Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies

A Phenomenology of the Middle Eastern Frame-Tale Collections

2023-01-30T12:06:11+01:00

The frame tale is a fascinating device of storytelling, whether oral or literary. The Middle Eastern frame-tale collections differ in nature from most corresponding collections in the Western literatures that are the subject of many of the existing historical and theoretical discussions. First and foremost, all of the Middle Eastern frame-tale collections are of considerable antiquity and owe their existence to the creativity of authors whose identity is lost in the mist of time. Although their diligent composition betrays the conscious hand of an intellectually gifted author, even the documented precursors of Middle Eastern frame-tale collections in the ancient Indian literatures can hardly be connected to an author known by name. Moreover, over the long history of their international dissemination, they have come to be regarded as products of popular tradition. And second, the same assessment applies to the tales the collections embed. While it remains speculative to which extent these tales themselves derive from oral or popular tradition, many of them have become part of popular tradition, whether as embedded constituents of their respective frame tales or as separate tales.

My considerations begin with an assessment of the Middle Eastern frame tales and frame-tale collections in terms of a focused definition. Although frame tales might at times embed only a single tale, my special interest is with the large collections that embed several, sometimes many, tales. I then proceed to discuss the phenomenology of the frame tales, their functional potentials, and the special relation between a given frame tale and its embedded tales. As I will repeatedly point out in my presentation, it is particularly this relation that deserves more attention than it has previously attracted.

Key words: Frame-tale, Embedding and embedded tales, The Thousand and One Nights, Kalīla wa-Dimna, The Seven Sages, Khurāfa

القصة الإطار والجواب السردي في كليلة ودمنة

2023-01-30T12:14:45+01:00

The inception of frame stories in the literary Arabic tradition, I argue, originates in, first, what I call “assembly narrative” (al-sard al-majlisī), which ensued during the oral phase of the Arabic language in evening gatherings in the desert’s open space, and second, in a specific discursive type (nawʿ khiṭābī), “questions and answers” (al-suʾālāt wa-l-ajwiba), which dominated Arabic literary writings around the tradition of the prophet Muḥammad (ḥadīth) during the phase of writings and then expanded to encompass multiple topics. I argue that the roots of the latter can be found in the Accounts of ʿUbayd b. Shariyya al-Jurhumī, in which Muʿāwiya b. Abī Sufyān quizzes ʿUbayd on pre-Islamic Arab history.

With the “assembly narrative,” the phenomenon of exchanging stories (taḥākī) appears in which an assembly participant is granted the opportunity to present an account (khabar), a tale (ḥikāya) or a story (qiṣṣa) through alternation, based on resembling or opposing themes; thus, stories and accounts generate other stories and accounts, producing knowledge and entertainment. As for the other type, “questions and answers,” with it emerged the need to inquire about historical, cultural, religious, and ethical issues from a known personality because of his/her knowledge of or familiarity with a specific topic and the trust toward what s/he offers regarding informative or narrative responses to the raised issues.

The questions took several forms like “What happened (to the character that will dominate in the narrative framing)?,” “How did that happen?”, etc., while the taḥākī (exchange of stories) produced all the embedded stories (qiṣaṣ muḍammana) that materialize as a narrative response (jawāb sardī) to questions of a narrative or documentary nature. In light of this concept I will finally analyze the structures, relations, and functions that characterize Kalīla wa-Dimna from a postclassical narratological perspective.

