The Sudanese Elements in the Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan
In: ArabicaSearch for other papers by Andrea Crudu in
Current site
Google Scholar
Abstract
Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan is the central character of three main traditions: the original one, its partially historical Yemeni saga; the claim of the Sayfuwa rulers of Kanem-Bornu to be his descendants, and the related corpus of traditions; the Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan, a popular epic originally composed in Egypt before the 16th century. The paper tries to demonstrate that the Sīra, in its later, much altered version, has been heavily influenced by sudanese stories, legends and traditions originally coming from the African region long dominated by the Sayfuwa dynasty. The aim is primarily to show this influence and to describe how it interacted with the Sīra. As for the questions regarding when, where and why this took place, only extremely hypothetical conjectures can be advanced at the present state of knowledge.
Résumé
Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan est le personnage central de trois traditions principales : l’originale, c’est-à-dire son épopée yéménite partiellement historique ; la prétention des gouverneurs Sayfuwa de Kanem Bornou à être ses descendants et le corpus de traditions qui s’y rattache ; la Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan, une épopée populaire composée à l’origine en Égypte avant le XVIe siècle. Cet article tente de démontrer que la Sīra, dans sa version tardive et très remaniée, a été fortement influencée par des histoires soudanaises, des légendes et des traditions qui viennent, à l’origine, de la région de l’Afrique longtemps dominée par la dynastie Sayfuwa. L’objectif est avant tout de montrer cette influence et de décrire comment elle interagit avec la Sīra. En ce qui concerne les questions relatives à l’époque, au lieu et aux raisons, seules de très hypothétiques conjectures peuvent être avancées en l’état actuel des connaissances.
Purchase
Buy instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Institutional Login
Log in with Open Athens, Shibboleth, or your institutional credentials
Personal login
Log in with your brill.com account
-
4
See A. Chraïbi, “Le roman de Sayf Ibn ḏī Yazan : sources, structure et argumentation”, Studia Islamica, 84 (1996), p. 113-134.
-
11
Ibid., p. 201-204, Norris, Introduction to The Adventures of Sayf, p. xi.
-
14
ʿUrābī, al-Bunya, p. 16-32, Norris, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 129-131. On the Ethiopian threat over the Nile see E. Cerulli, “Il volo di Astolfo sull’Etiopia nell’Orlando Furioso”, Atti dell’Accademia dei Lincei, Rendiconti della Classe di Scienze Morali, 8/6 (1932) and R. Pankhurst, “Ethiopia’s Alleged Control of the Nile”, in The Nile. Histories, Cultures, Myths, eds H. Erlich and I. Gershoni, London, Boulder, 2000.
-
18
See J.H. Kramers, “al-Nīl”, EI 2, N. Levtzion, “Arab Geographers, the Nile, and the History of Bilad al-Sudan”, in The Nile. Histories, p. 72-75, A. Miquel, La géographie humaine du monde musulman jusqu’au milieu du 11e siècle, Paris, Mouton, 1967, II, p. 136.
-
19
H.T. Norris, Saharan Myth and Saga, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972, p. 26-39, 46-49 and passim. The figure of a Yemeni hero is also mentioned in the 17th century Songhay chronicles Taʾrīḫ al-Sūdān and Taʾrīḫ al-Fattāš. See J.O. Hunwick, Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, Al-Saʿadī’s Taʾrīkh al-Sūdān down to 1613 and other Contemporary Documents, Leiden, Brill, 2003, p. xxxiv-xxxv, 5-6, 332-334. N. Levtzion, “A Seventeenth-Century Chronicle By Ibn al-Mukhtār: A Critical Study of Ta’rīkh al-Fattāsh”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 34/3 (1971), p. 580-581.
-
20
D. Lange and B.W. Barkindo, “The Chad region as a crossroads”, in General History of Africa, Paris, UNESCO, 1988, III, p. 459. Cf. A. Smith, “The Legend of the Seifuwa: a Study in the Origins of a Tradition of Origin”, in A little new Light, ed. A. Smith, Zaria, Abdullahi Smith Centre for Historical Research, 1987, p. 31.
-
21
Norris, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 137. H. Carbou, La region du Tchad et du Ouadaï, Paris, Leroux, 1912, I, p. 6-7.
-
23
Canova, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 11. Cf. Smith, “The Legend of the Seifuwa”, p. 39-40 and D. Lange and B.W. Barkindo, “The Chad region”, p. 458-459.
-
24
D. Lange, “The kingdoms and peoples of Chad”, in General History of Africa, Paris, UNESCO, 1984, IV, p. 239-243. D. Lange, Le Dīwān des sultanes du Kānem-Bornū, Chronologie et histoire d’un royaume africain, Wiesbaden, Steinar Verlag, 1977, p. 22-23.
-
26
Norris, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 134-145, see also Garcin, “Sīra/s et histoire”, Arabica, 51/1-2 (2004), p. 51, id., “Sīra/s et histoire (suite)”, Arabica, 51/3 (2004), p. 240-241 and Canova, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 11.
-
28
Norris, “Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan”, p. 145. See Cuoq, Recueil, p. 208, 260, 382-383 and cf. Smith, “A little”, p. 89.
-
31
Ibid., p. 440.
-
33
D.A. Miller, The Epic Hero, Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000, p. 99-101. J. Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004 (19491), p. 301-302.
-
35
E. Platte, “Kanuri sub-groups”, Kasa, Kanuri Studies Association, november 2004, URL: http://www.kanuri.net/kanuri_and_their_neighbours2.php?aID=15, last checked 27/11/2011.
