533 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA 534

ARABICA specialized articles no earlier wide-scale research into the Sirat had been done before Herzog’s enterprise.4) HERZOG, T. — Geschichte und Imaginaire. Entstehung, Herzog introduced the Sira to his readers as ‘a window to Überlieferung und Bedeutung der Sirat Baibars in ihrem a vanished world’ which gives the modern public a view into sozio-politischen Kontext (Diskurse der Arabistik 8). the world of imagination as experienced by the great mass of Verlag Otto Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2006 (24,5 cm, the urban population in the Middle East during and XVIII, 972). ISBN 978-3-447-05089-0. ISSN 0949- Ottoman times and expressed in the narratives of a long- 6807. / 138,-. lasting tradition. He set himself a threefold task: firstly, to elucidate the Introduction imaginative world of authors, transmitters, and storytellers of Among the popular romances the Sirat al-Malik the Sirat Baibars. Secondly, he dealt with the questions of aÂ-Åahir Baibars (‘Life of King aÂ-Åahir Baibars’) is prob- origin, sources and development. Thirdly, he clarified the ably one of the most appreciated and well-known narratives. function of the Sirat Baibars within its social, political and Thomas Herzog made a profound and detailed study of this spiritual context. He addressed these objectives, continually sira sha¨biyya, as this genre of popular epics is termed in focussing on them in conjunction, in the four parts of his Arabic. The results have appeared in his book Geschichte work, respectively, A) the text witnesses and their relation; und Imaginaire, which in size (972 pages) almost seems to B) the kernel of the narrative, i.e. the hero’s abduction to compete with the vastness of its subject matter, the Sirat Bai- Genoa; C) the world of imagination and D) on origin, devel- bars. This Sira is preserved in manuscripts of various lengths opment and function of the Sirat Baibars. In part E, which — frequently counting up to between 1,000 and 3,500 folios. takes up an extensive portion of the book (pp. 425-905), In advance, it must be acknowledged that undertaking a pro- underlying data have been added, like surveys and descrip- ject of this size takes courage and handling the material tions of the material involved, lists of titles of episodes, a demands a well-thought and worked-out strategy. Herzog concordance and a number of summaries of the narrative in demonstrates to have been aware of the complexity of the printed editions. matter, and to have chosen an apt approach to deal with it in In his initial exploration of the sources Herzog has tried to order to succeed in his objectives. reconstruct the environmental situation of the composers of the Sirat Baibars and of its recipients. To this aim he exam- The sira: ‘a window to a vanished world’ ined the important characters of the story, the elements of action, the places of events and the groups involved in con- The popular epic Sirat Baibars draws its hero’s name from flict and antagonism. This method has evidenced to be par- the BaÌri Mamluk sultan al-Malik aÂ-Åahir Rukn ad-Din ticularly fruitful, due to the typical circumstances of this Baibars al-Bunduqdari (reg. 1260-1277). However, the pro- Sira. It is certain that the Sirat Baibars has remained popular tagonist of the Sira does not really have much in common for ages, which probably mirrors the interest, concerns, pref- with the historical figure he is allegedly modelled after, erence and preoccupation of the creators and recipients. which is a common trait in the siyar narratives. The text is Moreover, the features of the characters, the places of action, known from a multitude of manuscripts (51, some of them the ‘historical’ setting and the nature of the confrontation fragments) and a few printed editions (3 Cairo editions, and have shown to be rich sources of information. Herzog has the Beirut and Damascus editions1)). Since 1985 the Euro- extracted these data and effectively utilized them to recon- pean reader has access to the epic via the French translation struct the stages of composition of this Sira. In this respect made by G. Bohas and J.-P. Guillaume.2) Before this date the the Sitz im Leben and contents of the Sirat Baibars are par- only extensive study into the Sirat Baibars available in ticularly apt for this kind of analysis, which would be impos- Europe was the work by the German scholar Helmut Wange- sible for some other siyar, like for example Sirat al-Iskandar, lin, who also had produced a survey of the text in German which completely lacks this sort of pointers.5) (Das arabische Volksbuch vom König Azzahir Baibars, diss. 1936). The range of the monograph AÂ-Åahir Baibars by the Historicity and milieu Egyptian author ¨Abd al-Îamid Yunus in the sixties of the twentieth century was confined in these days by the bounda- From the interpretation of the implicit data it emerged that ries of the Arabic speaking world. certain historical events and geographical settings gave clear Finally in the nineties of that century, the Sirat Baibars clues. On this basis Herzog concluded that learned historical was surveyed and examined as part of the siyar research in works as well as popular literature, legends, and narratives M.C. Lyons’s The Arabian Epic, the first major comparative like the Arabian Nights formed sources of inspiration for the study into the sira genre.3) Apart from these works and some compilers of Sirat Baibars. Moreover, the acquaintance with the city of Alexandria and the displayed conflicts between the Muslims and Francs — in particular the Genoese and Cata- lans — all point to realia which attach the stratum of the Sirat 1) Sirat al-Malik al-Åahir Baibars, Al-Îajj MuÌammad Amin Dirbal, ∑aÌib al-Maktaba al-¨ilmiyya al-¨umumiyya bi-Sari¨ al-Îalwaji, Cairo 1908-09, MuÌammad ¨Abd al-La†if al-Îijazi, Ma†ba¨at al-Ma¨ahid, Cairo 1923-26, Jamal al-Ghi†ani, Al-Haiˆa al-MiÒriyya al-¨amma li-l-Kitab, Cairo 4) In this respect the articles by Jean-Patrick Guillaume (“Les scènes de 1996; G. Buhas [G. Bohas] and K. Zakhariyya eds., Sirat al-Malik al-Åahir bataille dans le Roman de Baybars. Considérations sur le ‘style formulaire’ BaybarÒ Ìasab al-riwaya al-samiyya 7 vols., Institut Français d’Études dans la tradition épique arabe”, Arabica 51/1-2 (2004), 55-76) and Jean- Arabes de Damas, Damascus 2000-2007. Claude Garcin (“Sira/s et histoire”, Arabica 51/3 (2004), 223-257) must 2) G. Bohas and J.-P. Guillaume, Le roman de Baybars, translated from be mentioned. the Aleppo ms., 10 vols., Sindbad, Paris 1985-1998. 5) See Doufikar-Aerts, Alexander Magnus Arabicus, a Survey of the 3) M.C. Lyons, The Arabian Epic. Heroic and Oral Story-telling, 3 Alexander Tradition through Seven Centuries: from Pseudo-Callisthenes vols., Cambridge 1995. to ∑uri, Mediaevalia Groningana n.s. 13, Peeters, Louvain 2010, 256-258. 535 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LXX N° 3-4, mei-augustus 2013 536

