{"id":9734,"date":"2026-05-31T14:05:56","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:05:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/9734\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T14:05:56","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T14:05:56","slug":"how-arabic-language-and-literature-took-root-in-poland-over-a-century","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/9734\/","title":{"rendered":"How Arabic language and literature took root in Poland over a century"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arabic studies in Poland<\/a> have been under way for more than a century.<\/p>\n

At Jagiellonian University in Krakow, south of the Polish capital Warsaw, the field dates back to 1919, when pioneering Arabist Tadeusz Kowalski was appointed to lead the first department of Oriental philology in independent Poland. <\/p>\n

Later 20th-century scholars including Tadeusz Lewicki, Maria Kowalska and Andrzej Zaborski helped make Krakow an important Central European centre for Arabic language, literature and Islamic studies.<\/p>\n

That history ran through this year\u2019s Warsaw International Book Fair<\/a>, where Sharjah is guest of honour until Sunday. The emirate\u2019s programme, organised by the Sharjah Book Authority, brought Polish academics, writers and translators into conversation with Emirati authors and artists on the cultural relationship between Poland and the Arab world.<\/p>\n

Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, professor of Arabic literature at Jagiellonian University, pointed to Wac\u0142aw Rzewuski, the 19th-century Polish aristocrat, traveller and orientalist who helped fund one of Europe\u2019s early magazines devoted to Arab and Oriental studies.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was the first one who mastered Arabic,\u201d she said during a panel discussion at the fair. \u201cAfter that, he travelled to Vienna, where he established and funded the first orientalist magazine in Europe, in French and German, titled Treasures of the East.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michalak-Pikulska noted that Rzewuski later travelled to the Arabian Peninsula to buy Arabian horses and became known by the Arabic name Taj al-Fahr, meaning Crown of Honour.<\/p>\n

She added that Adam Mickiewicz, Poland\u2019s great 19th-century Romantic poet, drew on the classical Arabic qasida form for his 1828 poem Farys (The Rider) and also worked with the poetry of Al Mutanabbi, the 10th-century Abbasid-era poet.<\/p>\n

Emirati author Sultan Al Ameemi <\/a>described those connections as an example of how literature can bridge cultures.<\/p>\n

\u201cLiterature is one of the most effective ways societies discover shared human experiences beyond political and geographical boundaries,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He described Arabic\u2019s influence on Polish as part of a longer movement between languages.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe influence of Arabic on the Polish language is a migration of words shaped by centuries of exchange between peoples and civilisations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Al Ameemi used the Polish example to make a broader point about the importance of translation and oral literature.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe literary tradition itself extends back generations through oral poetry, storytelling and proverbs that formed an important part of social life in the UAE before the growth of publishing,\u201d he said. \u201cAlthough much of Emirati literature was documented in writing relatively recently, we are seeing the impact and history.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polish Arabist Sebastian Gadomski said he and his colleagues began by surveying Emirati literary production through Polish translations of key cultural works, including plays by Sharjah Ruler Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi<\/a>, which are available at the Polish book fair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe looked quickly at Emirati literary production and discovered that it is very rich,\u201d he said. \u201cIt enriches the Arab experience of writing, the novel, theatre and different literary forms.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor that reason, we focused on what His Highness Sheikh Dr Sultan Al Qasimi offers the contemporary reader. We chose the plays in which he returns to history and teaches us how we can build our future through the lessons we take from what we have experienced in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Polish literature has also reached Arab readers through translation. Dr Yousef Sh\u2019hadeh, an Egyptian academic, who lives in Poland and is a translator and lecturer at Jagiellonian University, translated into Arabic the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, the author of The Witcher, the Polish fantasy series that became a hit Netflix show starring Henry Cavill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that Arabs received this culture and literature with great enthusiasm,\u201d Sh\u2019hadeh said.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven now, almost every day, I sometimes receive emails from Arab readers thanking me for the translation. I do not know them. They search for my address in many places so they can contact me and ask when the next volume will come out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other forms of exchange took place beyond the book fair\u2019s panel sessions at PGE Narodowy Stadium. At the National Library of Poland, Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi<\/a>, chairperson of Sharjah Book Authority, inaugurated the Polish edition of Folktales Reimagined, an international series that pairs Emirati and international artists with folk tales from each other\u2019s cultures.<\/p>\n

Polish illustrator Joanna Czaplewska worked on the Polish translation of Netifan, an Emirati tale about a childless sultan mocked for not having children. Czaplewska adorned the text with images of Polish landscapes and earthy colours, and replaced the palm branch in the story with a local apple tree.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it was quite challenging because the story is a little removed from Polish culture,\u201d Czaplewska tells The National. \u201cSo I focused instead on the relationship between seven brothers and I wanted to show the landscape of Poland, the animals we can find here, the colours I feel close to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emirati artist Fatima Alzarouni worked with the Polish children\u2019s story King Popiel and the Mice, a legend about a ruler destroyed by greed.\u201cYou realise stories show us more of what we have in common than what separates us,\u201d she says. \u201cThey are about what we all experience and feel, so in that sense Polish stories can feel Arabic to me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arabic studies in Poland have been under way for more than a century. At Jagiellonian University in Krakow,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2907,2905,9,2904,1577,393],"class_list":["post-9734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-poland","tag-arts-culture-team","tag-literature","tag-poland","tag-sharjah","tag-standard","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/poland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}