Desert Perception: Representations of Pre-Islamic Arabian Space in Classical Arabic Literature

Abstract Stories set in the desert, and particularly narratives about the pre-Islamic Arabian desert are ubiquitous in Arabic literature, yet the tellers, audiences and writers of the stories were almost all urbanites, few of whom had actual lived experience with Arabia itself. The setting of pre-Islamic Arabia was accordingly mediated through texts, and this paper analyses how authors set the scene. Taking the main sources for the iconic “Thrust and Dusty War” ( al-Dāḥis wa-l-Ġabrāʾ ) as a case study, we find that attention to physical setting is surprisingly scant, almost non-existent, and the curiously austere spatial narratives prompt questions about the meanings and purpose of the story. Via methods of geocritical analysis, this paper explores the spatial narratives and the possible ways premodern readers responded to them.