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Volume 4 January-May 1989 Number 1-2

Editor Editorial Assistants

John Miles Foley Gregory Bouman

Jackie Dana

Managing Editor Sarah J. Feeny

Lee Edgar Tyler Richard Glejzer

William Guerriero

Book Review Editor Nancy Hadfield

Adam Brooke Davis Kendy Hess

Slavica Publishers, Inc.

For a complete catalog of books from Slavica, with prices and ordering information, write to:

Slavica Publishers, Inc.

P.O. Box 14388

Columbus, Ohio 43214

ISSN: 0883-5365

Each contribution copyright (c) 1989 by its author. All rights reserved. The editor and the publisher assume no responsibility for statements of fact or opinion by the authors. Oral Tradition seeks to provide a comparative and interdisciplinary focus for studies in oral literature and related fields by publishing research and scholarship on the creation, transmission, and interpretation of all forms of oral traditional expression. As well as essays treating certifiably oral traditions, OT presents investigations of the relationships between oral and written traditions, as well as brief accounts of important fieldwork, a Symposium section (in which scholars may reply at some length to prior essays), review articles, occasional transcriptions and translations of oral texts, a digest of work in progress, and a regular column for notices of conferences and other matters of interest. In addition, occasional issues will include an ongoing annotated bibliography of relevant research and the annual Albert Lord and Milman Parry Lectures on Oral Tradition. OT welcomes contributions on all oral literatures, on all literatures directly influenced by oral traditions, and on non-literary oral traditions. Submissions must follow the list-of reference format (style sheet available on request) and must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope for return or for mailing of proofs; all quotations of primary materials must be made in the original language(s) with following English translations. Authors should submit two copies of all manuscripts. Most contributions will be reviewed by at least one specialist reader and one member of the editorial board before a final decision is reached. Review essays, announcements, and contributions to the Symposium section will be evaluated by the editor in consultation with the board. Oral Tradition will appear three times per year, in January, May, and October. Annual subscription charges are $20 for individuals and $35 for libraries and other institutions. All manuscripts, books for review, items for the annual bibliography, and editorial correspondence should be directed to the editor, John Miles Foley, Center for Studies in Oral Tradition, 301 Read Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65211. Subscriptions and related inquiries should be sent to Slavica Publishers, P.O. Box 14388,

Columbus, OH 43214.

Printed in the United States of America.

Guest Editor

Issa J. Boullata

EDITORIAL BOARD

Patricia Arant

Brown University

Russian

Samuel Armistead

University of California/Davis

Hispanic, comparative

Indiana University

Turkish

Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles

Middle High German

Roderick Beaton

King's College, London

Modern Greek

Dan Ben-Amos

University of Pennsylvania

Folklore

Daniel Biebuyck

University of Delaware

African

Issa J. Boullata

McGill University

Arabic

David E. Bynum

Cleveland State University

East European, comparative

Robert P. Creed

Univ. of Mass./Amherst

Old English, comparative

Robert Culley

McGill University

Biblical StudiesJoseph J. Duggan

Univ. of Cal./Berkeley

French, Spanish, comparative

Alan Dundes

Univ. of Cal./Berkeley

Folklore

Mark W. Edwards

Stanford University

Ancient Greek

Ruth Finnegan

Open University

African, South Pacific

Donald K. Fry

Poynter Institute

Old English

Joseph Harris

Harvard University

Old Norse

Melissa Heckler

New York Storytelling Center

Storytelling

Elizabeth Jeffreys

University of Sydney

Byzantine Greek

Michael Jeffreys

University of Sydney

Byzantine Greek

Minna Skafte Jensen

University of Copenhagen

Ancient Greek, Latin

Werner Kelber

Rice University

Biblical Studies

EDITORIAL BOARD

Robert Kellogg

University of Virginia

Old Germanic, comparative

Eleanor Long

Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles

Folk Ballad

Albert B. Lord

Harvard University (Emeritus)

Slavic, comparative

Victor Mair

University of Pennsylvania

Chinese

John S. Miletich

Las Vegas, Nevada

Spanish, Serbo-Croatian,

comparative

D. Gary Miller

University of Florida

Linguistics, Ancient Greek

Nada Miloševi-Djordjevi

University of Belgrade

Serbo-Croatian

Michael Nagler

Univ. of Cal./Berkeley

Ancient Greek, Sanskrit,

comparative

Gregory Nagy

Harvard University

Ancient Greek, Sanskrit,

comparative

Joseph Falaky Nagy

Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles

Old Irish

Jacob Neusner

Brown University

Hebrew, Biblical StudiesFelix Felix J. Oinas

Indiana University

Finnish, Russian

Isidore Okpewho

University of Ibadan

African, Ancient Greek

Walter J. Ong

St. Louis University (Emeritus)

