F is for Fatima Al-Amira Dhat Al-Himma (Women's Epics A to Z)

This year my theme for the A to Z Blogging Challenge is Women's Epics. My goal was to read 26 traditional epics from around the world that have women as their heroes. Because epics like this do exist, and they are fascinating! Read the intoduction post here.

Sirat Al-Amira Dhat Al-Himma
Arabic

This book is the longest English translation of this epic, but it is by far not a complete one. The original epic (sira) - the only Arabic epic named for a woman - is the longest in this tradition, and in the original it fills 7 volumes (more than 5000 pages). The events take place in the 7th to 9th centures CE. The epic has been circulating in the oral tradition for centuries, but it was only written down in published in 1909. The oral telling usually took more than a year to complete.

This book contains the translation of 11 episodes out of the 455 in the original Arabic. Which, honestly, is barely enough to whet one's appetite. Especially because the translator admits that she was not trying to do a literal translation. She has taken out "gratuitous violence" and excessively bloody scenes, as well as many religious references. While I get the idea, it did make the text feel stunted at places. It was also strange that the translation used modern slang in some moments, which made the heroes sound badass, but it was also jarring.

The epic of Dhat Al-Himma was usually performed by male tellers. Which is why it is interesting that it has such a prominent female hero - but also a lot of traditional values to bind her within "the anxieties of patriarchal society about women who break the roles of their gender."

What is it about?

TL;DR: Fatima is raised in secret because she was born a girl, and teaches herself how to be a warrior. Through her strength and skill she rises to great power. She is forced into marriage and has a son, but despite her ex-husband's evil schemes, she goes through many adventures and always comes out victorious.

CW: this story includes mentions of sexual violence

It is a cycle of stories following several generations of warriors from the Bani Kilab tribe. This translation introduces us in a short first chapters to Fatima's great-great-grandfather Al-Harith, his son Jundaba, his grandson the romantic poet Sahsah, and Fatima's father Mazlum and his evil brother Zalim. From here, the epic turns to telling Fatima's story.

Zalim and Mazlum agree that whoever has a male child gets to lead the Bani Kilab. Both children are born on the same day: Zalim's son Walid, and Mazlum's daughter Fatima. A sympathetic midwife helps hide the girl's existence, saying instead the newborn was a boy who did not survive. Fatima is raised by servants. When she is still a small child, a neighboing tribe raids the camp and steals the servants, including Fatima. She refuses to cower before her captors, and they send her to herd horses and camels. Fatima teaches herself to ride and fight, covers her face in the custom of noble women, and becomes a self-taught warrior.

Her first heroic act is to kill a man who repeatedly tries to assault her. Since she is a slave, her owner has to pay the blood price for the kill. Fatima promises to reimburse him by raiding a neighboring tribe and taking their wealth. From that day on she becomes a respected warrior of the tribe. One day she ends up raiding the camps of her own father's people, the Bani Kilab. When she captures him, the servant woman who raised her reveals her identity, and Fatima returns to the Bani Kilab, celebrated as a hero, and happily accepted by her father and mother.

Fatima's life takes a turn when her cousin Walid takes an interest in her, and wants to force a marriage at all cost. Zalim and Walid decide that the marriage would not only get Walid a great wife, but they can also "break her", thus destroying her father's standing in the tribe, making Zalim the true leader. Fatima vehemently resists the marriage - she doesn't want to marry at all - and her father supports her decision. However, when the tribes travel to Baghdad to meet the new Abbasid caliph, Walid finds a way to get the caliph's approval of the marriage. Fatima is forced to marry her cousin. 

Meanwhile, the Byzantine armies - also led by warrior women - cross the border into the caliph's lands. Fatima leads an army against them, going through many battles and adventures, and wins herself a fortress, and the highly respected position of a general. She refuses to share a bed with her husband, until Walid manages to pay her best friend to drug her, and he violates her. From this, she has a son, who is born with black skin. They name him Abdelwahhab.

The birth of a black child sends Walid, Zalim and the entire tribe into an uproar, and Fatima is accused of adultery (neither Fatima nor Walid is black). Despite proving her innocence again and again, they eventually travel to Mecca to ask for a ruling from the elders. On the way there, a fearsome warrior takes a liking to Fatima and manages to threaten Walid into divorcing her. In turn, Fatima rejects and kills this new suitor - but at least she is now officially divorced. She raises her son with loving care to be a warrior just as clever and fearless as her.

