Arabic books of prison literature during (1948-2020)‎ : an analytical bibliometric study

Abstract EN

This study aims to monitor the Arab intellectual production of books on the subject of “prison literature” through a bibliographic list of (149) books, written by (121) authors, based on both bibliometric and content analysis method.

the study concludes with a set of results, most notably of which is that the male authors came in the first place (86.77%).

responsibility for “introducing” (57.64%) came first among the joint responsibilities in writing prison literature books.

Egyptian books on prison literature ranked first (28.8%), while Palestinian ones came first in terms of the number of authors (29.7%).

Zakaria Bou Gharara ranked first (4.7%) in terms of the volume of authorship, followed by Sayed Qutb (3.4%), and Mustafa Amin (2.7%).

Palestine ranked first (34.28%) in terms of the number of books it published abroad.

Dar al-Shorouk in Egypt ranked first among the publishing houses that published books on prison literature.

the publication of prison literature books in the period (2011-2015) ranked first with a rate of (26.84%).

the titles of the books on the subject of prison literature were formulated using words indicative of their semiotic content, such as the names of some prisons, such as “Tadmor” prison in Syria, and further titles such as “the humpback sparrow”, and some expressive words such as “prison” and “cell”.

some key words were also borrowed from the verses of the noble Qur’an to formulate the titles of books on prison literature, such as a book titled “o my fellow prisoners.” the covers of prison literature books were designed in an expressive manner, for the most part, such as the book “the black gate” and “the dungeon”.

the study concludes with a set of recommendations, most notably of which is the necessity of allocating a classification number to the subject of prison literature in Dewey’s Arabized and modified classification due to its rich and varied Arabic literature content.