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

• Final Report Year: 2018

Final Report Abstract

The present research project was designed to produce an English-language handbook containing detailed and comprehensive assessments of approximately 150–200 “Oriental” narratives documented in Western oral tradition. In the course of examining the available data, the project’s goal has been adjusted, limiting the amount of studied narratives to just about 100 (to be exact, 101) items. The main reason accounting for this limitation is the fact that the thorough perusal of the accessible textual material showed that numerous “Oriental” narratives were only adapted in literary versions dating to medieval and early modern times and have never been recorded from Western oral tradition of the nineteenth and/or twentieth centuries. As the present study was explicitly conceived to demonstrate the extent to which “Oriental” tales have been “internalized” to such an extent as to be considered integral parts of the West’s “own” narrative tradition, a given tale’s recording from oral tradition was vital for its being considered. Consequently, tales for which no recording from Western oral tradition could be identified have been excluded. Even so, the 101 narratives studied in detail amount to more than 500 pages of written text (including notes and bibliography), so that the study’s goal has been achieved in sufficiently comprehensive format. As envisioned, the assessments of specific tales begin with a short general introduction and a content summary. This is followed by a condensed survey of the tale’s tradition in Western sources and a detailed discussion of the tale’s “Oriental” sources, always taking into account major variations in terms of structure, content, or message conveyed. In this manner, the present study considers 5 tales classified as animal tales (tale types 1–299), 11 tales of magic (300–749), 7 religious tales (750–849), 10 realistic tales (850–999), 1 tale of the “stupid ogre” genre (1000–1199), 65 anecdotes and jokes (1200–1999), and 2 formula tales (2000–2399).

Publications

• “ Ḥamza, Romance of.” In: Encyclopaedia of Islam. Third Edition. Leiden 2018-1, 70–72
  Ulrich Marzolph
  
• “German ‘Märchen’ and Arabic Tales of the Marvelous and the Strange.” In: Arab and German Tales: Transcending Cultures. ed. Verena Lepper. Berlin: Kadmos, 2018, 21–23
  Ulrich Marzolph
  
• “Magie in den Erzählungen aus Tausendundeiner Nacht.” In: Die Geheimnisse der oberen und der unteren Welt. Magie im Islam zwischen Glaube und Wissenschaft. ed. S. Günther/D. Pielow. Leiden 2018, 403–422
  Ulrich Marzolph
  
• “The Arabic Source Text for Galland’s Dormeur eveillé.” In: Oriente Moderno 98 (2018) 1–32
  Ulrich Marzolph
  
• “The Man Who Made the Nights Immortal: The Tales of the Syrian Maronite Storyteller Ḥannā Diyāb.” In: Marvels & Tales 32.1 (2018), pp. 114–129
  Ulrich Marzolph
  
• “Ḥannā Diyāb’s Tales. Part I,” Marvels & Tales 32.1 (2018), pp. 133–154
  Ulrich Marzolph, Anne E. Duggan