@article{Nigst_2019, title={Druze Reincarnation in Fiction: Anīs Yaḥyà’s Novel "Jasad kāna lī" as a Source for Literary Anthropology}, volume={19}, url={https://journals.uio.no/JAIS/article/view/7048}, DOI={10.5617/jais.7048}, abstractNote={<p>In the Druze outlook, each human soul completes successive life-circuits as different human beings. If one of these human beings dies, the soul immediately migrates to the body of a newborn child. Normally, it is unknown who the soul was previously. However, in exceptional cases, mostly young children remember and “speak” about a previous life that usually came to an unexpected and tragic end. This also represents the backdrop of Anīs Yaḥyà’s novel <em>Jasad kāna lī</em>, which is set in a Druze context and revolves around a murder case and a little girl that remembers her death and names her murderer. The subject of transmigration is omnipresent in the novel. As this article seeks to show, this turns the novel into a highly relevant source for anthropological research into the Druze understanding of transmigration. The novel not only corroborates respective findings, but also complements them and thus contributes to a fuller understanding of the social and discursive presence of transmigration and “speaking” in Druze contexts. At the same time, anthropological research seems essential for a more profound understanding of this particular thematic dimension of the novel.</p>}, journal={Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies}, author={Nigst, Lorenz}, year={2019}, month={Aug.}, pages={15–34} }