but instead researched experimentation to find a theater style that fulfilled the needs of society as he saw them. He writes: “Isn’t it possible for Arabic theatre to resurrect forms indigenous to our own storytelling with the influences we have learned from modern European theatre?”5 He sought to create an experimental yet realistic theater that effectively spoke to specific sociopolitical conditions. Wannus’ use of classical Arabic language has been called “revolutionary” for the way he created a formal language that was closer to colloquial Arabic. Some of his most powerful plays were written as interactive theater, such as The Elephant, The King of All Times (1969), The Adventure of Jaber’s Head 1 The...