Baibars to the period between 1365 and 1415. The conquest various chapters. This aroused the expectation that the analy- of by Sultan Barsbay in 1426 is another historical sis would be followed by an overall conclusion or at least a event that is mirrored in the Sirat Baibars, in the sense that it survey of the most important new findings. From the part of gave rise to the composition of new episodes. These elements the average reader of Geschichte und Imaginaire this would were, subsequently, integrated as components into the Sira have been well appreciated. In the case of such a voluminous and formed the new core of the narrative, as it has finally work as the one under consideration a multitude of details are come down to us. The constituents which govern this core are presented. Most recipients cannot be expected to be familiar Baibar’s abduction to Genoa, the introduction of the wicked with all these different aspects and to keep in mind the line character of Gawan, alias shaykh ∑alaÌ ad-Din, and the book of thought from the first page all along the development of of predictions, the Kitab al-Yunan. the book. Therefore, it would not have been redundant to Due to the great variances between the texts and the insuf- restate the study and its results in broad outlines so as to up- ficient text-historical data it has been impossible to construct date and refresh the highlights in the readers’ mind. Although a stemma, but it is clear that the ‘fixed’ shape of the Sirat the work has obviously not been written for a general public, Baibars — the version in which the core elements as men- there is an increasing consciousness among scholars that tioned above, have definitively become the kernel part of the research results should be accessible, if possible, for a broader narrative — must date from the middle of the 17th century. interested public. This desire could be met with, by accom- In order to determine the milieus of the authors and recip- modating readers by way of a few adjustments in the presen- ients Herzog investigated the presentation of ‘space’, i.e. tation, without making concessions to scholarly standards. environment, setting, locations, and social and religious The study contributes greatly to a better understanding of groups. The term ‘space’ is differentiated into space of real the genre of popular epics; many of the conclusions and existing settings and ‘maps in minds’ (kognitive Karten). In observations about the evolution of the Sirat Baibars could both kinds of spaces a distinction can be discerned between apply to other epics as well and may be valid for a wider the inner world, the ‘own space’ and the outer world, the range of literature. Thus, the study of Sirat Baibars certainly ‘foreign space’. The perception of foreign space in the Sirat deserves attention of a broad public, since it elucidates the Baibars illustrates that this Sira primarily represents a 14th- environment and concerns expressed in an epic, cherished 15th century north Egyptian, Cairene perspective. The per- through the centuries in diverse Middle Eastern communi- ception of own space shows an awareness of a continuously ties. It not only opens a window to its world of imagination threatened Arab-Islamic civilization. projected on a long gone by world, it also opens a window for modern public to a vanishing society. Stages of development Its characteristics, together with the highly imaginable milieu and its suspense were definitely factors that provided In the i three principle elements come together, S rat Baibars the i with a social function for its public. Its that is to say the oriental tradition of popular story-telling, the S rat Baibars popularity continued until recent times and it is still part of reality of life as perceived by the composers and historio- the Middle Eastern imaginative world and mind as we can graphical transmission. In his conclusions Herzog emphasizes observe in the novel (‘The public story-teller’) that the i has gone through several stages of development, The Hakawati S ra by the Lebanese author, Rabih Alameddine. In this modern with an older stratum that points to the time of the transition epic novel Alameddine intertwines motifs inspired by the from Ayyubid to Mamluk rule, after the fall of Baghdad in i with his family history, composed into a won- 1259. The later re-composed stage of the epic alludes to the S rat Baibars derful narrative. At the same time this means that the i later Mamluk period and it is clear that the narrative has been S ra survived in new forms and that its again repre- reworked continuously during the ages, and even after it had Nachleben sents a new imaginative world. taken a more or less fixed shape, during the 16th-17th centu- ries. In this respect, the Sirat Baibars, like other siyar, cannot Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam F. DOUFIKAR-AERTS be considered the work of a single author, but of many. June 2012 An interesting conclusion is the fact that the epic in its initial stage must have been a composition for the elite pub- lic of the ruling circles, but in its later development, it became the favourite narrative of the ordinary people, per- formed in public for audiences of common and lower class citizens. Baibars is the hero who fights for justice and decency in a world of foreign and indigenous threats by vil- lains, imposters and hostile foes. In this position and by his hardships and adventures he is granted to take part in a paral- lel hidden (underground) world, which functions as a double ‘holy’ dimension next to the real world. This gave the Sira a mythical layer, which is not yet manifest in the earlier man- uscripts and probably did not form part of the proto-Sira.

Approach and conclusions In the subsequent chapters of his book Herzog addressed different questions through different perspectives. This revealed interesting, and sometimes surprising results. The outcome has been surveyed in provisional conclusions of the