Key words: Framing, embedding, taḥākī, narrative response, structures, relations, functions, Kalīla wa-Dimna

Beyond Fictionality

2023-01-30T12:21:16+01:00

According to Gérard Genette, frame narratives are one of few reliable textual markers of fictionality. While very different from the corpus studied by Genette, al-Tanūkhī’s (d. 384/994) compilation al-Faraj baʿd al-shidda includes many anecdotes featuring at least one instance of narrative framing, as well as many more anecdotes told on a single narrative level (after the usual introductory chain of transmitters). As such, the compilation presents a good case study for the link between fictionality and narrative levels in a premodern Arabic context. On the strength of many examples drawn from the compilation, this article describes three uses of frame narratives in the Faraj and argues that even if some of the compiled material thematizes questions of reports’ plausibility (rather than “fictionality”), narrative levels are not a reliable marker of stories considered to be more implausible. One use of the frame narrative in the Faraj is indeed in addressing a report’s plausibility (1), but other anecdotes achieve this without any such framing. Moreover, frame narratives also take on other functions whereby they neither flag nor are reliably associated with a story’s lesser plausibility. Such functions include anchoring a story’s narration within a familiar situation and highlighting the message of a narrative by setting up parallels between its different levels (2). Another function is to negotiate the incorporation of less familiar voices and content, remote in social milieu or geography from al-Tanūkhī’s life, into the world of the compilation (3). These different uses show that frame narratives are not reliable markers of fictionality in the Faraj, and that they were not artificially affixed onto the Faraj’s less plausible plots. Instead, they served different functions, introducing a wide variety of content and shaping the reception of stories by questioning their plausibility, yes, but also by exploiting and manipulating readers’ expectations, and by pushing the limits of spaces and perspectives incorporated into the Faraj’s overall message of deliverance after hardship.

Key words: Frame narratives, fictionality, plausibility, foreignness, al-Tanūkhī, al-Faraj baʿd al-shidda, compilation, Abbasid literature.

Demonic Narrator, Angelic Interpreter

2023-01-30T12:25:53+01:00

An Arabic legend tells how King Solomon arrived at a magnificent castle, half buried in the sands. Roaming through its corridors, Solomon wonders who could have built such a magnificent edifice and why it had been abandoned. Two variants of the tale employ two different strategies for solving the conundrum: in one variant, the answer is hidden in an inscription that Solomon cannot understand till a mysterious youth appears from the desert and deciphers it for him. In the second variant, the solution is offered in an embedded tale told to Solomon by a serpent demoness, who witnessed the building of the castle and partook in the final demise of its inhabitants.

In this paper, I offer a reading of this legend as a midrash, i.e., an exegetical tale that attempts to “fill in the gaps” of the Qurʾānic portrayal of Solomon. Considering the narrative questions raised by the frame tale and exploring the ways in which the embedded elements in each of the two variants employ competing strategies of “filling in the gaps” of the frame tale, I show that the divergent solutions offered in each of the variants to an ostensibly identical narrative problem lead to a different interpretation of each version. This leads to a discussion of the hermeneutic function of embedding as a form of “inner-midrash.” In the conclusion, I suggest that the two variants offer competing epistemologies of storytelling.

Key words: Solomon, qiṣaṣ al-anbiyāʾ, midrash, storytelling, narrative interpretation, narrative embedding

The Persian "Bilawhar wa Buyūdhas(a)f(a)" as a Mirror for Princes

2023-01-30T12:30:32+01:00

The present article introduces a fourteenth-century Persian retelling of the story of Bilawhar wa Buyūdhas(a)f(a), produced for the Jalāyirid court in Baghdad between 790-800/1389-1397, and highlights its stylistic and structural characteristics as an important representative of Persian prose in the post-Mongol period. The article examines the dynamic role of the framing structure in the classification of fictional and non-fictional content, and elaborates on its semantic significance in the transmission of relevant messages to the target audience according to the needs and necessities of that particular historical period. The article demonstrates how the flexibility of the framing structure along with the adaptability of the embedded narrative content on subjects such as religious tendencies and standards of governance turned this story of Buddhist origin into a text in the mirror for princes genre in accordance with the Perso-Islamic culture.

