Tale
Märchen und Gedichte aus der Stadt Tripolis in Nordafrika
Not translated into English
Hans Stumme · 1898
Synopsis
Fairy tales and poems told in Tripoli, noted down in the speech of the city. A little girl sets out to join her seven brothers, whom a step-aunt sent away before her birth by means of a false signal; the slave in her escort makes her walk barefoot behind the camel, then blackens her with tar. Nfis, the twelfth son, born half a man because his mother gave up half of the last apple, smells an ogress in the relative who welcomes his brothers. Jamila refuses to go home without an iron mortar found while gathering wood, and remains alone with it at nightfall.
Context
The collecting took place in Tripoli in 1897. The main informant, Sidi Brahim bin Ali al-Tikbali, a forty-five-year-old poet living in the old town, dictated ten tales and seven poems; a fifteen-year-old boy, Mhemmed bin Jum'a, acted as guide and dictated three more poems. One of Brahim's poems tells of the session at the photographer's, where Stumme had himself photographed with his informants, at his own expense. The book appeared in Leipzig the following year: transcribed texts, German translation, a sketch of the dialect and a glossary.
Who it is for
Texts in phonetic transcription followed by a German translation, with no French edition. Each tale runs to a few pages.
Prizes and reception
The first work devoted to the Arabic dialect of the city of Tripoli, it fixes it as it was spoken under the Ottomans, before Italian colonisation.