Fairy tales in Islam and Europe

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Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
OP - January 16, 2012, 10:14 PM

http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=19327.0;topicseen

Quote
Jeanette Winterson, Why be happy when you can be normal, discusses how she attempted suicide and how her love of words, reading and poetry brought her back from madness.

Fairy tales are extremely important. I wonder if Islam has fetishised words, and the emphasis on the alleged holy language of arabic is a guaranteed route to madness.

oui..
it's not a coincidence that the fairy tales in islam are written in a way that it's overwhelmingly ambiguous.. could drive a men into a caves and stark, raving mad.. .. yeah

May we discuss this?

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #1 - January 16, 2012, 10:20 PM

Quote from: moi on January 16, 2012, 10:14 PM
http://www.councilofexmuslims.com/index.php?topic=19327.0;topicseen

May we discuss this?

what is there to discuss moi? they are fairy tails.. tales.. lol., did you read them in the first place??

here ..http://www.sacred-texts.com/

Those "Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales" are along with that Akbar-Birbal stories in Indian subcontinent are Quite famous in some Muslim house holds..

moi.. or oui??., that is a good word to use..lol

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #2 - January 17, 2012, 11:24 AM

Apparently the guy who introduced 1001 Arabian nights to Europe made a fortune. Europe was obsessed with fairy tales at the time and this French bloke turned up wit a ready made set of fairy tales which were really good and considered by many to be better than their European counterparts. I will post some more about this when i get home.

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #3 - January 19, 2012, 02:49 PM

sorry moi didn't see this earlier.. what part.. the fairy tale part or the ambiguous part?

I remember talking about this very thing with Klingschor (who has fantastic videos, so if you haven’t already, be sure to check them out.. )
Anyways, i’m not sure if he ended up posting his findings but it was very interesting looking up the origins of the " burak " the flying horse, let’s call it pegasus, and " the sleeping seven of Ephuses" story,very similar to the surah " al kahf " the cave..

Yeezevee you’re so jam packed with some great info !!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV9vdUjuWxc
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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #4 - January 19, 2012, 04:56 PM

both together?

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #5 - January 19, 2012, 05:13 PM

We must realize here that "every story of every religion about god or "god said something to some guy with a TAIL" are nothing but Fairy tales"

but in the case of Islam it is unique., Muslim robots are using these tales for loot, booty, real estate and for political power in the name of Insha Allah and for some it is Jannah heaven that is filled with houries and honey rivers..

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #6 - January 19, 2012, 07:38 PM

We don't have a planet where 20% of one species think Grimm, Aesop, Cinderella, Disney etc is real do we?

Actually - add in all the other religions!

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #7 - January 19, 2012, 09:17 PM

It should actually be called The Indian - Persian - Arabian nights

Quote
How Arabian are these nights? Although we have come to associate them with Arab culture, the tales are properly speaking a composite work deriving from the oral traditions of India, Persia, Iraq and medieval Egypt. The first written version is a Persian collection translated into Arabic some time in the early eighth century as Alf Layla, or “The Thousand Nights”, although the number of tales included fell well short of that (in Arabic, alf simply denotes a large quantity). The title The Thousand and One Nights (probably from the Turkish expression bin-bir, “a thousand and one”, which is again suggestive rather than exact) became attached to the text in the twelfth century. To this core stories were later added, until the work delivered on the promise in its title. The European translations that followed after Galland produced his courtly twelve-volume Les Mille et Une Nuits in 1704 differed in quality and in their unspoken agendas. The best known are by Edward Lane, Richard Burton and Joseph Charles Victor Mardrus. Lane’s translation (1839–41) is scholarly but prudish, and heavily bowdlerized to eliminate any sexual references that might offend its Victorian readers; Burton’s (1885) takes the opposite approach, ramping up the raunch; while reading Mardrus (1902) is rather like spending an afternoon with a slightly louche uncle who manages to combine whimsy with constant suggestiveness.

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/tls/public/article858481.ece

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #8 - January 19, 2012, 09:41 PM

well this is a good fairy tale

Hmm.. Orthodox Jew...

Good lady good wife ..good Orthodox Jew,.... good fairy tale..

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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #9 - January 20, 2012, 12:37 PM

Ah Sir Richard Burton! Translator of Kama Sutra, one of first Europeans into Mecca (in disguise!), explorer of Somalia.

Living a fairy tale!

These mentions of the twelth century remind me of a British tradition - Arthur!

Crusades? Meeting of story tellers and bards from different continents?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fpx7q

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.

A.A. Milne,

"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
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Re: Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #10 - January 20, 2012, 03:28 PM

I think these lyrics are an allegory for the fairy tales of Islam and the fairy tales of all religions as well as an allegory for the roots of prejudice. But I might be wrong.

__________________________________________________________________________
A Trick Of The Tail

Bored of the life on the city of gold
He'd left and let nobody know.
Gone were the towers he had known from a child,
Alone with the dream of a life
He travelled the wide open road,
the blinkered arcade,
In search of another to share in his life.
Nowhere.
Everyone looked so strange to him.

"They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence.
Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold
That lies in the deep distance?", he cried

And wept as they led him away to a cage
Beast that can talk, read the sign.
The creatures they prodded and pushed at his frame
And questioned his story again.
But soon they grew bored of their prey
"Beast that can talk?
More like a freak or publicity stunt."
Oh
No,

"They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence.
Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold
That lies in the deep distance?" he cried

And broke down the door of the cage and marched on out.
He grabbed a creature by the scruff of his neck, puinting out:
"There, beyond the bounds of your weak imagination
Lie the noble towers of my city, bright and gold.
Let me take you there and show you a living story
Let me show you others such as me!"
"Why did I ever leave?"

