Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period

Many Arabic popular religious prose narratives from the post-classical period exist mostly in manuscript; relevant sources are few and their tone is dismissive, if not downright disdainful. As a result, the main sources of information on the composers and transmitters (quṣṣāṣ) of these religious narratives are polemical works, such as Ibn al-Jawzī’s (d. 1200) Kitāb al-quṣṣāṣ wa’l-mudhakkirīn (The Book of Story-Tellers and Preachers) and al-Suyūṭī’s (d. 1505) Taḥdhīr al-khawāṣṣ min akādhīb al-quṣṣāṣ (On Guarding the Elite Against the Falsehoods of the Story-Tellers). Few modern scholars have treated popular religious writings in Arabic and other Islamic languages as worthwhile literature.¹

The genre of popular religious narrative surveyed here, the qiṣṣa, typically includes a tale of the contest of good and evil and the ultimate triumph for good; tales about the meek who, armed with no more than their piety and fear of God, stand up to and overcome the mighty and wicked. The heroes of such tales are prophets, saintly figures (awliyā’), and pious men and women, who are granted this divine gift of working miracles and marvels (mu‘jizāt and karāmāt).

Some of these popular religious narratives derive their material from the Koran, its various narratives about the biblical and non-biblical figures before Muḥammad, such as Abraham, Joseph, the Children of Israel, Mary, Hūd and Ṣāliḥ, among others. Other sources include ḥadīth reports, non-Koranic tales derived from Jewish sources (isrā’īliyyāt) and tales about Sufi masters and their miracles (karāmāt).

The Arabic words for story, qiṣṣa, story-telling, al-qaṣṣ and the verb qaṣṣa, are used in several ways in the Koran as is illustrated in these examples: (1) to recount: tilka al-qurā naquṣṣu ‘alayka min anbā’ihā, ‘those [earlier] communities, some of whose stories We [now] relate unto thee’ (7:101); (2) to trace or track: wa-qālat li-ukhtihi quṣṣīhi fa-baṣarat bihi ῾an janbin wa-hum lā yash‘urūn, ‘And so she said to his sister, “Follow him”, and she watched him from afar, while they were not aware of it’ (28:11); (3) to tell a tale with a moral for didactic purposes, to teach a lesson: la-qad kāna fī qaṣaṣihim ‘ibratun li-ulī al-albāb, ‘Indeed in the stories of these men there is a lesson for those who are endowed with insight’ (12:111). Al-Ṭabarī said that the verses of the Koran are but tales after tales, one following the other,² the divine purposes behind which are listed by al-Tha‘labī:³

1. As proof of Muḥammad’s prophethood, his knowledge of the tales of past prophets and communities were to impress on his hearers the miraculous source of this knowledge. These Koranic stories were considered proof of the miraculous nature of the Koran by al-Rummānī, al-Khaṭṭābī and al-Jurjānī,⁴ since they told of past events and communities and were related by the Prophet Muḥammad who was illiterate.⁵

2. God wanted the Prophet to adopt the manners of past prophets and become an example (uswa wa-qudwa) to his followers.

3. God wanted to honour the Prophet and his community by singling them out for this gift of prophetic tales.

4. God wanted to edify the Muslim community by the morals behind these tales, as ta’dīb wa-tahdhīb, education and instruction.

5. God wanted to confer honour on His own prophets by commemorating their pious deeds. It is clear that the didactic purposes of these Koranic tales were established early on. For Ibn al-Athīr, people who thought that these tales might have been included in the Koran in order to entertain the reader/listener were people of error, ahl al-zaygh, who were destined to perdition, as al-Sakhāwī also states.⁶

Qāṣṣ, pl. quṣṣāṣ, is a ‘popular story-teller’ or ‘a preacher, deliverer of sermons’. His main function was preaching in the mosques, most probably delivering the sermon (khuṭba). Even though the verb qaṣṣa is often used in the Koran (see above), the active participle qāṣṣ does not appear at all. The Prophet is reported to have said, ‘None but an amir, a subordinate [of an amir] or proud man shall preach’ (lā yaquṣṣu illā amīr aw ma’mūr aw mukhtāl). Charles Pellat states that it would be ‘difficult to date precisely the intransitive use of the verb in the sense of “to perform the function of a popular story-teller or deliverer of sermons”’.⁷ However, some sources mention that Tamīm al-Dārī was the first qāṣṣ in the sense of a story-teller of religious narratives, and that the Prophet Muḥammad related some of al-Dārī’s tales about the dajjāl (Antichrist).⁸ Pellat, however, cautions us against accepting these reports uncritically since Tamīm had ‘become a legendary figure’.⁹

There were two kinds of quṣṣāṣ, public and state-appointed ones. The latter performed in mosques, relating Koranic narratives about past communities and biblical figures and commenting on the ‘edifying features scattered among the sūras’, as Pellat states. The public ones, on the other hand, performed to audiences outside the mosque, much to the consternation of the authorities who suspected some of the quṣṣāṣ, at times with good reason, of propagating apocryphal traditions, false ḥadīth, and seditious religious and political materials as agents of the various opposition groups. The authorities acted intermittently against the quṣṣāṣ, but whether out of self-defence or out of a genuine desire to protect the authentic core of the Islamic tradition, is not always clear.

