Seers, saints and sinners : the oral tradition of Upper Egypt / Elizabeth Wickett.

Tales in English translation with transliterations of Upper Egyptian pronunciation of Arabic in appendices.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-224) and index.

Tales from the Egyptian epic 'sīrat banī hilāl'. The tale of ʻAzī̄za and Yūnis. Egyptian erotica : ancient precursors and Bakhtin's concept of the adventure chronotope ; Towards an ethnopoetics of Egyptian sīra performance. The tale of Khadra al-Sharīfa and the miraculous conception of Abu Zayd al-Hilālī. Epic as ethnography : gender and rites of passage among the Banī Hilāl -- Coptic Tales. The tale of St. George and the dragon. The egyptian St. George : intertextuality and etiological myth in an un Upper Egyptian saint's tale ; The tale of Adam and Eve. Egyptian tales of Adam and eve : gender, original sin and the logic of redemption -- Egyptian conversion tales. Ancient contexts, reversions and converions : Messianic tales of the miraculous. The praise poem of Maimūna ; The tale of Theodore, the warrior saint.

"Traditional Egyptian folktales have a vivacity and wit in performance that is seldom rendered well in translation, with the result that the imaginative flair, drama and dynamic rhythms of original performances have been lost. Now in 'Seers, Saints and Sinners', Elizabeth Wickett presents five rich and vivid tales from Upper Egypt in English that accurately capture all the liveliness, nuance and humour of Egyptian oral narrative in performance. The stories, with one exception, were originally recorded live in the 1980s by the author. They were sung and chanted by the famous epic poet and praise singer ʻAwadʼullah ʻAbd al-Jalī., from Edfu, and by ʻAmm Rizq Būlos, a weaver from the ancient Coptic settlement of Nagada near Luxor. In the tradition of Upper Egypt, neither poet was able to read or write: they relied entirely on their memory to mould the spoken word to tell the stories. The first two tales are stories of famous women in Egyptian folk history: Khadra al-Sharīfa -- revered mother of the hero Abu Zayd al-Hilālī -- and the tale of ʻAzīza, the flamboyant daughter of the Sultan of Tunis, who attempts to seduce and capture the handsome young Yūnis, paragon of innocence and virtue. Two tales from the Coptic folk religious repertoire then follow: St. George and the dragon and Adam and Eve. Both are familiar from Judaeo-Christian tradition, though here are refreshingly and subtly different. Finally comes a conversion tale, the story of Maimūna, the slave girl of Mecca, who is crucified for her beliefs. For each story the author explores the broader literary and social significance of the text, as well as the aesthetics of performance, issues of gender -- particularly the pre-eminence of heroines -- and parallels with other Egyptian and Near Eastern tales, both ancient and modern. This is the first time that the tale of the romance of ʻAzīza and Yūnis has ever been published in English, or that stories performed by ʻAmm Rizq Būlos have been translated or published. 'Seers, Saints and Sinners' presents a unique record and analysis of a tradition that is little known in the West and which is fast disappearing. It will be of interest to Egyptologists, archaeologists, anthropologists, and all those with an interest in the language and culture of North Africa and the Middle East"--Publisher's description, pages [2] of dust jacket.