"They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence
Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold
That lies in the deep distance?" he cried
And wept.

And so we set out with the best and his horns
And his crazy description of home.
After many days journey we came to a peak
Where the beast gazed abroad and cried out.
We followed his gaze and we thought maybe we saw
A spire of gold - no, a trick of the eye that's all,
But the beast was gone and a voice was heard:

"They've got no horns and they've got no tail
They don't even know of our existence ......."
Am I wrong to believe in a city of gold
That lies in the deep distance?

"Hello friend, welcome home!"

"A Trick of the Tail" is copywrited by Atlantic Recording Company, 1976.
__________________________________________________________________________

Better than putting my mediocre version up here is the best version I can find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AryXkeAoCec

"And you, you are a fantasy, a view from where you'd like to think the world should see, just be true, and you will likely find a few building a vision, doing justice to our times."
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Fairy tales in Islam and Europe
Reply #11 - May 16, 2015, 10:32 PM

Site dedicated to the Arabian Nights: http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/index.htm

Quote from: moi
Ah Sir Richard Burton! Translator of Kama Sutra, one of first Europeans into Mecca (in disguise!), explorer of Somalia.

It also has Burton's account of his trip to Mecca: http://www.wollamshram.ca/1001/Guide/guide.htm

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Reply #12 - May 17, 2015, 05:47 AM

Ohh, new links to check out.

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'
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Reply #13 - July 08, 2016, 05:42 PM

Paul Cobb - The Arabian Nights: Medieval Fantasy and Modern Forgery (skip to 4:30)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=Hz0VviPR07U

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Reply #14 - October 06, 2016, 05:47 PM

An interview with Bruce Fudge: A Hundred and One Nights and the “tip of the iceberg” of popular Arabic tales

http://www.libraryofarabicliterature.org/2016/an-interview-with-bruce-fudge-a-hundred-and-one-nights-and-the-tip-of-the-iceberg-of-popular-arabic-tales/
Quote
....
How did this translation come about?

My first area of specialization was Qurʾan commentary, and I worked on that for a number of years. Eventually, I decided that I’d had enough of that for a while, and I would like to read all the things that religious scholars told you not to read. I’d always had a fondness for the 1,001 Nights in Arabic, so I went back to them and began to read about the related stories, to get an idea of what the field looked like. And I liked it a lot more than commentaries on the Qurʾan.

One of the things that I quickly became aware of was that only a fraction of this kind of material was readily available. There were really only two other works, besides the 1,001, that could be said be “well known.” One of these has just been translated into English by Malcolm Lyons as Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange, It was discovered in the 1940s and edited by Hans Wehr in the 1950s. It has been translated into German, and the odd scholar has looked at it.

I began reading those tales, and there are some fantastic stories in that collection. The other one that had some degree of visibility was A Hundred and One Nights. It was translated into French in 1911, and there’s an Arabic edition that was produced in the 1970s.

But these three—the 1,001, the 101, and the Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange—are only the tip of the iceberg?

Ironically, one of the reasons that only these are well-known is that they have titles. There are plenty of other manuscripts. Who knows how many there are! In libraries in Europe and the Middle East, there are countless uncatalogued, unread manuscripts of this type of story. Usually, they’ll have a generic title or no title at all, and that makes it hard for them to be identified. Sometimes the stories don’t even have titles.

How many of them do you suppose there are?

I don’t know. I know in Paris and Berlin alone there are dozens, if not hundreds, of these types of manuscripts. I think Paris alone has enough for a few scholarly careers. But for much of the 20th century, scholars didn’t take much interest in these.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the 1,001 Nights were a standard part of Arabic studies. People would study Arabic philosophy or theology and also the 1,001 Nights. But for much of the 20th century, interest in the Nights waned, and people got more concerned with religion. Until the 1990s, there wasn’t much interest in the Nights, with a few notable exceptions.

Many of these were manuscripts were cataloged a hundred years ago, but there hasn’t been that much attention to them since.

It’s interesting to consider the changing image of the Islamic world. In the late 1800s, early 1900s, both in academe and in popular culture, the Nights were much more influential, and you’d have this clichéd Orientalist version of the Islamic world—a place of unbridled sensuality and unspeakable cruelty, with eunuchs wielding scimitars guarding the harem, that kind of thing. The popularity of the Nights was a major factor in creating this kind of image. Today, you go to an academic conference or read the news and it’s mostly religion and Islamic law and so on, and you have the impression that everyone in the region prays five times a day without fail. Obviously thing have changed in the past century but still it is telling how our own perspective determines what we would like to see.
....

Review: http://www.thenational.ae/arts-life/the-review/the-other-arabian-nights-new-translation-of-arab-folk-tales-101-nights

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Reply #15 - February 01, 2018, 10:41 AM

Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/SChakrabs/status/958376579717091329
Quote
It has come to my attention that not enough of you are familiar with the original story of “The City of Brass” from the 1001 Nights. This is awful. There are death-dealing statues and screaming jinn. Gather, dear ones, it’s story time.

Also: https://mobile.twitter.com/duftur/status/959587653418209280

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