Early reports about actions taken against the quṣṣāṣ include the decision by ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib to expel them from the mosque in Basra. More prohibitions against the quṣṣāṣ and their activities followed.¹⁰ The reasons for these prohibitions may have to do with the tendency of some quṣṣāṣ, even the ones ‘motivated by the best intentions’ to ‘mix in their commentary edifying narratives drawn from the Koran, Judeo-Christian legends and stories from the Jāhiliyya’, as Pellat wrote. The quṣṣāṣ were banished from mosques and their activities repeatedly proscribed. Paradoxically, it appeared that the more harshly the authorities clamped down on them, the more their appeal to their unlettered audiences was enhanced. They managed to gather around them ‘a more attentive, more eager and often denser audience than that of the fuqahā’ and other scholars, who tended to adopt a disdainful attitude towards them, more especially as in any discussion they were sure of carrying the day, thanks to their easy flow of speech’.¹¹ Ibn al-Jawzī even conceded that ‘the storytellers and preachers were also given a place in [the] divine scheme in order to exhort the masses. And so it is that the masses profit from them in a way that they never profit from the scholar.’¹²

Periodically, condemnations were levelled against the quṣṣāṣ by major figures such as al-Ghazālī, Ibn al-Jawzī, Ibn ‘Abdūn and al-Suyūṭī. We learn from the sources that once the quṣṣāṣ were banished from the mosques they started to perform in cemeteries, in addition to marketplaces, since their narrative ‘wares’ were now viewed as suspect goods by the market-inspectors (muḥtasibs). In later centuries, and as the quṣṣāṣ became more and more popular, condemnation from the religious authorities increased so much that al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) felt obliged to issue his warning in a book with the telling title, Taḥdhīr al-khawāṣṣ etc. (On Guarding the Elite Against the Falsehoods of the Story-Tellers). They were once the popular sermon-givers and interpreters of the Koran but in later times they became, in the words of Pellat, ‘buffoon[s] who mainly replaced edifying narrations by comical and often improper stories especially ridiculing biblical characters . . . Some became veritable mountebanks, who contrived to “play to the gallery”, provided that the collection afterwards produced a substantial reward.’¹³

In later centuries the performing techniques and repertoire of quṣṣāṣ overlapped with those of other popular performers; performing groups bearing the name qaṣṣāṣīn were operative as late as the nineteenth century.¹⁴

There are several types of popular religious narratives in the pre-modern era which can be briefly categorized as follows:

Other than the sīra works by Ibn Isḥāq, Ibn Hishām, al-Zuhrī, al-Wāqidī and al-Ṭabarī, there are ‘popular’ elaborations in later sīra works, especially on the miracles of the Prophet Muḥammad. There are also the books of dalā’il (proofs of the authenticity of Muḥammad’s prophethood) by authors such as Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī and of shamā’il (his physical and spiritual qualities) by Ibn Kathīr, among others, which illustrate the esteemed position the figure of the Prophet enjoys in popular Muslim piety. Other ‘popular’ narratives can be found in post-classical devotional literature, still in circulation, such as al-Jazūlī’s (d. c. 1465) Dalā’il al-khayrāt and the mawālid works (literary compositions in honour of the Prophet) such as those by ‘Abd al-Ra’ūf al-Munāwī (d. 1621) and al-Sayyid Ja‘far al-Barzanjī (d. 1766). These narratives are composed in both prose and verse, some of the latter appropriated from classical elite poets including the ascetic Abū᾽l-‘Atāhiya (d. 825 or 826), the mystics Sahl al-Tustarī (d. 896), ‘Abd al-Raḥīm al-Bura‘ī (d. c. 1058), ‘Umar ibn al-Fāriḍ (d. 1235) and the Andalusian-born Abū᾽l-Ḥasan al-Shushtarī (d. 1268–9).¹⁵ There are many popular narratives of the life of the Prophet Muḥammad preserved in manuscript form in various libraries.