Hermeneutics of orality and

literacy

Jeff Opland

Vassar College

African, Old English

Svetozar Petrovi

University of Novi Sad

Serbo-Croatian, Critical theory

Burton Raffel

Univ. of Southwestern

Louisiana

Translation

Alain Renoir

Univ. of Cal./Berkeley

(Emeritus)

Old Germanic, Old French,

comparative

Bruce A. Rosenberg

Brown University

Folk narrative, Medieval

literature

Geoffrey R. Russom

Brown University

Old English, Old Norse,

Old Irish

Deborah Tannen

Georgetown University

Linguistics, Discourse theory

Dennis Tedlock

SUNY/Buffalo

Native American

EDITORIAL BOARD

Jeff Todd Titon

Brown University

Music

J. Barre Toelken

Utah State University

Folklore, Native American

Leo Treitler

SUNY/Stony Brook

Music

Ronald J. Turner

Univ. of Missouri/Columbia

StorytellingRuth Webber

University of Chicago

(Emerita)

Spanish, comparative

D.K. Wilgus

Univ. of Cal./Los Angeles

(Emeritus)

Folk Ballad

Michael Zwettler

Ohio State University

Arabic

Contents

Guest Editor's Column............................................................................... 1

Frederick M. Denny

Qur'n Recitation: A Tradition of Oral Performance

and Transmission............................................................................. 5

R. Marston Speight

Oral Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad:

A Formulaic Approach................................................................... 27

James T. Monroe

Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwašša?

Some Evidence for the Oral Origins of

Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry.................................................... 38

Muhsin Mahdi

From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the

King's Steward in the........................... Thousand and one Nights 65

Dwight F. Reynolds

Srt Ban Hill: Introduction and Notes to an

Arab Oral Epic Tradition............................................................... 80

Bridget Connelley and Henry Massie

Epic Splitting: An Arab Folk Gloss on the

Meaning of the Hero Pattern....................................................... 101

H. T. Norris

Arabic Folk Epic and the Western....................... Chanson de Geste 125

Saad Abdullah Sowayan

"Tonight My Gun in Loaded": Poetic Dueling in Arabia................ 151

Simon Jargy

Sung Poetry in the Oral Tradition of the

Gulf Region and the Arabian Peninsula...................................... 174

Contents

Adnan Haydar

The Development of Lebanese Zajal:

Genre, Meter, and Verbal Duel.................................................... 189 irghm . Sbait

Palestinian Improvised-Sung Poetry:

The Genres of id and Qarrd-

Performance and Transmission................................................... 213

Teirab AshShareef

Ban Halba Classification of Poetic Genres..................................... 236

George D. Sawa

Oral Transmission in Arabic Music, Past and Present..................... 267

Review.................................................................................................... 267

About the Authors................................................................................... 269

Guest Editor's Column

The essays that make up this special issue of Oral Tradition deal with various aspects of oral tradition in Arab culture. Orality has always been an important mode of communication and of cultural transmission in the Arab tradition. Right from the earliest times in Arabia, long before the advent of Islam in the seventh century A.D., through the period after the promulgation of Islam and its dramatic geographical spread from the Arabian Peninsula to different parts of the world, and up to the present, orality has continued to be a well-known method of preserving Arab culture and transmitting it to succeeding generations. Even after writing had become common among Arabs, oral performance remained for a long time an acceptable way of passing on knowledge. This phenomenon might have been enhanced by the very nature of Arabic writing itself, which, though later perfected, was based on the consonantal representation of words, the short vowels not being written and remaining always in need of the oral sound of a performer or transmitter to specify them. Thus a word like slm, which could be pronounced in a variety of ways with different combinations of unwritten vowels, depending on the context, had to be orally heard to become authentically meaningful. This has been particularly signifi cant in the oral transmission of the sacred text of the Qur'ăn' and to a lesser extent in the transmission of Prophet Mu˕ammad's sayings in the ˔adĦth. A long chain of transmitters had to be authenticated before the correct text was established. At a different level of meaning, orality among Arabs meant a heavy dependence on memory, whether in the recitation of poetry, epic narratives, romances, and proverbs or in the enumeration of genealogical data. Tribal lore, and historical or pseudo-historical events. Arab tradition abounds with stories of persons who had prodigious memories, equally amazing whether they specialized in religious knowledge or in secular matters. At yet another level of meaning, orality among Arabs sometimes meant spontaneous extemporizing of verse in specifi c poetic duels or slanging- matches, and in social settings where improvising was required. The rich vocabulary of the Arabic language and its structural patterns helped to bring such impromptu oral composition within the reach of poets more readily than would have been possible otherwise, yet a long period of training was still necessary and the challenges of this orality delighted Arab audiences as they witnessed poets struggling to meet its demands.

