Abstract
[Excerpt] Prisons have proved to be extraordinarily fertile sources of literature across the history and geographies of the Middle East and Western Asia. At least a third of the Judeo-Christian Bible was penned in carceral contexts, most notably the Apostle Paul’s four “Prison Epistles.” In the Islamic world of the Middle Ages, Arabic verse composed in prison, rūmīyāt, gave rise to the genre of Persian poetry known as habsīyāt, which has significant repercussions in modern Kurdish literature. Even the Kurdish national anthem, “Ey Reqîb,” was written in prison. Masterpieces of world literature more broadly, including Don Quixote, The Travels of Marco Polo, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” had their genesis behind bars. The experience of imprisonment offers a context for the expression of heightened passions restrained, wherein the act of writing itself becomes a liberating outlet for repressed causes, lofty ideals, unbounded hope, and stark physicality cast in sharp relief.