Key words: Bilawhar wa Buyūdhas(a)f(a), mirror for princes, Persian advice literature, framing narrative, the Buddha, Jalāyirid dynasty

Scripture as Frame in Naṣr Allāh Munshī’s "Kalīla and Dimna"

2023-01-30T12:34:44+01:00

This is a study of the narrative framing structure found in the Persian translation of Kalīla and Dimna written by Naṣr Allāh Munshī in the sixth/twelfth century. Kalīla and Dimna is famous partly for its embedded narratives—i.e., the phenomenon whereby characters within the book are the ones who tell the stories. This system of nested narrative frames gains a new dimension in the rendition of Naṣr Allāh, whose project involves (inter alia) presenting Kalīla and Dimna as a book of practical wisdom in an explicitly Islamic context. Naṣr Allāh has added a substantial new preface, which argues for the importance of Kalīla and Dimna in instructing people—especially rulers—in the values of justice and sound governance. He links these ideas to Islamic ethics by quoting extensively from Qur’ānic verses and ḥadīth. But this is not only a feature of the preface: the body chapters of the book, the fables themselves, are also enriched with religiously inflected arguments and scriptural quotes (not to mention lines of poetry). The style is reminiscent of that of Arabic adab works—with which Naṣr Allāh was obviously familiar. While there are several fascinating aspects of Naṣr Allāh’s version of Kalīla and Dimna, the goal of this article is to shed light on the interventions that have been made to the framing structure of the stories.

Key words: Kalīla and Dimna, Persian literature, translation, Qur’ān, ḥadīth

Inside and Outside

2023-01-30T13:12:52+01:00

Beside the sophisticated arrangement of stories, anecdotes and observations about avarice and stinginess, The Book of Misers by ʿAmr b. Baḥr al-Jāḥiẓ (160-255/776-868 or 69) displays the mechanisms of an ongoing process of negotiating social interaction. The distribution of names and labels for undesirable behavior, the warning about sanctions and consequences, and the description of emotional involvement give rise to an image of a social discourse in which the main concern is the achievement of interpretative authority. To be considered generous or stingy seems to be a matter of aspirational inclusion or momentous exclusion. This paper traces how the text highlights the transgression of conventions and the costs of remaining within a given framework. By also pointing out the fears and anxieties involved, it will be asked what framing dynamics and emotion practices have in common and how they are related to each other. Close reading of the selected episodes reveals complex interdependencies of expectations, perceptions, definitions, and conceptualizations, resulting in a delicate web of permeable frames and shifting hierarchies.

Key words: emotion, fear, anxiety, adab, limitation, transgression, stinginess, avarice, generosity

On Rupture and Temporary Endings

2023-01-30T12:57:27+01:00

In the early decades of the fifth/eleventh century, a young poet from Córdoba, Ibn Shuhayd al-Andalusī (d. 426/1035), composes a satire on inspiration and literary theft, after being accused of plagiarism. It came to be known as The Epistle of Attendant Jinn and Whirling Demons. It opens with an apostrophic frame, activating, from the onset, interstitial locations and alerting the readers to its unorthodoxy both as an intellectual attitude and a narrative strategy. In this epistle, the author revisits the old Arab myth that personifies inspiration as demons who live at the Mount-Parnassus-like Valley of ʿAbqar. The recrudescence of this myth, however, serves a particular purpose: it is designed to satirize the persistence of the classics, and to agitate the structures that make them legible. In the tales, the auto-diegetic protagonist experiences a writer's block, and is introduced to an attendant jinn who becomes the poet’s co-author and travel companion. As this recurs, episodic suspension becomes the structure that sustains the program of the work: it allows for new beginnings to emerge throughout the work and enables a series of (time) travels to the valley of ʿAbqar.

Conceived within an Arabo-Islamic environment that places great value on the ability of art to persuade, The Epistle of Attendant Jinn and Whirling Demons’s satirical outlook comes with an urgent claim. Ibn Shuhayd is not asking for pleasant, disinterested appreciation, but for public reparation. Multiply imaginative and meticulously scholarly, Ibn Shuhayd’s epistle demands to be read through a twined lens. The present study takes this affinity seriously, tracing resonances of the epistle in Ibn Shuhayd’s scholarly writing to sketch how the poetic form and and the scholarly project jointly speak to a critical moment in the Arabic literary imagination.