Differences exist between the popular narratives of the Prophet’s life and their equivalents in the classical accounts, notably the biography of Ibn Isḥāq in Ibn Hishām’s recension. In order to glean an understanding of the nature of these popular narratives, we will discuss here some of the details in the popular narratives and compare and contrast them with their parallels in the biographies written by Ibn Isḥāq and others.

There are some intimations about the primordial light of Muḥammad already in Ibn Isḥāq’s biography, although he cautiously prefaced his account of it with the disclaimer za‘amū (they alleged), to cast doubt on the authenticity of the account. Ibn Isḥāq tells us that when Āmina was giving birth to the baby Muḥammad, there came out of her a light that illumined the castles of Buṣrā (Bostra) in Syria.¹⁶ This concept of the primordial light which existed before creation is not elaborated as it is in the popular narratives. Nor does Ibn Isḥāq mention the baby Muḥammad’s miraculous circumcision or that his mother was helped by angels or by Mary or Āsiyā (the pharaoh’s believing wife) as do later biographies of the Prophet. For example, the baby Muḥammad is born already circumcised in a late sixteenth-century biography entitled al-Sīra al-ḥalabiyya al-nabawiyya, also sometimes known as Insān al-‘uyūn fī sīrat al-Amīn wa’l-Ma’mūn, written by Ibn Burhān al-Ḥalabī, who was born in Cairo in 1567, worked as a professor in al-Madrasa al-Ṣalāḥiyya and died in 1634. He composed several commentaries and supercommentaries but he is best known for his biography of the Prophet. It is in his biography that we find the miraculous details surrounding the birth of the Prophet, details which recur in later popular religious narratives in Egypt. The circumcision story is cited there on the authority of the jurist Anas ibn Mālik who reports the Prophet’s saying: ‘A sign of the honour conferred on me by my Lord is that I was born circumcised and that no one has seen my genitalia.’¹⁷ The polymath jurist and Koran exegete al-Suyūṭī (d. 1505) also cited this detail on the authority of several transmitters.¹⁸ Other details in al-Sīra al-ḥalabiyya, which are not in Ibn Isḥāq’s biography, include the presence, at Muḥammad’s birth, of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and of Āsiyā, the pharaoh’s wife who secretly took care of the baby Moses. According to this account, Āmina, Muḥammad’s mother, said:

The significance of this detail lies not only in the notion that the God-favoured Prophet was served by mothers or nurses of previous prophets,²⁰ but also in the belief that he will be married in Paradise to both of these women as well as to Kulthūm, the sister of the prophet Mūsā, as reported by al-Ḥalabī and Ibn Kathīr.²¹

A curious detail about the baby Muḥammad nursing only from the right breast of Ḥalīma, his wet nurse, is cited in another late biography, that of Imām Aḥmad Zaynī, known as Daḥlān, a Shafii muftī in Mecca. In his al-Sīra al-nabawiyya wa’l-āthār al-muḥammadiyya we are told:

One of the Prophet Muḥammad’s miracles, cited in several sources, both elite and popular, tells of a chance meeting with a gazelle which the Prophet found tied by a hunter. He took pity on her and redeemed her freedom by offering himself as a hostage in her place. Having been struck by the grand sacrifice, the gazelle converted to Islam by uttering the testimony of faith. The sources which cite the story of the Prophet and the gazelle are many, ranging from the earlier Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī and al-Damīrī to the late fifteenth-century al-Suyūṭī.²³ The hunter in these sources is reported to have been a bedouin, not a Jew as Egypt’s modern maddāḥ narrates.²⁴ Here is a ḥadīth report on the authority of al-Ṭabarānī, al-Bayhaqī and Ibn Ḥajar (who corrected some of its details) based on an account given by Umm Salama, one of the Prophet’s wives:

There are also references to complaints uttered by a camel to the Prophet Muḥammad in several accounts in Ibn Kathīr’s Shamā’il al-rasūl, al-Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ’s al-Shifā, al-Suyūṭī’s al-Khaṣā’iṣ al-kubrā and others. In Ibn al-Jawzī’s account we read about several encounters that the Prophet had with camels, all of which purport to be complaints of ill-treatment by the owner.²⁶ The story of the Prophet and the camel, at times called Nuṭq al-jamal (The Camel’s Utterance) is in the current repertoire of Egyptian maddāḥīn and was attested in Algeria in the early twentieth century and in Egypt in the sixteenth century.²⁷ ‘The Camel’s Utterance’ tells of a bedouin who, yearning to visit the Prophet, sets out on a long journey and on his way he meets three Jews who, possessed by envy when they set their eyes on his young agile camel (qa‘ūd), forge a deed of sale which states that the bedouin sold them the camel. When the bedouin finally reaches the Prophet he is surprised to see the three Jews there pressing their claims to the ownership of his camel. When the bedouin protests against the fraudulent assertions of the Jews, they produce the necessary witnesses and for a while the bedouin seems helpless. At that point, a miracle occurs: the camel loosens its tether and comes forward to testify against the Jews. The Prophet believes the camel and the bedouin is vindicated, whereas the culprits run away or, in another version, are severely punished.²⁸

