Epic
The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan
سيرة سيف بن ذي يزن
Anonymous · 1400
Synopsis
Sayf, son of King Dhi Yazan of Yemen, is abandoned at birth by his mother Qamariyya, a sorceress, and grows up in the desert under the name of Wahsh al-Fala before being taken in by a king of Ethiopia. Having become a hero, he learns who he is, sets out in quest of the Book of the Nile, fights Ethiopian enemies, confronts ghouls, giants and sorcerers, searches for a wife as far as the City of Maidens, and constantly clashes with his mother, scheming and greedy. The prose alternates with many passages in verse.
Context
The sira draws on a half-legendary Himyarite king of the sixth century, who defended his kingdom against the empire of Aksum with the help of the Sasanian Persians, but it departs widely from history. Composed between the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, it is preserved in a sixteenth-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan, in nine volumes and some eight hundred leaves, then in copies in France and in Cairo. The story runs over three cycles, Yemeni, Abyssinian and Egyptian. The Arabic text runs to about two thousand pages; Lena Jayyusi translated the first five hundred into English.
Who it is for
A long popular epic in prose mixed with verse; the abridged English version is the most convenient way in.
Prizes and reception
Kirkus Reviews compares the English version to Roland furieux and the Mille et Une Nuits.
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