Description

This book presents a bilingual edition and study of an anonymous work of early Arabic fiction set in pre-Islamic times: an Arab maiden called ‘Layla the Chaste’ is kidnapped and threatened with forced marriage to a Persian king. Ultimately, she is saved by her handsome and beloved cousin al-Barraq, and they marry and live happily ever after. This knight-in-shining-armour-rescues-damsel-in-distress narrative, which combines elements of the Arabic popular epic (sira) with others from the Udhri; love story and the western fairy tale, was misinterpreted as history by scholars in the 19th century. In the two substantive chapters that frame her translation of the tale, Hammond discusses the text’s evolution in the Arab Renaissance and its metamorphoses in 20th-century popular culture. She also analyses the structure of the tale to look for clues as to its real origins, shedding new light on theories of the development of the Arabic novel.