This miracle tells of a palm tree against which the Prophet used to lean when preaching in a modestly built mosque. When Muslims begin to increase in number and the mosque becomes crowded with believers, a man by the name of Tamīm al-Dārī suggests to the Prophet that a proper pulpit be built for him. The Prophet agrees but when he actually comes to mount the newly built pulpit he is interrupted by loud crying which sounds like that of a child. The worshippers look around for the source of crying only to find, to their surprise, that the palm trunk against which the Prophet used to lean is sobbing because of the pain it feels at being separated from the beloved Prophet. The Prophet embraces the trunk and gives it a choice between being replanted and becoming a palm tree or being duly buried with a guarantee that it would be resurrected on the Day of Judgement and become a palm tree in Paradise. The palm trunk chooses the latter.

There are several classical accounts of this miracle, which itself is not mentioned in the Koran. It is considered as an authentic report (ḥadīth ṣaḥīḥ) by al-Bukhārī.²⁹ It is narrated, for example, by Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī and al-Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ.³⁰ But accounts differ in minor details, for example over the identity of the person who built the minbar for the Prophet: Tamīm al-Dārī, a Greek carpenter, or the young slave of a woman from among the Anṣār (the Helpers).

Ibn Kathīr gives nine accounts of this miracle, on the authority of familiar transmitters like Ibn Ḥanbal, Mālik, Ibn ‘Abbās, Jābir, al-Bukhārī, Abū Nu‘aym al-Iṣfahānī and two of the Prophet’s wives, ‘Ā’isha and Umm Salama.³¹ All accounts agree on the essentials of the story: a tree trunk cried like a child, or like a she-camel (nāqa) or a ten-month pregnant goat (‘ishār), when the Prophet abandoned it.³²

Several chapters in the Koran are named after biblical prophets such as Abraham and Joseph, as well as non-biblical ones such as Hūd and Ṣāliḥ. Koranic commentators (mufassirūn) were the first to collect Arabic narratives (qiṣaṣ) about the various prophets mentioned in the Koran. Later these narratives were compiled in anthologies on the lives and miracles of the prophets under the title Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’ (Stories of the Prophets), such as the works of al-Tha‘labī’ and al-Kisā’ī. These stories can perhaps be classified as popular religious literature because of the author/collector’s tendency ‘to simplify Biblical-Koranic legends for the education and the enjoyment of the masses; and by variations in contents and arrangements of the different extant manuscripts of this particular work, variations that could well indicate the existence of an oral tradition even after the first recording of al-Kisā’ī’s oeuvre’.³³

Some of these narratives, such as the ones about ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and al-Ḥusayn, have survived and were greatly developed in the Shia tradition. Others, for example about Abū Bakr and ‘Umar, are still part of the repertoire of the contemporary Egyptian maddāḥīn (singers of praise in honour of the Prophet Muḥammad). A good number of these narratives are extant in manuscript form with titles such as ‘Story of the Conversion of Abū Bakr al-Ṣiddīq’, ‘The Birth of our Lord ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib’ and ‘History of the Martyrdom of al-Ḥusayn and the Wars that Followed’.³⁴

Numerous tales are found about leading Sufi figures such as Dhū᾽l-Nūn al-Miṣrī, Ibrāhīm ibn Adham, Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī,³⁵ Aḥmad al-Badawī, Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī, al-Sayyida Zaynab and al-Sayyida Nafīsa among many others. Works on less well-known Sufis, their lives and marvels (karāmāt) also abound. Al-Nabhānī cites hundreds of these karāmāt in his two-volume work, Jāmi‘ karāmāt al-awliyā’. One may add also narratives about the wise man Luqmān al-Ḥakīm, to whom some Arabic fables are attributed, and ‘The Tale of the Skull’ about Christ and his encounter with the skull of a dead man which pleaded with Christ to resurrect him.³⁶

Two examples of the lives of saintly figures, one Muslim and the other Coptic Christian, follow. The first is the life of al-Sayyida Nafīsa, a descendant of the Prophet Muḥammad by his grandson al-Ḥasan, taken from al-Nabhānī’s collection but based on accounts of several authorities in different periods of Islamic history.

