Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T05:11:21.706Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Signs from Above: Towards a Comparative Symbology of Bird Imagery in Medieval Near Eastern Popular Prose

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Rachel Schine
Rachel Schine*
Affiliation:
Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents excerpts from two near-contemporary works of popular prose from the medieval Near East: the Persian Dārāb-nāmeh and the Arabic Sīrat Banī Hilāl. In each, birds or birdlike characters (the sīmorgh and the crow, respectively) that share in having had theriomorphic, mythic significance in regional pre-Islamic traditions dispense premonitory wisdom to Muslim characters. Comparing these passages, the article contends that the characterization of these birds brokers a pietistic shift in symbolism between the pre-Islamic and Islamic context, while still maintaining the birds’ mystical significance and sustaining the trope of birds as winged, heaven-sent messengers. This modified association between birds and divine ministry is not only prominent in these two texts, but also in the Qurʾān and varied bestiaries, poetry, and belletristic works that comprise these texts’ cultural network.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , January 2018 , pp. 47 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ahmed, Shahab. “Ibn Taymiyyah and the Satanic Verses”. Studia Islamica 87 (1998):67–124. doi: 10.2307/1595926CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Al-Jāḥiẓ, Abū ʿUthmān ʿAmr b. Baḥr. Kitāb al-Ḥayawān. Vol. 3. Edited by Hārūn, ʿAbd al-Salām. Cairo: Muṣṭafā al-Bābī al-Ḥalabī, 1965.Google Scholar
Al-Ṣafāʾ, Ikhwān. The Case of the Animals versus Man before the King of the Jinn: An Arabic Critical Edition and English Translation of Epistle 22. Edited by Goodman, Lenn Evan and McGregor, Richard J. A.. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Al-Ṭarsūsī, Muḥammad Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā Abū Ṭaher. Dārāb-Nāmeh-ye Ṭarsūsī. Vol. 2. Edited by Ṣafā, Dhabīḥullah. Tehran: Bongāh-e Tarjomeh va-Nashr-e Ketāb, 1968.Google Scholar
Boyarin, Shamma Aharon. “Diasporic Culture and the Makings of Alexander Romances”. PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2008.Google Scholar
Carroll, Joseph. Literary Darwinism: Evolution, Human Nature, and Literature. New York: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connelly, Bridget. Arab Folk Epic and Identity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.Google Scholar
De Kay, Charles. Bird Gods. New York: Barnes & Co., 1898.Google Scholar
El Hamel, Chouki. Black Morocco: A History of Slavery, Race, and Islam. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Ferdowsi, Abolqasem. The Shahnāmeh: The Persian Book of Kings. Translated by Davis, Dick. New York: Penguin, 2006.Google Scholar
Foufopoulos, Johannes, and Litinas, Nikos. “Crows and Ravens in the Mediterranean (the Nile Valley, Greece and Italy) as Presented in Ancient and Modern Proverbial Literature”. The Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 42 (2005): 7–39.Google Scholar
Galley, Michelline, and Ayoub, Abderrahman. Histoire des Beni Hilal et de ce qui leur advint dans leur marche vers l’ouest. Versions tunisiennes de la geste hilalienne [The History of the Tribe of Hilal and of What Befell them during their Westward Migration. Tunisian Versions of the Sīra Hilāliyya.]. Paris: Armand Colin, 1983.Google Scholar
Gasimova, Aida. “Models, Portraits, and Signs of Fate in Ancient Arabian Tradition”. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 73 (2014): 319–340. doi: 10.1086/677285Google Scholar
Grant, Kenneth. “‘Sīrat Fīrūzšāh’ and the Middle Eastern Epic Tradition”. Oriente Moderno 22 (2003): 521–528.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hanaway, William L. “Dārāb-Nāma”. Encyclopaedia Iranica. 2011. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/darab-namaGoogle Scholar