2 GUEST EDITOR'S COLUMN

Arab audiences have been noted for their strong inclination to rejoice in listening to the cadences and rhythms of their language as it expressed ideas or emotions with which they identifi ed. They would be thrilled at the apt use of a word or an image and would respond with unrehearsed, uninhibited collective acclaim as the inevitable word or image is eventually used by the poet, particularly in a rhyming position, with unexpected ramifi cations of meaning. Arab audiences listening to epics or romances have also been described as identifying with the heroes or heroines of their oral tradition, the narrators often moulding their material to suit local needs or timely necessities either consciously or unconsciously. In the fi nal analysis it is verbal art at its best, in the oral tradition of Arab culture, with which the essays in this special issue deal. Frederick M. Denny begins with a study of the art of oral recitation of the Qur'ăn - because of which practice, he believes, "Islam has retained a high level of orality in its piety and in its way of understanding the nature of things." R. Marston Speight points to formulaic aspects of the ˔adĦth, orally handed down from the Prophet Mu˕ammad and the outstanding personalities of early Islamic history. James T. Monroe digs up some evidence for the oral origins of Hispano-Arabic strophic poetry, which, he concludes, "is learned development of the popular zajal in Arabic and Romance." In similarly fascinating detective work, Muhsin Mahdi compares a tale in the Arabian Nights with an account of it transmitted much earlier as history, showing how audiences respond variously to fact and fi ction, not always based on rational grounds but often on their willingness to believe. Dwight F. Reynolds writes an introduction to the oral epic of BanĦ Hilăl and the scholarship that studied it as history and as text, and calls for more studies on its live performance and its signifi cance. Bridget Connelly and Henry Massie highlight the psychological and social needs of local audiences that dictate the choice of themes in the oral performance of the BanĦ Hilăl epic by narrators, repeatedly emphasizing in Tunisia those related to repressed anxieties of social rupture between Berber and Arab. H. T. Norris explores the common elements of Arabic epics and European chansons de geste and, in spite of differences, establishes the possibility of borrowed content relating to detail and fantasy. Saad Abdullah Sowayan depends on fi eld research in Arabia to describe oral poets performing poetic duels accompanied by a chorus. Translating his own article from French, Simon Jargy offers a study of certain living genres of sung poetry from the present-day oral tradition of the Gulf region and the Arabian Peninsula, reported earlier by Western travelers and ethnographers. Adnan Haydar studies another living oral tradition, the zajal of Lebanon, and examines its genres and meters, following up the developments in improvised oral duels between zajal

GUEST EDITOR'S COLUMN 3

poets. ʼirgham ˔. Sbait discusses the living oral tradition of Palestinian improvised-sung poetry, analyzing its genres and their social functions. Teirab AshShareef presents the results of his fi eld research in the Sudan regarding the classifi cation of sung poetic genres in the oral tradition of the BanĦ Halba; he shows that tunes are the basis of such classifi cation and that, within it, there are men's genres and women's genres. Finally, to end this special issue, George D. Sawa gives an account of oral transmission in Arabic music as performed in Baghdad in the heyday of medieval Arab civilization as well as in modern times. There are many other aspects of the Arabic oral tradition that have not been treated in this collection. It is hoped that future issues of Oral Tradition will deal with some of them. Readers of Oral Tradition whose specialization is in fi elds other than Arabic will fi nd in this special issue many affi nities with their fi elds. It is my hope that the collection will help to enlarge the purview of comparative studies in oral tradition as it helps to advance scholarship in the fi eld of studies in Arabic oral tradition. Issa J. BoullataInstitute of Islamic StudiesMcGill University, Montreal

Oral Tradition, 4/1-2 (1989): 5-26

Qur'ăn Recitation:

A Tradition of Oral Performance

and Transmission

Frederick Mathewson Denny

Oral performance by means of recitation of the Qur'ăn is at the center of Islamic corporate and individual piety. The Qur'ăn is recited during the daily ̓alăt prayer services; nightly during the Ramadan fasting month; in special recitation sessions frequently convened in mosques, schools, and other places; and on many special occasions, such as the openings of businesses, schools, legislative sessions, at weddings, circumcisions, funerals, and other times. Individual Muslims also recite the Qur'ăn, for religious merit, for refl ection on its meaning, and for spiritual refreshment. The Qur'ăn is recited in competitions in some regions of the Muslim world and champions earn fame and, potentially, wealth, because professional reciters of high standing can command substantial fees for their performances and their followers eagerly buy tape cassettes. The academic study of Qur'ăn recitation has been a very minor aspect of Arabic and Islamic studies in the West. Only a few treatises have been producedquotesdbs_dbs45.pdfusesText_45

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