Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Qadhafi: Shakespeare Was an Arab Named Shaykh Zubayr

I've been looking for a source for the widely known fact that Muammar Qadhafi claimed Shakespeare was not a native-born Englishman but, in fact, an Arab named Shaykh Zubayr.
Cork Milner's site on the authorship controversy gives us this:
The most bizarre of all the pretenders is Muammar al-Qaddafi's choice, Sheik Zubayr bin William. Quaddafi came up with his champion in 1989 when Radio Tehran announced that Libya's “Great One” had declared that an Arab sheik named Zubayr bin William, who had been born in the sixteenth century, was Shakespeare.
I should point out that Qadhafi did not originate the bizarre claim that Shakespeare was a crypto-Arab.  Usually cited in jest, the Shaykh Zubayr “theory” holds that Shakespeare was actually an Arab Muslim living in Britain.  Various authors cite “evidence” including Shakespeare’s full lips and “Islamic” beard in the supposedly "un-English" Chandos portrait(above); his many treatments of mistaken or doubtful identity; and his allegedly unflattering views of Jews, Turks, and the British (supposedly clear in The Merchant of Venice, Othello, and the history plays).  Who but an Arab could harbor unfavorable views of precisely these three groups?

M.M. Badawi ("Shakespeare and the Arabs," 1964) and Ferial Ghazoul ("The Arabization of Othello," 1998) trace the
Shaykh Zubayr authorship theory to a mid-nineteenth-century Lebanese satirical writer, Aḥmad Fāris al-Shidyāq; it was later taken up in earnest by Iraqi scholar Ṣafā’ Khulūṣī and then painstakingly refuted by Ibrāhīm Ḥamāda in a book-length essay, عروبة شكسبير (“The Arabness of Shakespeare,” 1989). Qadhafi drew Western headlines by mentioning it (perhaps jokingly? who can tell with such a lunatic?) in 1989.  

But the conceit of an Arab Shakespeare has also appealed to all kinds of intercultural writers addressing Western readers.  My favorite is Wole Soyinka in his essay "Shakespeare and the Living Dramatist" (replublished in Art, Dialogue, and Outrage). In a similar vein, Jordanian-Irish-American novelist Diana Abu Jaber in her novel Crescent has an Iraqi-American character invoke the theory, tongue-in-cheek, speaking to an American graduate student: “Did you know that Shakespeare’s favorite food was stuffed eggplant?  And there’s some who say that Shakespeare’s name was actually Sheikh Zubayr . . . There’s a nice thesis for you.’”  (132).  Sulayman al-Bassam resorts to a similar opening gambit in a 2005 Guardian column. So the authorship theory can be a playful bid for intercultural understanding, not only (as with Qadhafi) an insane claim of Arab cultural priority.
By the way, the would-be Arabic name preserves the phallic imagery of spear-shaking.  Zubr = penis.  So the diminutive zubayr, on one reading, is "little penis."  Shake it, Will, habibi!

10 comments:

Keith Andrew Massey said...

Conspiracy Theories abound because they are more entertaining than the world we actually live in. Snarla Husayn parodies the Shakespeare authorship question with a line of "Shaykh Zubayr" collectibles:

A Bard by any other Name

E said...

I love the authorship debate on account of the craziest ideas always getting the most precedence. I've never heard this one before, but it's pretty fantastic.

On a related note, Roland Emmerich of 'Day After Tomorrow' 'fame' has made a movie addressing the authorship debate that sounds completely mad.

Unknown said...

Hi, just a small note on the interpretation of Zubayr-- which you have completely missed. Zubayr does indeed seem to follow a diminutive sclae _Fu'ail/ as in Kutaib, Kulaib, Qulaib--so is Zubair in Arabic, but it has nothing to do with the little penis you thought it meant. Zubair comes from classical Arabic Zubr (you seemed to have relied on Arabic dialect, Egyptian perhaps?)-- which in Arabic means, slabbing the orifice of a water well with stones-- hence to give steady, well-defined orifice to an otherwise unrefined well. When zubayr is used as a proper noun, it means the well-balanced and stable man. I was hoping to see some language/etymology-based research for interpreting a name like this instead of making an effortless speculation.

Unknown said...