Offended by the ruling of the elders that Fatima is not at fault, Zalim and Walid decide to cross over to the Byzantine lands, get baptized, and turn on their own people. They take hostage the son of one of Fatima's friends. Fatima sets out to rescue the child; she manages to capture the Byzantine emperor's son and do a hostage exchange. She wins the emperor's respect (and Zalim and Walid's fury), and spends some time in Byzantium, helping them defeat an invading Portuguese army. 

On her way home with the boy and 150 people, she is ambushed by Zalim and Walid's army. They fight a desperate battle on a mountain, rescued in the last moment by a Byzantine prince who saw Fatima in a dream. He even converts to Islam after the battle is done.

After many adventures and a long life of fighting, Fatima and her son resolve to take the pilgrimage to Mecca every year. Eventually, the famous amira passes away on one of these journeys, and is buried in Mecca. Her son dies soon after.

The highlights

There are several memorable adventures in this story. I loved the part about the siege of Amida, a Muslim fortress attacked by the Byzantine army. Among the attackers there is a scholar with an ancient book written by Aristotle that contains information on the fortress' water source. The Byzantine soldiers divert the water and the besieged army almost dies of thirst before they are liberated by Fatima's army. Once the battle is won, they try to fix the water supply - and in the end they find the problem by walking all the way up the empty water channels to the source.

(I loved the moment where the starved and thirsty people inside Amida decided to break out - "even if they kill all of us, at least our animals wil survive.")

I also enjoyed the episode where Fatima takes the Byzantine emperor's armor, and fights a duel in his name - throwing her Portuguese opponent off balance when she accidentally shouts Allahu Akbar! during the fight.

I liked the scenes where Fatima appeared as a tough but loving mother. In one of them, she tested her son's bravery and skill by disguising herself as a bandit and ambushing him on the road. After he defeated her, she revealed herself, and kissed him on the forehead.

One of the translated chapters deals with an adventure later in Fatima's life, when her son Abdelwahhab already has his "Knights of the Round Table" style company of heroes. They are all captured by a warrior princess named Nura. Fatima and her army has to fight a series of duels against Nura's female companions (her lovers), until Abdelwahhab and his friends manage to free themselves from the dungeons of an evil bishop. The whole adventure has excitement and humor, and begs for a movie adaptation. Nura eventually marries Al-Battal, the first male hero she shows interest in. She and their daughter join the team of heroes following Fatima on her adventures.

The last adventure in the book is the most exciting. Fatima, along with all the named cast of the epic, is trapped in a cave during a battle, and they get snowed in. After eating their horses, they explore the caves and find a secret burial chamber. It contains the body of a scholar, and preserved food that keeps them from dying. When things become desperate, they decide to take the scholar's funeral bed apart and build a ladder to try to find a way out. Hidden in the bed they find a tablet that informs them that the scholar had foreseen all this, and has a genie ready to appear and rescue the party. They return, months after being presumed dead, accompanied by an army of djinn just in time to save their warriors from defeat.

(This was the ordeal during which Fatima and Abdelwahhab swore they would take on the pilgrimage every year if they survived.)

THIS WAS A TRULY EPIC STORY.

I wish I could have read more. It sounds like a really cool group of hero characters, both women and men.

Would you read more if you had the chance? Who do we talk to about this? :D

Z is for the Zircon and the Idol (Gemstone Folklore)

Welcome to the 2022 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Gemstone Folklore. Because I love stories about shiny things. Read the introduction to the project here.

ZIRCON (JACINTH)

Zircon is a gemstone also known as zirconium silicate. It comes in various colors, from colorless through blue all the way to brown. The yellow, orange, and red variants are called jacinth or hyacinth.

The King's Idol and His Daughter

14th century Arab legend from Spain

This is a story within a story. According to the 14th century manuscript, Dulcarnain (Alexander the Great?) comes across a great idol on an island, and asks to know the story of who created it. An old man tells him the tale of The King's Idol and His Daughter:

A great and powerful king has a thousand concubines, but only one child: a daughter. When she is born, astrologers all agree that she will give birth to a son who will become a great hero. The king constructs a fortress and locks his daughter - Omr - inside, giving her all she could wish for, except freedom. When she grows up, the girl looks out the window, falls in love with the vizier's son Xams, and finds a way to sleep with him. From their union, a child is born in secret. The princess puts a jacinth stone around his neck and a gold band on his ankle, puts him in a wooden coffin, and sets him out on the sea, praying to God to take care of the baby.