Nafīsa, the daughter of al-Ḥasan ibn Zayd ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib (may Allah be pleased with them all) has been a source of blessing for Cairo [or Egypt?] from her own times till the present. It is said that next to her house, when she (may Allah be pleased with her) came to dwell in Cairo . . . there lived Jews among whom was a woman who had a paralyzed daughter. The Jewish woman wanted one day to go to the public bath and she asked her paralyzed daughter if she wanted to be carried to the public bath, but the daughter demurred. Her mother said to her, ‘Then you will have to stay alone in the house,’ to which the daughter replied, ‘What I truly desire, mother, is to stay with our neighbour, the Sharīfa [the noble woman of the house of the Prophet Muḥammad] until you come back.’ The mother went to al-Sayyida Nafīsa and asked her if it was agreeable to her to take care of her paralyzed daughter. Al-Sayyida Nafīsa said yes. The mother carried her daughter and put her in one of the corners of al-Sayyida Nafīsa’s house. While al-Sayyida Nafīsa was performing her ritual ablution, the water she used seeped through and streamed in the direction of the paralyzed girl whom Allah inspired to scoop some of this water and wash her paralyzed legs with it. Instantaneously, and with God’s permission (may He be exalted) she found herself standing up on her two feet, as though she had never been paralyzed. Al-Sayyida Nafīsa was totally absorbed in her prayers, unaware of what happened. When the daughter heard her mother returning from the public bath, she left al-Sayyida Nafīsa’s house to go to her mother’s. When she knocked on the door, her mother came out to see who was at the door. The daughter embraced her mother but the mother did not recognize her and asked. ‘Who are you?’ The girl said, ‘I am your daughter.’ The mother said, ‘What has happened to you?’ The girl then told her the whole story. The mother burst out crying and sobbing and said, ‘By Allah, this religion [Islam] is indeed the true religion (al-dīn al-ṣaḥīḥ); ours is a repulsive one (qabīḥ).’ She then went to al-Sayyida Nafīsa and knelt down and kissed her feet, saying, ‘Give me your hand; I bear witness that there is no deity save Allah and that your grandfather Muḥammad is the messenger of Allah.’ Al-Sayyida Nafīsa praised the Lord (may He be exalted) and thanked Him for having guided that woman and having rescued her from error (ḍalāl).³⁷

Not only the Jewish mother but also her husband and her Jewish neighbours converted to Islam. Other miracles which are attributed to al-Sayyida Nafīsa in this account conclude with conversions from Judaism or Christianity to Islam. The miracles function as evidence of the validity and divine origin of the religion of Islam. Notice the interesting adjective ṣaḥīḥ (true) referring to Islam; it may also mean ‘whole’ and ‘wholesome’ and when it was used by the Jewish mother whose daughter was just made ‘whole’ and ‘wholesome’ through the miraculous deed of a Muslim saintly figure, the implication is that Islam makes one ‘whole’ and ‘wholesome’ not only somatically but also spiritually.

Al-Munāwī (d. 1621) mentions that al-Sayyida Nafīsa died in Cairo in the year 208/823–4. When her husband wanted to move her remains from Cairo to Medina, the Cairenes pleaded with him to leave her among them as a source of blessing. The husband, we are told, saw the Prophet Muḥammad (in a dream or vision) who said to him, ‘O Abū Isḥāq, do not cross the people of Cairo over this matter of Nafīsa. God’s mercy descends on them on her account.’³⁸

Narratives in Arabic about saintly figures are not restricted to Muslim awliyā’ for one finds their counterparts in the many tales about Coptic saints (qiddīsīn) and martyrs (shuhadā’). These Coptic narratives are found in a compendium of the lives of saints known as the Synaxarion or Synaxarium (synaxar in Coptic, al-sinksār in Arabic). The Synaxarion is read out in Arabic by the Coptic priest during matins and on some occasions in the liturgy. These religious narratives on the lives and martyrdom of Coptic saints are full of miraculous traditions which may have had folk origins. The narratives show saints as local patrons, as folk heroes, as healers of body and exorcists of possessing demons or as specializing in some area of human need. At some point in earlier centuries these miraculous traditions about saints were adopted and given a stamp of official acceptance by the Church, as Otto Meinardus suggests: ‘No doubt, the Synaxarium or martyrology had its origin in local martyrologies which may date back to the 4th or 5th centuries.’³⁹

The second example is from the Synaxarion on the life of Mittawus Ⅳ, the 102nd Coptic patriarch:

