Abū Ḥayyān fī Ṭanǧa: il presente all’esame del passato

In recent years, historical narratives have undergone significant revitalization through the work of several Arab authors. These narratives often deploy historical settings and the interplay of fictional and fictionalized characters as narrative strategies to transport the reader into the historical past of given historical figures. However, what happens when this temporal movement is reversed—when the historical figure is brought into the reader’s present instead of the reader being taken into the past? This narrative inversion lies at the core of Abū Ḥayyān fī Ṭanǧa (2010), a novel by the Moroccan author Bahāʾ al-Dīn al-Ṭūd (1946-2023). Through its subversion of generic conventions and the protagonist’s journey across time, the novel aligns itself with postmodern literary practices. The fictionalization of historical figures such as Abū Ḥayyān al-Tawḥīdī (930-1023) and Muḥammad Šukrī (1935-2003), along with al-Ṭūd’s reworking of historical material, opens up critical spaces for social commentary. Using a close reading approach, this paper aims to highlight the numerous and varied references and intertexts of the novel and its main themes, while pointing out Abū Ḥayyān fī Ṭanǧa’s unique features within the genre of Moroccan biofiction.