On some Popular features in narratives
by Antje Lenora
Introduction
First I would like to give some very general, brief introduction to the relationship of popular Arabic-Islamic narrative literature of the Middle ages and the language style and specific features used in it.
We could use the terminus "Popular narrative literature" her for literary genres which were either performed orally first and then written down in order to memorize and transmit them, or: which were possibly written down as "popular history stories", whether performed or not. There can be noticed that they have several features in common, as specific formulas and stylistic aspects and for instance the cyclic repetition of motives.
A famous group of such works is called Siyar shaábiya / Popular Biographies which were performed in Oriental coffee-houses until recent past (I refer here to the dissertation of Thomas Herzog who took chance to join these events in Damascus).
They all share that they are historical romances and refer to very well known people of pre- Islamic or Islamic history /pseudo-history; and more important: they share a lot of themes and motives which enjoyed great popularity and were obviously liked by common people (as in the Arabian Nights and folk-stories in Islamic historiographic literature as: Ibn Iyas’ History of Egypt (d. 1524).
To give an example of what typical popular features in those stories may be, I have chosen an extract of an episode of the Biography of al-Hakim bi-Amrillah (who reigned: 996-1021) and his in Egypt ruling successors, a narrative which shares a lot of features of popular Arabic romances, and its content bears some specific characteristics as well.
The text I am using is taken from a Wetzstein manuscript (Syria collection) of the Library Preußischer Kulturbesitz in Berlin which is dated to the end of the 17th century.
A short glance at the language style
We find a mixture of prose and rhymed prose in the texts. Rhymed prose (sag’) is typical style in Medieaval Arabic narration and used also in other genres. Its main characteristic s that two or more sentences or parts of sentences or just noun and its attribute end with the same cocalisation (vocal plus consonant, or vocal, consonant plus vocal, or the same vocalisation of a complete expression, like in parallelism membrorum). The keeping of this rhythmic style needs as imaginable, a lot of repetition seems to narrow the choise of words for describing an act or situation, but as Danuta Madeyska pointed out, there is a huge pool of these expressions and the professional story teller or writer had a lot of this in mind when reciting a sira and used it as fitting to the content and somehow freely. Certain other formulas, for instance the most prominent: qala / qala ar-rawi – he said or the story teller said function as indication for the change of an action, or modus of place or time, as the introduction of a new motive or theme to the story. They are a hind for the recitator as well as for the audience / reader.
If you read through Medieval Arabic texts which have there origin not in the high Islamic learned authorities, as Grammarians, Quran commentators and so on, you will find that a lot of literature bear features that are non conform to the "canonical classical Arabic". That is for instance literature of science, commercial books etc and popular narratives; and on the other hand most of the non Islamic religious literature, for instance Christian hagiography,. These features, which we are taught to call Middle Arabic, do not share much in common (but that they use dialect or loan words, meaning vernacular features as well as classical). There is a huge variety of places, social backgrounds, and even time that leads to an enormous variety of Syntactic structures and vocabulary that differ from CA.
Concerning the Islamic popular narrative I am dealing with, one can say, the language is referring to Classical Arabic but including a lot of vernacular features as well.
Syntax is not complicated, the vocabulary is using both: classical expressions which were normally not used by the recipients but well understood, and colloquial speech from the environment of the origin of the text or that were put to the text by copists later.
Grammatical mistakes may be the result of a certain unsureness of the writer or are pseudocorrections, that means the writer wanted to correct a dialectal expression or a keep a grammatical rule, an the result here is, for instance, the wrong setting of an accusative ending or the use of a non fitting preposition.
Nevertheless, the language of the sira is highly elaborated and sometimes you can notice that colloquial features within a certain passage are chosen intentional, and not just happen to be mixed into the text: as for instance when a common person is speaking (direct speech) you ll find qolloquial Arabic, and on the other side a well-educated person will be equipped with more classical features (and possible pseudo corrections) and use of Quran-quotations.