Hi, just a small note on the interpretation of Zubayr-- which you have completely missed. Zubayr does seem to follow a diminutive scale, i.e., Fu'ail/ as in Kulaib/ Tufail/ Zuhair/ so as in Zubair in Arabic, but it has nothing to do with the little penis you thought it meant. Zubair comes from classical Arabic Zubr (you seemed to have relied on Arabic dialect, Egyptian perhaps?)-- which in Arabic means, slabbing the orifice of a water well with stones-- hence to give steady, well-defined opening to an otherwise unrefined water-well. When Zubayr is used as a proper noun, it means the well-balanced and stable man. I was a little surprised since there is no Language-based/ Etymology-based academic research for interpreting a name like this, especially if you are untrained in Arabic. What I see instead is making an effortless speculation. I like your blog. I will be a returning reader.

Anonymous said...

Hi Margaret
It seems that most of your readers think that it is mad or a conspiracy theory when a famous westerner is/was originally an Arab. I have a very interesting study in Arabic, which logically attempts to prove the Arabness of Shakespeare. If there is any serious interest to offer funding for this mini project, I will translate the worthwhile study. The comment by the lady who corrected the meaning of zubair is true in terms of the word's usage in a dialect, but it means small penis in the dialects of the people in Asham area (Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria) not in standard Arabic. Additionally, they never use the word 'zubair' in the dialect, not to mention that this laventine dialect is relatively modern and was not used this way during Sheakspare's time.
So that your readers don't think it is madness or a conspiracy theory for a famous westerner to be originally an Arab, here is a list of them:

Consumer advocate and presidential candidate Ralph Nader
Radio personality Casey Kasem
Singer/Songwriter Paul Anka
Comedian and Philanthropist Danny Thomas
Actress Marla Thomas
Actress Salma Hayek
Actress Kathy Najimi (Oscar winner)
Actress Wendy Malick
Singer Shakira
Actor Tony Shalhoub
TV director Asaad Kilada
And many more. Google their names if you don't know some of them to see what they've accomplished. To learn more about famous westerners of Arab descent, google Casey Kasem on Arab Americans. He had compiled over one hundred of them.
Regards
Wafaa

Margaret Litvin said...

Dear Wafaa, thanks for your comment. Is this your own study, or is it the one by the Iraqi scholar Dr. Safa Khulusi?

Unknown said...

actually "Zubor" carries many meanings in Arabic the most common is what is written in qur'an (Atony "zubor" al hadeed) and it's meaning (give me the "large pieces" of iron) and zubayer is a very famous arabic name in medieval era you can read about (Zubayr ibn al-Awam) in wiki pedia he was a great warrior and he he commanded a regimen in the yarmouk battle.

Unknown said...

actually "Zubor" carries many meanings in Arabic the most common is what is written in qur'an (Atony "zubor" al hadeed) and it's meaning (give me the "large pieces" of iron) and zubayer is a very famous arabic name in medieval era you can read about (Zubayr ibn al-Awam) in wiki pedia he was a great warrior and he he commanded a regimen in the yarmouk battle.

KaLou ManGo said...

I don't know if he was an arab, but I think that, for sure he got some inspiration from the arabic culture, and also from sufism.

The main plot of "The taming of the shrew" is from one of the One Thousand and One Nights' story of "The Sleeper and the Waker"...

All this, make me think that he really have something to do with the rituals "forms" in masonry nowadays...because mystics in arabia but also in india use intuitive knowledge a lot... and stories like the thousand and a nights, rumi masnavi or epic stories in india or even poetry are the "tools" they use, sometimes, to "trick" the mind so they can get some esoteric knowledge.

Even in India drama have a strange relationship since the dawn of time with spirituality...

Maybe Shakespeare wasn't an arab, maybe he was just initiated in some mystic order like sufism...

Remember the story of the Shriners?

"Florence, a world-renowned actor, while on tour in Marseille, was invited to a party given by an Arabian diplomat. The entertainment was something in the nature of an elaborately staged musical comedy. At its conclusion, the guests became members of a secret society. Florence took copious notes and drawings at his initial viewing and on two other occasions, once in Algiers and once in Cairo. When he returned to New York in 1870, he showed his material to Fleming.[3]

Fleming took the ideas supplied by Florence and converted them into what would become the "Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine (A.A.O.N.M.S.)". Fleming created the ritual, emblem and costumes. Florence and Fleming were initiated August 13, 1870, and initiated 11 other men on June 16, 1871.[4]"

(sorry for my english i'm not fluent...)

Ahmed said...

you missed that he was born in Stratford upon Avon, not an Arab country.
By the way, I come from Egypt