Oral tradition, volume 04, number 1-2 (January 1989) - Arabic Oral Traditions

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https://hdl.handle.net/10355/63729

Cover
Front Matter
Editor's Column
About the Authors (Back Matter)
Articles

Qur'ān Recitation: A Tradition of Oral Performance and Transmission
by Frederick M. Denny
Oral Traditions of the Prophet Muhammad: A Formulaic Approach
by R. Marston Speight
Which Came First, the Zajal or the Muwaššḥa?
Some Evidence for the Oral Origins of Hispano-Arabic Strophic Poetry
by James T. Monroe
From History to Fiction: The Tale Told by the King's Steward in the Thousand and One Nights
by Muhsin Mahdi
Sīrāt Banī Hilāl: Introduction and Notes to an Arab Oral Epic Tradition
by Dwight F. Reynolds
Epic Splitting: An Arab Folk Gloss on the Meaning of the Hero Pattern
by Henry Massie, Bridget Connelly
Arabic Folk Epic and the Western Chanson de Geste
by H.T. Norris
"Tonight My Gun is Loaded": Poetic Dueling in Arabia
by Saad A. Sowayan
Sung Poetry in the Oral Tradition of the Gulf Region and the Arabian Peninsula
by Simon Jargy
The Development of Lebanese Zajal: Genre, Meter, and Verbal Duel
by Adnan Haydar
Palestinian Improvised-Sung Poetry: The Genres of Hidā and Qarrādī Performance and Transmission
by Dirghām H. Sbait
Banī Halba Classification of Poetic Genres
by Teirab AshShareef
Oral Transmission in Arabic Music, Past and Present
by George D. Sawa
Review
by Dwight F. Reynolds

[Collection created May 30, 2018]

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About the authors (Oral Tradition, 4/1-2, 1989)
(1989-01)
Oral tradition, volume 04, number 1-2 (January 1989) - Arabic Oral Traditions
(1989-01)
Banī Halba Classification of poetic genres Teirab AshShareef
(1989) AshShareef, Teirab
The Banī Halba are an Arabic-speaking ethnic group who live in the Southern part of the Darfur Region in the Sudan. They are one of the Baggāra (cattle-rearing) ethnic groups who inhabit a curve-like belt in the Southern Darfur and Kordofan Regions. According to the 1955-56 population census, the last reliable census, their population was about 50,000. The Banī Halba inhabit an area which lies to the southwest of Nyala, approximately between latitudes 11 degrees and 12 degrees N., and longitudes 23½ degrees and 25 degrees E. They have a subsistence economy, the resources of which are animals (mainly cattle with a few goats), land, and hashāb trees, the producers of gum Arabic. The animals are privately owned by individual households, but land is communally owned and everybody has equal access to it. The ethnic group has two sectors-a nomadic sector and a sedentary one. The sedentary sector lives on farming and the nomads migrate south westwards in the harvesting season in search of water and grass for their cattle. They spend winter and summer there and then migrate back to the homeland at the onset of the rainy season. The two main sections of the ethnic group are Awlād Jābir and Awlād Jubāra, each having six main sub sections. This structure is hereditary and each individual is a member of a household. A group of households forms both a social and an administrative unit headed by a sheikh (pl. mashāyikh). A number of sheikhs forms a larger unit headed by a cumda. All the cumad (pl. of cumda) used to owe allegiance to a paramount head, the Nāẓir. The administration of the ethnic group is thus organically linked to its social structure. In 1971, however, the government cancelled the paramount headship and maintained the mashāyikh and cumad. The Banī Halba are Muslims. The different facets of their life and culture are those of a nomadic Muslim Arab community. Kinship is an important social institution in their community and their group consciousness and sense of solidarity are very strong. Moral values such as courage, hospitality, respect for neighbors, and the like are highly regarded. The different aspects of their life and culture are interdependent, and there is a continuous interplay between them.--Introduction.
Qur’ān recitation : a tradition of oral performance and transmission
(1989) Denny, Frederick Mathewson
Oral performance by means of recitation of the Qur'?n is at the center of Islamic corporate and individual piety. The Qur'?n is recited during the daily ?al?t 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'?n, for religious merit, for reflection on its meaning, and for spiritual refreshment. The Qur'?n 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.
Which came first, the Zajal or the Muwaššaḥa? Some evidence for the oral origins of Hispano-Arabic Strophic poetry
(1989) Monroe, James T.
Up to this point, I have summarized some theoretical arguments, derived from certain structural features of the texts at hand, to suggest why the zajal might antedate the muwaššaḥa, from which the latter could be derived. Nonetheless, until now, we have had little documentary proof that the zajal did in fact precede the muwaššaḥa chronologically, with which to counter the objections of the partisans of the Arabic thesis. In what follows, I shall present some recently garnered evidence in support of the above arguments, “in order to respond to the ‘Avez-vous un texte?’ of Fustel de Coulanges and his less intelligently positivistic offspring (Rico 1975:557).”--Page 43.

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