And sometimes the break of grammatical rules is necessary to keep the style, for instance in rhymed prose, when different syntactic structures would not allow the same vocalisation in the end:
And one could get the impression that pseudo-corrections and certain mistakes were intentionally used to mark the text as belonging to a this specific literary genre: popular narrative (as well as style and motives do).
But this is not yet proven yet, as far as I know – and I will put this as a question. As the question of improvisation.
A word on the content
Between high status profession and common Medieval underworld life
Just to cast a short glance at an aspect of the content of popular narrative: So in distinction from texts made for a highly educated elite recipients, the popular stories deal with the life of common people as well as with the elite authorities.
I have chosen an episode which is of no real importance for the course of the action but has the advantage of
1. refering to other genrtes of literature and
2. is dealing with the common people of the city of Alexandria.
My example: al-Hakim, who is main hero of the sira, has just been put to power, and one of his first wishes is to know the learned men of the people ruled by him.
So he invites everybody who has special skills to his castle and after examining them, choses the 7 best and awards them with clothes of honor.
When I read through the passage, it was most interesting, which kind of sciences where mentioned, in which order and how:
First al-Hakim calls for the craftsmen, and AFTER them he invites the masters of science, who are mentioned in the following categories:
enlightening – Islamic law specialists;
exalting – hadtith experts, Quran commentators and grammarians;
useful – the doctors
and broad – these are the astrologers.
The text is not spending much attention on the first two categories that are of course no professions of the common people, but function to show the expertise of the ruler in the discussion concerning those highly estimated sciences as religious and lingual. There is an explicit reference to literature that is Quran and hadith, but in this first field not more. Interesting, that the part of the discussion with the experts of language is longer and contains more details about poetic style, verses, and the art of eloquent talking.
It is of course not the field of common profession but also expertise: – it happens to be the "instrument and science" of the popular story teller, and so we find a handsome young man standing in front of the ruler al-Hakim, talking to him about high literature and style – and pleasing him most of all for his eloquence and fine behavior (zarf, I would speculate). (A case of self-praise of the story teller?)
The reference to expert literature is the "Alfiyat Ibn Malik" a very well known Grammar book written in lyrical form.
Now, having earned the attention of al-Hakim, the young man is ordered to show more of his qualities in speaking verses and some of his best speeches: the narrator comments that there is some serious and some funny thing to say.
So the young man starts to explain 40 categories of people, each ten belonging to a circle, and that to them belongs always a craftsman and a trickster (or outlaw).
Now the professions of these people are explained, and we find that a lot of them belong to a social hemisphere not belonging to typical legal profession but to the underworld classes or at least very close to them:
examples: dream-readers,
people who go through the streets and conjure (beschwören) for the women, people who do geomancy, though they do not know whatthey are talking about (so the text), insect hunters, horse doctors, quack doctors, herb collectors, who are eating skorpions and other insects (to impress people and make money), people who walk on stilts, horse acrobats, athletics showing their power on market places and many more. All of these "professions" bear a specific name and are explained seperately, I take this as an inducation that the narrator / writer did not expect the recipients to understand these professions just by their terminus.
After having dealed with these "professions" the narrator gives also a reference to a book, saying: "Those has mentioned the author of the book: kashf ad-dakk wa-idah is-shakk", Uncovering the basis and clearing out the doubt".
Unfortionately the book is lost but one can find another reference to it and some of its contents in a book of al-Gaubari: Uncovering the secrets / Kashf al-asrar, that is about the beggars, outlaws and tricksters among common people. It does not belong to popular literature and holds a negative opinion towards these groups.
Just to finish the text passage: After al-Hakim has heard of all these professions he gets curious about life of common people and likes to got out and get to know each of the groups. So this leads to another motive (the hidden ruler among common people).
Here I would like stop my observation and just point out that a popular narration needs the talk about common people, - in this case also making it attractive and interesting for the authorities. And mentioning these "professions" that range somewhere between conventionality and criminality might also be quite entertaining and amusing for the audience. An you would not find these "professions" in the literature of the learned authorities except for describing and blaming them, as in the two books I have mentioned just before.