Notes on a Middle-Arabic ‘Joseph’ poem

Extract

Tales of the Prophets, in prose and verse, are a well-marked genre in Arabic literature. These productions were designed for a popular audience of mixed character, not solely for the intellectual élite. Side by side with the literary manifestations of the genre, there was a long tradition of oral recitations on these themes by professional quṣṣāṣ, which range along with popular epics like the Sīrat 'Antar, etc. All these have a ‘Homeric’ quality, in that while there was a rough approximation to an ‘established’ text, no one author can be pinned down; they are the end-product of innumerable recitations over the centuries, each of which may have contributed something to them. Recorded specimens of this folk-literature are scanty, and are difficult to assess linguistically, since the Arabic script is extremely ill-adapted for recording non-literary language, and the mere attempt at recording it in writing imposes a deceptive veneer of ‘classicism’ on its appearance. A piece in verse is therefore particularly valuable, because the metrical structure reveals a good deal about how it was read.