The baby is guided by the winds to an island inhabited by animals only. A gazelle finds a child and gives him milk. He grows up among the animals, observing their behavior, and when he grows up, he learns to make tools and hunt. He soon becomes the leader and judge of the animals.

Meanwhile, the kind is looking for his precious jacinth stone, and can't find it anywhere (he kills six thousand people who can't present it to him). When his vizier dies, Xams ascends to the position. The king sees a dream of Xams' son taking over his throne, and in a fury exiles the young man in a ship alone. The winds take the ship to the same island. Father and son meet and get to know each other. Eventually they are picked up by a ship and taken to the kingdom of the princess' father. The king recognizes the scene from his dream, including the precious jacinth around the boy's neck - and the princess claims the young man as her child. The sos ascends to the throne, and becomes a wise and powerful ruler.

Sources: Read the story (in Spanish) here. Read more about it here.

This is it, people! Another year of the A to Z Challenge completed!

Did you enjoy the ride? 

Which one was your favorite story?

See you on Monday for Reflections!

Tarot Tales: X is for X of...

Welcome to the 2021 A to Z Blogging Challenge! My theme this year is Tarot Tales. I am making a selection of folktales, legends, and other traditional stories that correspond to tarot cards. Storytelling and tarot go well together. Do other stories come to mind? Let me know in the comments!

Today I once again post about four cards instead of one: the Tens (X's) of the Minor Arcana. Tens are the highest non-court cards, and thus they represent the completion or fulfillment of the symbolism of their entire suit.

Ten of Cups

This one is a lovely card (although I struggle to differentiate if from the Nine of Cups...). It is about joy, happiness, love - living a whole and harmonious life filled with nurturing and meaningful relationships. Cups represent water and emotion, therefore this is all about nice warm and fuzzy emotions.

The Bird of Happiness (Tibet)

A young man sets our from a cold and desolate village to bring the Bird of Happiness to his people. As he climbs higher and higher in the mountains he encounters various monsters that threaten him, and demand payment for letting him pass. The payment is always killing or hurting someone else from the village, so the young man repeatedly refuses, and suffers the consequences instead. Finally, blinded, starved, and bruised, he finds the Bird of Happiness. The bird heals him and carries him down to the village, singing a beautiful song that makes the sun shine, the fields bloom, and everyone's heart fill up with joy.

Ten of Swords

This is a baaad card. It is about deep pain, grief, loss, and despair. It is about hitting rock bottom, going through your darkest hour, being betrayed, hurt, abandoned. Lots of hard, painful feelings. The silver lining of this card is the proverbial "nowhere to go from here but up." 

The Nameless Son of Urizhmag (Ossetian Nart saga)

One of the most heartbreaking stories I know. The great hero Urizhmag kills his own child in a freak household accident. The child's spirit begs the ruler of the Underworld to let him return to the land of the living, to go on one adventure with his grieving father. He receives permission, and returns to his father's village. Urizhmag does not recognize him, but he decides to go on an adventure with the brave young warrior anyway. When they return, the boy has to go back to the Underworld; his mother realizes too late who he was. She runs after him, begging the sun to stand still on the horizon, giving her a few precious moments to catch a glimpse of her child before he disappears again.

Ten of Wands

As an overachiever, I relate to this card a lot. It is about taking on too much, and struggling to carry all the responsibility. It is about things weighing you down. This card usually signals that you have to learn to say no, and choose your battles carefully. The workload is too much, and something's gotta give.

The Magic Hen (Hungary)

There are many legends in Hungary about a creature called a lidérc, a kind of spirit that can be both helpful and dangerous. In one story, the lidérc takes the shape of a black hen that never stops working. It brings its owner whatever she desires - gold, silver, diamonds, food, etc. - and keeps bringing more and more of it until it is told to stop (or until the house fills up). If it doesn't get a new task, it takes the owner's soul to Hell. It is very hard to get rid of: the only way to kill a lidérc is to give it a task it cannot fulfill.

Ten of Pentacles

Another nice card. It is about long-term wealth, success, and financial security. Basically it represents achieving a place in life where you can provide safety and comfort to your own family - whether they are blood relations or otherwise. It is about an abundance of material resources that create a secure and nurturing environment. 

The Pasha's Only Daughter (Arab folktale)

A version of the King Thrushbeard tale, but with a better outcome. A pasha's wise and clever daughter refuses to marry anyone she doesn't love. When she rejects a very high ranking suitor, her father grows furious and orders her to be married to the most wretched man in the city. Such a man (a fire stoker from a public bath) is selected, and married to the girl, then they are both kicked out of the palace to fend for themselves. However, the young woman, Uns-ul-Juloos, does not panic. She starts befriending her new husband, little by little, and he turns out to be a kind, trustworthy man. She sells her jewelry and begins renovating the small hovel they live in. She also helps her husband find a new job, and slowly but surely their lives turn for the better. By the end of the tale, with the help of a friendly jinn, they become a wealthy and respected couple. They live in their own palace comfortably, and even manage to make peace with the girl's parents and family.

These cards all represent great highs and lows. How are you feeling about them? 

A treasure trove of stories (Following folktales around the world 160. - Israel)

Today I continue the blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts here, or you can follow the series on Facebook!

The ​Power of a Tale
Stories from the Israel Folktale Archives
Haya Bar-Itzhak & Idit Pintel-Ginsberg 
Wayne State University Press, 2019.

A very special collection with a great backstory. The 53 tales in this book were selected from the Israel Folktale Archives (IFA) to celebrate its 50th anniversary - the book was published in Hebrew in 2009, and finally in English last year. The archives were founded in 1955 to gather folk narratives from people immigrating into Israel, as well as from religious and ethnic groups living in the country (actively contradicting the idea that Israel would have to be culturally homogeneous). Today the archives contain more than 24,000 texts! All the stories in this book are tales that have not been published before. They represent 26 ethnic groups; nineteen of the tellers were women, and thirty-three were men.
This book really has everything a reader-researcher can wish for: a detailed Introduction about the history of IFA and the collection projects; bibliographies, folktale types, photos of the storytellers, an index, statistics of IFA, etc. Each story comes with a full background essay, with sources and notes and bibliographies, written by folklorists in Israel and abroad. Each takes a different approach to its story: a feminist point of view, comparative folklore, story psychology, cultural anthropology, etc. They were often as fascinating to read as the stories themselves. The whole book is a rare resource and a fun read, and definitely worth the time.

Highlights

My favorite story in the book was about The king who trusted the kingdom to his daughters (I blogged about it here). I love it because the heroine saves a kingdom with her kindness and empathy, turning her tears into diamonds to help people. Another story I loved a lot was titled A mother's gift is better than father's gift, in which a stepmother made her stepdaughter do chores around the house, and the girl hated her for it. When she grew up and fell on bad times, she suddenly realized she'd learned to work from her stepmother to survive. Good stepmother tales are a rare find!

Professor Dov Noy,
 founder of the IFA

The tale of The rich miser from Iraq was quite funny. He had his shoes mended so many times that they became heavy as rocks, and every time he tried to get rid of them they caused more and more trouble, until he had to admit it would have been easier to buy a new pair. The tale of Men's wisdom and women's slyness started out equally funny, but turned kind of cruel. A woman tricked a conceited man just to prove women could be sly and wise - but she did so at the expense of a crippled girl. The accompanying essay unpacked all the possible implications of the tale quite well.
Since the book focused on stories that are culturally relevant, it contained several narratives from times of pogroms and discrimination, telling of heroic sacrifices and miraculous survival. In the legend of Serah Bat Asher from Georgia, a king made fun of the Jews and made discriminatory laws against them, until one day he encountered a warrior woman, daughter of one of Joseph's brothers, who gained eternal life from God, and she convinced him to believe and revoke his laws. In a Persian story the Jews were saved when they used a magical bottomless bucket to fish the cruel king out of his palace through a well, and made him sign a document that gave them protection. In a story from Poland a boy was taken from his family and raised in Russia to be a soldier, and he found his parents later on by accident; in a story from Romania a boy was rescued from a persecuted Jewish family, and his wandering father found him years later, living as a rich man.

Connections

Recording stories (Image from here)

Of course there were also stories in the book that rang quite familiar, or belonged to international types. There was a Godfather Death tale, but with a female Death (!), and a kinder ending. Here, when the man asked for his life candle to be extended, Death kindly reminded him that he'd chosen her as godparent because she treats everyone equally. The tale of The princess in the wooden body was an All-kinds-of-fur type story, and the accompanying essay outlined the symbolism of abuse and childhood trauma quite beautifully. The six girls in the mountains was a Bluebeard tale, but here the heroine only ended up saving herself, not her sisters. The story aptly titled The measure of a woman is two, the measure of a man is one was a Basil Girl variant, complete with the part where the clever wife seduces her own husband in disguise three times in a row. The girl born from an egg was a Rapunzel story.
The tale of the cat demon was a fairy midwife tale; here the midwife did not only help with the birth, but also saved a changeling from being taken by demons. The life legend of the Polish hero Dobush started out with him being lost in the woods as a baby and being suckled by a female dog, much like Romulus and Remus. Between Sun and Moon was a Bedouin tale of a boy with a secret dream who won not one but two wives with his cleverness. I really like this type.
The queen and a fish reminded me of a story from Iraq; the queen's infidelity here was also revealed by a fish after multiple warnings by cautionary tales. From an Ethiopian source there was the tale of the Lion's whiskers, of a patient woman who learned how to approach her husband. In Muslim Arab stories I encountered the motif of a clever girl giving a drink of water to a man slowly, so that he is not harmed by it; I knew this one from Queen Anait from Georgia.

Where to next?
Palestine!

A is for Antarah (Epics from A to Z)

Welcome to Epics from A to Z! We are off to a very adventurous start.
(How is this story not a blockbuster movie yet?)

Origins
The Romance of Antar is an Arab epic poem composed sometime in the 8th century. It consists of forty-five volumes (!!!) and several hundred pages in its original form; as to date, no full English translation has been published. The story takes place in the 6th century and centers around Arab tribes and kingdoms in the land of Hejaz (western Saudi Arabia) with occasional adventures into Persia and Yemen, and even mentions of Byzantium and Europe. Hamilton's four-volume English translation of the first of the three parts of the epic is dubbed "a Bedouin romance." While the epic makes frequent mentions to Mecca and Islam, the story actually takes place before the time of the Prophet.
Some people speculate that this story, traveling through cultural exchange in the time of the Crusades, could have been one of the cultural sources of medieval European romances of chivalry. It definitely has a lot in common with them.

The Hero
The main hero of the tale is a historical person: Antarah ib Shaddad al-Absi was a 6th century poet and warrior (some of his poems are counted among the greatest feats of Arab poetry). That is a pretty cool combination. He was a "raven" - the son of an Arab prince and a black slave woman, thus born a slave himself. In the epic he is a chivalrous and brave person who first distinguishes himself by saving an old beggar woman from abuse, even though he knows he will be punished for it. He is equipped with a great war horse and a sword forged from thunder (literally). I like him, because whenever he is not cleaving his enemies in half he composes poems about the beauty of the world (and his love).
Antarah has two goals in life: Be accepted by his father as a free member of his tribe, and marry his beautiful princess cousin, the fair-skinned Abla. Both of them are eventually accomplished through a lot of fighting and a lot of perilous adventures. Abla gets kidnapped a couple of dozen times by various enemy tribes and jilted suitors, and has to be rescued. Antarah also participates in various battles and conflicts all over the map; he even fights a Christian knight in the Persian court. He is a protector of the weak, a defender of women, a fearless warrior, and a lovesick poet.
You will be happy to know that eventually Antarah saves his entire tribe and is accepted as a noble warrior; and after a few dozen crashed wedding attempts he finally manages to marry Abla and have children. He lives in greatness until the very end; his heroic death is mourned even by his enemies.

The Highlights
Even though I could only read an abridged version of the story, the highlights that jumped out at me were some of the supporting characters, namely:
Shiboob, Antarah's half-brother (one of the sons that were kidnapped and enslaved with their mother to Antarah's father). He is called "Son of the Wind" for his running speed, and is also a pretty good archer. He acts as Antarah's messenger, sidekick, best friend, and common sense. He is good at tracking down kidnapped people (a much needed skill in this epic). He comes up with clever ploys to trick enemies, and puts on masterful disguises to infiltrate the camps of other tribes. Once he even dresses up as a woman and puts on a dance-and-song performance.
Jaida, a female warrior, one of Antarah's enemies. She defeats several men in combat and duels, and falls in love with her cousin, who at first is very disturbed by the fact that his very talented warrior friend turns out to be a woman.
Jezar, the man that brings down Antarah in the end. He is a skilled archer, and when Antarah defeats him in battle he blinds him by drawing a red-hot blade across his eyes. Jezar lives and plots revenge for ten years - he learns to shoot with deadly accuracy following the sounds he hears (eat your heart out, R.A. Salvatore).

Fun Fact
Some people have suggested that Antares, the brightest star of the Scorpio constellation, was named after Antarah.