The "Orient" within "Us": Narratives from the Muslim World in Western Oral Tradition

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulrich Marzolph
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies ; General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
• Term: from 2015 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 268416587

The narrative heritage the West owes to the Orient is neither commonly known nor adequately acknowledged, particularly not as far as modern oral tradition is concerned. For many centuries, tales have been an important part of the intellectual goods that travelled East to West. In addition to large collections of tales - such as Kalila wa-Dimna, the Sindbad-name/Seven Sages and The Thousand and One Nights - numerous single tales originating from or adapted by Muslim tradition were transmitted to the West. Predominantly, cultural contacts took place in the Iberian Peninsula, Sicily, Palestine and the Levant, Byzantium, and, later, in the contact zones with the Ottoman Empire in North Africa and the Balkans. Many Oriental tales eventually became integral parts of European oral tradition to an extent that the narrators and their audiences are not aware of their foreign origin. It is these tales that the present research project proposes to study in their historical and modern dimension. Methodologically, the research project is grounded in comparative folk narrative research with a particular emphasis on tales deriving from Persian, Arabic, and Turkish tradition. The project will result in the publication of an English-language handbook that contains detailed and comprehensive surveys of approximately 150-200 Oriental narratives documented in Western oral tradition. The resulting publication will thus shed light on the vernacular and popular dimension of the impact of the Orient, an aspect that previous research on Orientalism and cultural contacts between the Orient and the West has neglected. The adequate awareness for the Oriental and, particularly, the Muslim heritage of a considerable body of narratives prevalent in Western oral tradition is much needed as a humanist counterbalance in the late modern world where Muslims are again perceived as the essential Other, often with a derogatory and threatening undertone.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Spain
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Dr. Aboubakr Chraibi; Professorin Dr. María Jesús Lacarra Ducay