On this day in the year 1391 AM, corresponding to the 15th of August, 1675 AD, Pope Mittawus Ⅳ, the 102nd patriarch, left this world for his eternal rest [tanayyaḥa]. Known as Mattā al-Mīrī he was born to pious Christian parents who were pure at heart and who did good and charitable deeds . . . The Lord gave them three boys, one of whom was this pious father. He was his parents’ favourite child [Girgis was his original name]. He was well raised by his parents so he grew as a well-mannered and poised young man . . . and became better versed in the holy books than any of his peers. He was capable of interpreting the meaning of the holy books to those who were unable to comprehend them. When he grew up he shunned this transient world and went to live in the monastery of St Mary for six years. He once dreamt of his parents who looked saddened because, having not heard from him for a long time, they thought him dead. He rose from his dream to tell his brothers the monks about it. They in turn advised him to go to his village to see his parents. So he did go to Mīr, his village, and greeted his parents. When they set their eyes on him they were exceedingly happy. They wanted to marry him off [he came to know that through a close friend] and he escaped and returned to the monastery. His brothers the monks gladly welcomed him back and he continued to live among these saintly figures, showing much love and faithfulness towards them, and serving them with sincerity. On the recommendation of all the monks, he was ordained a monk/priest in the monastery. Soon he put on the monk’s frock, giving himself to long periods of praying, fasting and worshipping, more than what was imposed on his fellow monks. He used to fast by abstaining from having food or drink from sunset to sunset, and during times of adversity he would fast for two days non-stop. He continued in this manner for the rest of his life until the Lord was pleased with him for his good deeds, his good worship and his pious and ascetic life.⁴⁰

A woman came to him complaining that her husband repudiated her and went on to marry another woman. Mittawus asked the husband to come to see him with his second wife and ordered them to separate. The second wife objected, saying to him, ‘How can this be? I am pregnant with his child.’ The patriarch said, ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ forbids this act and teaches that you two be separated.’ No sooner had the second wife left the door of the patriarch’s cell than she aborted the baby. The incident frightened many. The man left this woman and went back to his first wife.

In another incident some opponents of the Church wanted to destroy the church of Saint Mercurius, Abū Sīfēn [Abū Sayfayn, ‘the one wielding two swords’] in Old Cairo. They even managed to get a state order to do that. When the patriarch heard of this news, he was exceedingly sad. He stayed up all night praying and supplicating to the Lord (may He be Exalted) and seeking the intercession of Saint Mercurius to foil the plot of the wicked and save the church from ruin. Lo and behold, while the soldiers were asleep, a wall fell on them and they all died. The news spread all over town and the wicked plan [to destroy the church] was foiled and the townsfolk praised the Lord.

When his time of eternal rest drew near, he made his way to the cemetery in Cairo which contained the bodies of the other patriarchs and addressed the cemetery with these words, ‘Open your gates and let me in to repose among my pure brethren.’ He then had his eternal rest after attaining a ripe old age (may we be mentioned in his prayers). Glory be to our Lord forever. Amen.⁴¹

This Coptic hagiographic account differs in some important respects from its Muslim counterpart. First, in the Coptic tradition it is the date of death or martyrdom of the given saint that is celebrated. In the Muslim tradition it is the date of birth, hence the Arabic name of the festival, mawlid/mūlid (birth, pl. mawālid); the Coptic narratives use ῾īd (feast, festival) more often than mūlid. ‘The Coptic Church’, observed Meinardus, ‘. . . saw in the martyrdom of one of its saints his birthday, the natalitia or genethlion . . . For that matter [they] still interpret the mawālid of their saints as the “second births”, the birth into the Life Everlasting. In this respect, the commemoration of the Coptic mūlid differs from that of the Islamic, which is held in honour of the natural birth of the shaikh.’⁴² The Arabic verbs for ‘to die’ are starkly different in both Coptic and Muslim hagiographic narratives. The Coptic narratives often use the peculiarly Christian verb tanayyaḥa (to have one’s eternal rest) in contrast to the Muslim use of māta or tuwuffiya (to have one’s soul handed to its Creator; to die; to pass away) or laqiya rabbahu (to meet one’s Lord). In the Coptic narrative the saint abandons his original name Girgis and adopts another, the biblical Mattā (Matthew), a sign of his second birth in Christ. He evinces a strong aversion to this life and his eschatalogically directed attitude is manifested in his shunning of this world and its pleasures (e.g. marriage to a woman), turning his attention to his salvation and towards the Life Everlasting and desiring to die. The two miracles mentioned are punitive and are meant to prevent a wicked deed (the illegal second marriage) and the destruction of a church.