-
40
Cf. M. Konaté Deme, Heroism and the Supernatural in the African Epic, New York, Routledge, 2010, p. 92-93.
-
42
Ibid., p. 58.
-
45
Ibid., p. 23.
-
46
Ibid., p. 46, 48.
-
47
See J. Tubiana and M.-J. Tubiana, “Forgerons du nord-est du Tchad” and J. Tubiana, “Forgerons-Chasseurs des Teda-Daza et des Beri”, in Hommes sans voix, p. 11, 37, 89-91, 103, 117. Doutoum, “Place and statut”, p. 152-153.
-
48
Studied by I. Nicolaisen, Elusive hunters: the Haddad of Kanem and the Bahr el Ghazal, Aarhus, Aarhus University Press, 2010. For a description of their net-hunting techniques see p. 237-263.
-
55
Ibid., p. 125.
-
56
Ibid., p. 124.
-
57
Ibid., p. 130-132.
-
58
Ibid., p. 167.
-
59
Ibid., p. 123-125.
-
61
Ibid., p. 148-160, 166, 175-180, 259-260.
-
62
J.S. Trimingham, A History of Islam in West Africa, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 118.
-
66
Ibid., p. 298.
-
67
Ibid., p. 311.
-
68
Ibid., p. 299-310.
-
69
Ibid., p. 317.
-
70
Ibid., p. 319.
-
71
Ibid., p. 319-320.
-
72
Ibid., p. 323.
-
75
J.S. Trimingham, A History, London, Oxford University Press, 1962, p. 108.
-
76
D. Lange, “L’éviction des Sēfuwa du Kānem et l’origine des Bulāla”, in The Journal of African History, 23/3 (1982), p. 317-322; Lange, “The kingdoms”, p. 254 and Smith, A little, p. 93, 117.
-
84
Ibid., p. 129-130.
-
85
Ibid., p. 132.
-
86
Ibid., p. 132-133.
-
87
Ibid., p. 129.
-
91
Ibid., p. 124 and note 25.
-
92
Summarized in W.K.R. Hallam, “The Bayajida Legend in Hausa Folklore”, The Journal of African History, 7/1 (1966), p. 47-49. See also E.J. Arnett, “A Hausa Chronicle”, Journal of the Royal African Society, 9/34 (1910), p. 162-164. For two more Bornu-oriented versions see Palmer, Sudanese, III, p. 149-153 and R.S. Rattray, Hausa Folk-Lore and Customs, Proverbs, etc., Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1913, I, p. 2-4.
-
96
Ibid., p. 1291.
-
97
Ibid., p. 1293-1294.
-
98
Ibid., p. 1295-1296.
-
99
Ibid., p. 1297-1299.
-
100
Ibid., p. 1302.
-
101
Ibid., p. 1304.
-
102
H.J. Fisher, “ ‘He Swalloweth the Ground with Fierceness and Rage’: The Horse in the Central Sudan. I. It’s Introduction”, The Journal of African History, 13/3 (1972), p. 371.
-
106
On this problem see Fisher, “‘He Swalloweth”, p. 370-373. See also H.J. Fisher, “The eastern Maghrib and the central Sudan”, in The Cambridge History of Africa, ed. R. Oliver, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2007 (19771), III, p. 306-308.
-
110
M.I. Gerhardt, The Art of story-telling: A literary study of the Thousand and One Nights, Leiden, Brill, 1963, p. 285-299. See also The Arabian Nights Encyclopedia, p. 341-345.
-
111
Ibid., p. 419-420.
-
115
R.C. Jankowsky, Stambeli: music, trance, and alterity in Tunisia, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 2010, p. 18-19, 55-59, 86-91; I.M. Lewis, “Zar in Context: the Past, the Present and the Future of an African Healing Cult”, in Women’s medicine: the Zar-Bori Cult in Africa and beyond, eds I.M. Lewis, A. Al-Safi and S. Hurreiz, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press for the International African Institute, 1991, p. 2; P. Constantinides, “The History of Zar in the Sudan: Theories of Origin, Recorded Observation and Oral Tradition”, in Women’s medicine, p. 83-92; C. El Hamel, “Constructing a Diasporic Identity: Tracing the Origins of the Gnawa Spiritual group in Morocco”, Journal of African History, 49 (2008), p. 247-250, 258.
-
116
Trimingham, A History of Islam, p. 115, Garcin, “Sīra/s et histoire”, p. 51.
-
117
T. Walz, “Trans-Saharan Migration and the Colonial Gaze: the Nigerians in Egypt”, Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics, 26 (2006), p. 99-101, 106-107, 109-112.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 672 | 118 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 202 | 4 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 50 | 12 | 1 |
The Sudanese Elements in the Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan
In: ArabicaSearch for other papers by Andrea Crudu in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan is the central character of three main traditions: the original one, its partially historical Yemeni saga; the claim of the Sayfuwa rulers of Kanem-Bornu to be his descendants, and the related corpus of traditions; the Sīrat Sayf b. Ḏī Yazan, a popular epic originally composed in Egypt before the 16th century. The paper tries to demonstrate that the Sīra, in its later, much altered version, has been heavily influenced by sudanese stories, legends and traditions originally coming from the African region long dominated by the Sayfuwa dynasty. The aim is primarily to show this influence and to describe how it interacted with the Sīra. As for the questions regarding when, where and why this took place, only extremely hypothetical conjectures can be advanced at the present state of knowledge.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 672 | 118 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 202 | 4 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 50 | 12 | 1 |