THE MYTH OF DILMUN Features of Sumerian Mythological Literature

Abstract

Al-Munajah is a kind of Arabic prose writing. It was neglected for long time by academics who studied the ancient Arabic literature even at modern times with limited range. At the same time, orientalists and modern writers took account of and shed some lights on Al-Munajah as a literary genre. Like any other literary genre Al-Munajah has traditions formed on the course of time and by different writers who added new similar and common treats developing the genre. At the very beginning of Islam It might be the prophet Mohammad, his companions and followers who started the practice of al-munajah. But it became a literary genre only when it was used by Sufis during first three centuries of Islam. In this paper I tried to study Al-Tawheedy's Al-Isharat Al-Ilahiyyah as an example of the genre. We can summarize main traits of Al-Munajah as a literary as follows: -Very special communicative situation between the addresser (I) and the addressee (you). It is a situation based on a passion to communicate or at least to make any kind of dialogue with others. -Al-Munajah is not just a prayer from an end to the other but it is a deep feeling of alienation, complaining, and hesitance. -In spite of desperation Al-Munajah is an endless search for hope. It is a tireless knocking on the door so that the essence of the genre is based on recurrence of sounds, structures, vocabularies, and images.