Introduction

Writing about the self is not an exclusively Western tradition. From the Ayyām al-ʿArab (Days of the Arabs) pre-Islamic biohistorical poetry, to the first sīrāt (life-stories) of the Prophet Muḥammad, and from the medieval tarjamāt (biographical notices and autobiographies) to the latest riwayāt sīra dhātiyya (autobiographical novels) by contemporary Arab writers, the individualistic/collective self has been an …