PRISON LITERATURE IN THE ABBASID AND ANDALUSIAN PERIOD

أدب السجون في العصر العباسي والأندلسي

Abstract

Prison is a term used for a place where criminals and accused are kept. Every human society needs it to be limited. Literature of prison can be defined as literary works which reveal horrors and sufferings and impact of the prison on those who are effected with it psychologically and physically. This type of literature has significance because it is being written behind the dark walls of the prison. The shared human experience of prison has resulted in creation of some great literary works. A prisoner during his stay in a prison resorts to thinking, daydreaming dreams, realizing his mistakes, identifying his good and bad habits and planning for his future, so he writes everything he thinks about it. Everything he writes inside the prison becomes valuable for literature lovers. Keeping in view the significance of this topic, I have decided to write about it and to do research about some stylistic and objective characteristics of this type of literature. This study includes an introduction and six chapters. The first chapter deals with important poetic purposes of prison literature in the two eras Abbasid and Andalusia, and the second chapter discusses kinds of prose of prison literature in the two eras. The third chapter will deal with verbal characteristics of prison literature in the two eras whereas the fourth chapter will discuss meaning characteristics of this Literature. Religious and Social Aspects of Prison Literature will be under discussion in the fifth chapter whereas sixth chapter will put light on Political and Economic Aspects of Prison Literature in the two eras.