Other sources for these Coptic siyar are the pulp editions of the lives and miracles of Coptic saints and martyrs, which are sold during various Coptic festivals such as Sitt Dimyāna (Saint Dimyāna), Mari Girgis (Saint George) and others. These Coptic ‘Lives of the Saints and Martyrs’ have their counterparts in the Muslim ‘Stories of the Prophets’ and the karāmāt collections.

Although one need not insist on including such narratives under the rubric ‘religious’, there are at least some pretexts to raise the issue. Under this category we may cite literary compositions such as Ibn al-Batanūnī’s al-‘Unwān fī’l-iḥtirāz min makāyid al-niswān (On Guarding Against the Wiles of Women). The work is a mine of information about Muslim attitudes to women in the late fifteenth century in Egypt.⁴³ It is composed of numerous tales about wicked women who cheat on their men, seduce strangers and level false charges against others, but whose wickedness and evil deeds are miraculously exposed in the end and the proper penalty is meted out against them. Some of these narratives are drawn from ‘the rich Islamic corpus of tales of prophets, some from Islamic history, and some from general literary sources’.⁴⁴ At the conclusion of each tale, the Koranic sentence, ‘Verily great are their wiles’, is repeated like a refrain.⁴⁵ One of these tales, ‘The Tale of Faḍlōn the Ascetic’, has survived in the contemporary narrative ballads of the Egyptian maddāḥīn. The name of the ascetic Faḍlōn (Faḍlūn in classical Arabic, which suggests ideas of excellence and virtue) corresponds to the moral characteristics of the ascetic Faḍlōn who, much like Joseph in the Koran, resists the seductive ways of a beautiful temptress. The religious moral behind these tales is that no matter how great women’s wiles and machinations are, the Almighty guards pious men against them.⁴⁶

The following are some of the characteristics of these popular religious narratives. It will be noticed that the recurrence of the miraculous is fundamental to these narratives and may explain their popular texture and appeal.

1. The breakdown of natural laws. The boundaries of time and space are repeatedly eliminated. Prophets, Sufi or Coptic saints move from one land to another in one step, faster than the blinking of an eye. Sufi saints, such as Aḥmad al-Badawī of Egypt, who possess this miraculous ability are called ahl al-khaṭwa (saints who can cross long distances in one step).⁴⁷ Some of the miracles are evidentiary (to prove the divine nature of the faith, the special status of the holy men and women); some are to benefit the community (healing the sick, finding water and food in the desert, for example); others are punitive (meting out punishments against the wicked, the unbelievers, etc.).

2. Taming and befriending wild beasts, speaking with animals. There is a tendency in these narratives to reconcile opposites and to transcend natural enmity between man and beast or a beast and its natural enemy.

3. Raising the dead. The Sufi saint Aḥmad al-Badawī raised a girl from the dead and Ibrāhīm al-Dasūqī was able to bring a drowned man to life seven days after he had been devoured by a whale.⁴⁸

4. Curing terminal illnesses and physical handicaps, especially blindness and paralysis, through the use of amulets (aḥjiba, sing. ḥijāb).

5. The recurrence of dreams and visions. This ranges from seeing God, angels, the Prophet Muḥammad or a Sufi or a Coptic saint (especially Mari Girgis, that is, Saint George, known as sarī‘ al-nadha (he who responds speedily to the believer’s call).

6. Heroic ability to endure physical and psychological pain and the mortification of the body. These narratives abound with scenes of tortured, starved or thirsty bodies etc., especially the Coptic narratives about saints and martyrs. We can also add the heroic ability to resist the temptations of seductive females. Symbolically the temptress stands for the lustful self which must be controlled.⁴⁹

7. These religious narratives, whether of Muslim or Coptic provenance, betray their folk origins by stressing the miraculous and by showing the awliyā’ or saints as local patrons (al-Sayyida Nafīsa as the patron of Cairo, Mari Girgis the patron of the town of Mīt Damsīs), or as folk heroes, or as healers of body and exorcists of possessing demons (Coptic saints tend to practise exorcism more than their Muslim counterparts, after all Christ himself was the supreme exorcist), or as specializing in a certain area of human needs. These narratives also appear to have an inclusive tendency, which is shown in the way they appropriate other religious traditions or reflect the local culture in contrast to the dogmatic texts and rituals of the ‘official cultus’.⁵⁰

¹ See e.g. Schimmel, Muḥammad; Waugh, The Munshidīn of Egypt; Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad; Abdel-Malek and Asani, Celebrating Muḥammad.

² al-Ṭabarī, Jāmi‘ al-bayān, vol. Ⅰ, p. 36.

