Libraries are considered the most important achievements of the Arab Islamic
civilizatation because of their important role in spreading science among Muslims, and
their impact on Europe that sunk into darkness. With the establishment of the Fatimi
d state
in Egypt in 358/969, the Fatimids tried to compete with Baghdad in the cultural field by
encouraging private and public libraries. Despite of the collapse of the Fatimid state, the
books of its libraries remained preserved in the libraries of civilizations that followed, such
as the Fadilia and Bimaraston Qaloun Schools .
This paper is concerned mainly with an unprecedented phenomenon,
which deserves more examination and analysis: it is the Fatimid writers’
tendency toward finding a the interrelation between poetry and prose, and
showing how far their memorization
of poetry and prose effects the
emergence of this phenomenon. Therefore, this paper attempts at
unraveling three important aspects: first, identifying the concept, the
beginnings of the interrelation; second, the genres of the interaction
between a poem and a letter; third, the leitmotivs of the interrelation
between a poem and a letter in the writings of Fatimid writers.
