Existential Poiesis in Maḥmud al-Masʿadī’s Mawlid al-nisyān

Abstract

Chapter 1 examines Tunisian intellectual Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī’s 1945 mythical novella Mawlid al-Nisyān [the Genesis of Forgetfulness] about a physician on a spiritual quest for a drug to defeat time. Maḥmūd al-Masʿadī (1911–2004) was a prolific writer, educator, editor, trade unionist, and government official. The novella integrates Sufi philosophy, existentialism, and humanism in its exploration of the relationship between the human and divine. The chapter frames these concerns within the novella’s Qurʾanic intertextuality and al-Masʿadī’s broader philosophical writings on Islam and literature. Across his critical and literary oeuvre, al-Masʿadī explores literature as a creative praxis that speaks to broader existential and humanist concerns. Crowned the founder of “Muslim Existentialism,” he theorizes Islam as a philosophy of existence intimately connected to the artistic process. The chapter reads his novella Mawlid al-Nisyān as a Sufi spiritual journey that explores creation as an ethical imperative of human existence.