³ al-Tha‘labī, ῾Arā’is al-majālis, pp. 4–5.

⁴ Khalafallāh and Sallām, Thalāth rasā’il, pp. 23, 25.

⁵ See al-Tamīmī, Uṣūl al-dīn, p. 183; al-Bāqilānī, I‘jāz al-qur’ān, p. 34.

⁶ See Ibn al-Athīr, al-Kāmil, vol. Ⅰ, p. 9; al-Sakhāwī, al-I‘lān, p. 49.

⁷ Pellat, ‘ḳāṣṣ’, p. 733.

⁸ Ibn Kathīr, Nihāyat al-bidāya, pp. 94–6; Muslim, Ṣaḥīḥ, pp. 80–1.

⁹ Pellat, ‘ḳāṣṣ’, p. 734.

¹⁰ See al-Makkī, Qūt al-qulūb, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 21, 25, 28; Ibn al-Ḥājj, Madkhal, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 13, 145.

¹¹ Ibn al-Jawzī, Talbīs Iblīs, p. 131, cited by Pellat.

¹² Ibn al-Jawzī, Kitāb al-quṣṣāṣ, p. 104.

¹³ Pellat, ‘ḳāṣṣ’, p. 735.

¹⁴ Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad, p. 21.

¹⁵ Ibid., p. 7.

¹⁶ Ibn Hishām, Sīrat Rasūl Allāh, vol. I, pp. 180–1.

¹⁷ al-Ḥalabī, al-Sīra, vol. Ⅰ, p. 53.

¹⁸ al-Suyūṭī, al-Khaṣā’iṣ al-kubrā, vol. Ⅰ, pp. 132–3.

¹⁹ al-Ḥalabī, al-Sīra, vol. Ⅰ, p. 65.

²⁰ Schimmel, Muḥammad, p. 151.

²¹ al-Ḥalabī, al-Sīra, vol. I, p. 65; Ibn Kathīr, Qiṣaṣ al-anbiyā’, p. 300.

²² Zaynī, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, vol. Ⅰ, p. 24.

²³ See al-Iṣfahānī, Dalā’il al-nubuwwa, pp. 320ff. and al-Damīrī, Ḥayāt al-ḥayawān, pp. 126–7; al-Suyūṭī, al-Khaṣā’iṣ, vol. Ⅰ, pp. 265–7.

²⁴ Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad, pp. 70–1.

²⁵ ‘Iyāḍ, al-Shifā, pp. 441–2.

²⁶ Ibn al-Jawzī, al-Wafā, pp. 301–2.

²⁷ Cachia, Popular Narrative Ballads, p. 224.

²⁸ Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad, pp. 72–3; Cachia, Popular Narrative Ballads, pp. 206–7.

²⁹ al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ, vol. Ⅴ, pp. 40–1.

³⁰ al-Iṣfahānī, Dalā’il al-nubuwwa, vol. Ⅰ, pp. 399–404; ‘Iyāḍ, al-Shifā, vol. Ⅰ, pp. 427–30.

³¹ Ibn Kathīr, Shamā’il al-rasūl, pp. 239–51.

³² Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad, pp. 85–6.

³³ Shoshan, ‘High Culture and Popular Culture’, p. 85. Several narratives devoted to individual prophets exist in manuscript in the Library of Berlin (see Hamid, Arabic and Islamic Literary Tradition, p. 93).

³⁴ For manuscripts in Berlin, see Hamid, Arabic and Islamic Literary Tradition, pp. 96–7.

³⁵ See ibid., pp. 108–9.

³⁶ Ibid., pp. 109–10.

³⁷ al-Nabhānī, Jāmi‘ karāmāt al-awliyā’, pp. 509–10.

³⁸ Ibid., pp. 512–13.

³⁹ Meinardus, Christian Egypt, p. 216.

⁴⁰ Kitāb al-sinksār, vol. Ⅱ, pp. 372–3.

⁴¹ Ibid., pp. 374–5.

⁴² Meinardus, Christian Egypt, p. 216.

⁴³ Malti-Douglas, Woman’s Body, pp. 54–66.

⁴⁴ Ibid., p. 55.

⁴⁵ Koran, Sūra of Joseph, 12:28ff.

⁴⁶ Abdel-Malek, Popular Ballad, pp. 122–3.

⁴⁷ al-Zayn, al-Ṣūfiyya, p. 101.

⁴⁸ Ibid., p. 102.

⁴⁹ al-Najjār, al-Turāth al-qaṣaṣī, p. 484.

⁵⁰ Meinardus, Christian Egypt, p. 219.