Hardy, Paul. “Medieval Muslim Philosophers on Race”. In Philosophers on Race: Critical Essays, edited by Ward, Julie K. and Lott, Tommy L., 38–63. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, Prudence Oliver. “The Senmurv”. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 20 (1961): 95–101. doi: 10.2307/3257932CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Peter. “Other Sīras and Popular Narratives”. Vol. 6 of Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, edited by Allen, Roger and Richards, D. S., 319–329. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heath, Peter. The Thirsty Sword: Sīrat ʿAntar and the Arabic Popular Epic. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Hefter, Thomas. The Reader in al-Jāḥiẓ: The Epistolary Rhetoric of an Arabic Prose Master. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homerin, T. Emil. “Echoes of a Thirsty Owl: Death and Afterlife in Pre-Islamic Arabic Poetry”. Journal of Near Eastern Studies 44 (1985): 165–184. doi: 10.1086/373127CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ingram, Paige Mandisa. “Trials of Identity: Investigating al-Jāḥiẓ and the Zanj in Modern Pro-Black Discourse”. Master’s diss., University of Texas, Austin, 2015.Google Scholar
Kopf, L. “The Zoological Chapter of the Kitāb al-Imtāʿ wal-Muʾānasa of Abū Ḥayyān al-Tauḥīdī (10th Century)”. Osiris 12 (1956): 413–414. doi: 10.1086/368605CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kruk, Remke. The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature. New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurman, George. “A Methodology of Thematics: The Literature of the Plague”. Comparative Literature Studies 19 (1982): 39–53.Google Scholar
Lane, E. W. Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians. New York: Cosimo Publications, 2005.Google Scholar
Lewis, Bernard. “The Crows of the Arabs”. Critical Inquiry 12 (1984): 88–97. doi: 10.1086/448322Google Scholar
Lewis, Bernard. Race and Slavery in the Middle East: An Historical Enquiry. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Lyons, M. C. The Man of Wiles in Popular Arabic Literature: A Study of a Medieval Arab Hero. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Lyons, Malcolm. The Arabian Oral Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling. Vol. 1. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Madeyska, Danuta. “The Language and Structure of the ‘Sīra.’” Quaderni Di Studi Arabi 9 (1991): 193–218.Google Scholar
McDonald, M. V. “Animal-Books as a Genre in Arabic Literature”. Bulletin (British Society for Middle Eastern Studies) 15 (1988): 3–10. doi: 10.1080/13530198808705468CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meisami, Julie Scott. Persian Historiography: To the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Monroe, James T. “Formulaic Diction and the Common Origins of Romance Lyric Traditions”. Hispanic Review 43 (1975): 341–350. doi: 10.2307/472433CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monroe, James T. “Oral Composition in Pre-Islamic Poetry”. Journal of Arabic Literature 3 (1972): 1–53. doi: 10.1163/157006472X00017CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montgomery, James E. Al-Jāḥiẓ: In Praise of Books. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Patton, Kimberley C. “‘He Who Sits in the Heavens Laughs’: Recovering Animal Theology in the Abrahamic Traditions”. The Harvard Theological Review 93 (2000): 401–434. doi: 10.1017/S0017816000016400CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Dwight Fletcher. Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reynolds, Dwight, ed. “Sīrat Banī Hilāl Episode 1: The Birth of Abū Zayd (Part 1)”. Sīrat Banī Hilāl Digital Archive of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Accessed February 26, 2015. http://www.siratbanihilal.ucsb.edu.Google Scholar
Rubanovich, Julia. “The Reconstruction of a Storytelling Event in Medieval Persian Prose Romance: The Case of the Iskandarnāma”. Edebiyāt 9 (1998): 215–247.Google Scholar
Sari, Nil. “The Simurgh: A Symbol of Holistic Medicine in the Middle Eastern Culture in History”. In: Proceedings of the 37th International Congress of the History of Medicine (2000): 156–158, edited by Philippe, Albou, Chester, R. Burns, et al. Galveston, TX: Institute for the Medical Humanities.Google Scholar
Schine, Rachel. “Conceiving the Black-Arab Hero: On the Gendered Production of Racial Difference in Sīrat al-amīrah dhāt al-himmah”. Journal of Arabic Literature (forthcoming).Google Scholar
Schmidt, H. “Simorḡ”. Encyclopedia Iranica. 2002. http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/simorg.Google Scholar
Schoeler, Gregor. The Oral and the Written in Early Islam. New York: Routledge, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sīrat Banī Hilāl. Vol. 1. Beirut: al-Maktaba al-Thaqāfiyya, 1980.Google Scholar
Slyomovics, Susan. “Arabic Folk Literature and Political Expression”. Arab Studies Quarterly 8 (1986): 178–185.Google Scholar
Slyomovics, Susan. The Merchant of Art: An Egyptian Hilali Oral Epic Poet in Performance. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Tlili, Sarra. Animals in the Qurʾan. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar