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Blood on the Wedding Bed 284 283 blOOd ON ThE wEddING bEd 284 BLOOD ON THE WEDDINg BED: THE CApTuRE OF TROy, AgAmEmnon’s MuRDER, AND THE ARAbIc STORy of al-ZĪr As VARIANTs of the “AvENgINg Bride” TALE TypE1) Johan WESTSTEIJN Abstract A number of modern Arab thinkers have compared the Story of al-Zīr, a little-known Arabic folk epic, with accounts of the Trojan War and the Oresteia. After dealing with the pitfalls of comparing stories from different cultures, I argue for criteria to distinguish between weak and strong parallels, and then analyse the similarities between the story of Jalīla, that constitutes the first part of the Story of al-Zīr, and the Graeco-Roman stories of Helen’s abduction and Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon. Such a comparative approach, based on the method of folktale studies, sheds new light on a number of much-discussed elements from the story of Clytemnestra, such as “blameless Aegisthus” (Odyssey 1.29), Agamemnon’s minstrel, and the purple fabric and “bathtub” that figure as stage props in the Oresteia. In Aeschylus’ Oresteia, Clytemnestra and her lover Aegis- thus murder her husband king Agamemnon and present his corpse to the public in a vessel, covered by a blood-spattered purple cloth. In Virgil’s Aeneid, Helen and her Greek husband Mene- laus murder her Trojan husband prince Deiphobus when he lies drunk in his wedding bed. Helen takes Deiphobus’ sword from under his pillow. After the murder, she lights a torch from Troy’s battlements as a sign for the Greek troops to storm the city. In the anonymous Arabic Story of al-Zīr, Jalīla and her lover Kulayb murder her bridegroom king Tubba῾ when he lies drunk in his wedding bed. Kulayb takes Tubba῾’s sword that hangs above the head of his bed. After the murder, Kulayb drinks the king’s blood, and then dips a piece of cloth in it to dye the fabric red. He hangs this purple flag from the battlements of Tubba῾’s stronghold as a sign for his troops to storm the castle. In this study, I will compare an Arabic folktale, about the abduction of the beautiful Jalīla, with two Graeco-Roman stories, about the abduction of Helen, and about Clytem­ nestra’s murder of Agamemnon. Jalīla’s story is narrated in the first part of the Story of al-Zīr, an oral folk epic set in the 5th century AD, which has been written down in various recensions since the 18th century. As an oral tale told by members of the common people, the Story of al-Zīr has received little scholarly attention, but a number of modern Arab thinkers have compared it to accounts of the Trojan War and to the Oresteia. With his Stealing Helen: The Myth of the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective (2016), Lowell Edmunds has shown that the combination of Folklore Studies and Classics can provide fruitful results. He argues that the story of 1) I thank Jan Zacharias van Rookhuijzen for his help in the writing of this article. 285 bIblIOThECA ORIENTAlIS lxxIV N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2017 286 Helen’s abduction and recovery, the basic plot of the Trojan classics that have been preserved, but also in the form of a War, is a variant of an international tale type, “The Abduc- large number of works from the second category, oral tales tion of the Beautiful Wife.” Recently, I have argued that the told by members of the common people, as can be argued for Arabic story of Jalīla is a variant of a tale type that could be example from the evidence of vase paintings.4) Elite authors called “The Bride who Takes Revenge on her Groom.” such as Homer, Aeschylus, and Virgil used one or more of Other Near Eastern variants of this Avenging Bride tale type these anonymous versions from popular tradition to create include the Arabic Zenobia Legend, the story of Cyrus and their literary works of art, which in their turn influenced the Tomyris, and the Book of Judith.2) folk versions: the (preserved) versions of the written master- Here, using criteria to establish the strength of parallels,3) pieces and the (lost) versions of the popular oral tales consti- I will demonstrate the many similarities between the stories tute one single tradition. of Helen and Jalīla, and conclude that the story of Jalīla is an Not only are the motifs of the Trojan Cycle not exclu- Arabic variant of the “Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” tale sively a high literature subject; they are also not exclusively type. The story of Clytemnestra’s murder of Agamemnon is Greek or Roman. It has been shown that the written chefs- not an abduction story, yet it shares, as will be shown, many d’oeuvre of Classical literature contain many motifs and parallels with both the story of Helen and the story of Jalīla, even plotlines that are also found in international folktales.5) as well as with the Avenging Bride tales of Zenobia, Tomyris, The comparison of a Graeco-Roman classic with variants of and Judith. Apparently, the story of Clytemnestra is another the same tale type from other cultures can help us to recon- variant of the “Avenging Bride” type, while the stories of struct some of the lost oral or written versions of this story Helen and Jalīla belong to both the “Avenging Bride” and that could have existed in Antiquity. It is only in the last the “Abduction of the Beautiful Wife” type; the two tale decades, however, that a majority of Classicists have come types partly overlap. to truly appreciate the value of comparative research.6) In I will show that this kind of comparative approach, based contrast to this reluctance of Classicists to compare their on the method of folktale comparison, provides new insights field with other literatures, various Arab intellectuals, who into some much-discussed elements from the story of Agam- measured their own literary heritage to the standards set by emnon’s murder, such as “blameless Aegisthus” (Odyssey European critics, have been eager to draw parallels between 1.29), the minstrel who guards Clytemnestra in the Odyssey, Graeco-Roman and Arabic literature.7) and the purple fabric and “bathtub” that figure as stage props in the Oresteia. Arab intellectuals on the Graeco-Roman Classics and the As modern readers we know the stories of Helen and folk epic of al-Zīr Clytemnestra through the lens of Greek and Latin master- pieces that have come down to us in the form of written texts At the end of the 19th century, Sulaymān al-Bustānī, a created by famous authors. Homer’s Odyssey, Aeschylus’ high-ranking official from the Ottoman province of Lebanon, Oresteia, and Virgil’s Aeneid are considered true classics, of translated the Iliad into Arabic. In the foreword to his trans- such aesthetic quality that they set the standards for not only lation he compares the Trojan War with the War of Basūs, a Greek and Roman but also European or even Western litera- long feud between two Arab tribes in the 5th century AD. ture. The lives of Helen and Clytemnestra are seen as typical Scraps of information about this feud are found scattered high literature subject matter. over a large number of works written in Classical Arabic.8) A comparison between the Graeco-Roman stories of Helen and Clytemnestra and an Arabic folktale therefore appears at first glance to be not only a comparison between works from 4) Mark I. Davies, “Thoughts on the Oresteia before Aischylos,” Bul- letin de Correspondance Hellénique 93 (1969) 214–260; Uvo Hölscher, two different cultures but also between two completely dif- Die Odyssee: Epos zwischen Märchen und Roman (Beck: München, ferent genres; on the one hand high literature: complex and 1989); Susan Woodford, The Trojan War in Ancient Art (London: Duck- original written texts of great artistic value created by elite worth, 1993) 7; Marco Fantuzzi & Christos Tsagalis (ed.), The Greek Epic authors, and on the other hand low, folk, or popular litera- Cycle and its Ancient Reception: A Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), especially John M. Foley & Justin Arft, “The Epic ture: simple, traditional, oral tales of little artistic value pro- Cycle and Oral Tradition,” 78–95; Ursula Gärtner, “Virgil and the duced by anonymous members of the common people. Epic Cycle,” 543–564; Lowell Edmunds, Stealing Helen: The Myth of On closer look, however, this dichotomy turns out to be the Abducted Wife in Comparative Perspective (Princeton: Princeton Uni- not that strict. In ancient Greece and Rome, the stories of versity Press, 2016) 40. 5) Hölscher, Odyssee; Graham Anderson, Fairytale in the Ancient Helen and Clytemnestra, as well as other stories of the Tro- World (London: Routledge, 2000); William Hansen, Ariadne’s Thread: jan Cycle (about the prelude to the war, the war itself, and A Guide to International Tales Found in Classical Literature (Ithaca: Cor- what happened to its heroes when they returned home after nell University Press, 2002); Lowell Edmunds, “Epic and Myth,” in: ed. the siege) were not only known in the form of the written John Miles Foley, A Companion to Ancient Epic (Maiden: Blackwell, 2005) 31–44. 6) Hyun Jin Kim, “Ancient History and the Classics from a Compara- 2) Johan Weststeijn, “Zenobia of Palmyra and the Book of Judith: tive Perspective: China and the Graeco-Roman World,” Ancient West & Common Motifs in Greek, Jewish, and Arabic Historiography,” Journal East 14 (2015) 253–274. for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 22 (2013) 295–320 & “Wine, Women, 7) Wajih Fanus, “Sulaymān al-Bustānī and Comparative Literary and Revenge in Near Eastern Historiography: The Tales of Tomyris, Studies in Arabic,” Journal of Arabic Literature 17 (1986) 105–119; Judith, Zenobia, and Jalila,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 75 (2016) Michael Kreutz, “Sulaymān al-Bustānīs Arabische Ilias: Ein Beispiel für 91–107.
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