Key words: frame tale, apostrophe, inspiration, travel, al-Andalus, sariqa (literay theft), satire, praise, eidolopoeia

Framing and Meaning

2023-01-30T12:52:06+01:00

Framing in The Thousand and One Nights (Alf layla wa-layla) brings together not only people and their stories but also temporalities, geographies and destinies. It stages coincidental encounters of these in entangled story lines (story within story) of the Nights and generates meaning through the strangeness (gharāba) of the narrated coincidences and the wonder (ʿajab) effect of the entanglement of temporalities, geographies and destinies resulting from them. Wonder, this paper argues, is the Nights’ interrogation of the role of language and narrative in structuring ontology and epistemology. I will look at a particular entanglement engineered by framing in the Nights, between, first, the “Hunchback” and other Nights tales, second, between the different stories in the “Hunchback,” and third between this cycle and adab (learned literature in Arabic). In so doing, I explore the context of the extra-diegetic canvas of an imagined infinite universe, and show how narrative framing engages with and pushes the boundaries of narrative in order to capture what narrative leaves out, and produce meaning and generate effect. Three elements of the meaning generated in the entanglement between the Nights, especially the “Hunchback,” and adab will be the foci of discussion: the idealization of kingship and imagination of community, the subversion of the world of adab, and the formulation of a moral universe based in beauty.

Key words: Framing, coincidence, entanglement, ʿajīb, gharīb, adab, The Thousand and One Nights, Arabian Nights

Early Modern Hajj Accounts as Framed Narratives

2023-01-30T13:02:28+01:00

It is not easy to gather the corpus of Arabic travelogues, as they developed in their diversity during several ages and in many parts of the Muslim world, within a single generic demarcation. This is even more true of hajj travelogues, which on the one hand represent a sub-genre of the corpus of travel literature, but may also be considered a separate genre within the tradition of religious literature. Hajj travelogues have appeared in many different forms which defy strict generic boundaries. In this article the author explores the possibility of conceptualizing hajj travelogues as framed narratives to develop a categorization of the corpus as a separate genre, or at least a substantial sub-genre. He proposes to recognize the interaction between a discursive, religious, frame and a spatiotemporal frame as the main common determinant of the corpus. This interaction could also be a starting point for an analysis of this type of text. Two texts from the seventeenth century are discussed as examples of this approach: the hajj travelogues of the Moroccan scholar al-‘Ayyāshī and the Syrian Sufi and scholar al-Nābulusī.

Key words: Framed narratives, hajj travelogues, genre, travel literature, religious discourse, al-‘Ayyāshī, al-Nābulusī

2024-04-28T07:30:11+02:00

TOC

From the Frame Tale to Framing Intertextuality

2023-01-30T11:59:47+01:00

The application of the term framing to Arabic texts is commonly confined to the frame tale type of which the Arabic tradition produced one of the most popular works, The Thousand and One Nights. This issue transcends the study of the Nights and the associated story-within-a-story trope, moving toward a reconstitution of the study of the frame tale as part of literary framings more broadly conceived, which include multiple notions and applicabilities. In so doing, “Framing Narratives” aims to fill in a lacuna both in the study of frame tales in the Arabic and other Middle Eastern traditions such as Kalīla and Dimna, Barlaam and Josaphat and the Seven Sages in their different versions and the broadening of the framing category itself.

This introduction presents a comprehensive and cumulative definition of framing narratives including notions of mise en abyme, mise en reflet/mise en série, paratext, and parergon, among others. The overall issue will contain definitory and structural-functionalist attempts, with additional foci on the translingual variation of frame narratives, and the intertextual variation of frames, connecting the realms of adab and poetry, philosophical and anthological genres, and scripture.

Key words: Framing, frame narrative, Arabic literature, Kalīla wa-Dimna, The Thousand and One Nights, allegory of the man in the well, Gérard Genette, Werner Wolf, contextualist narratology