Moslem Traditions

By Full Well Ventures

This article, "Moslem Traditions," from the February 1859 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine, retells some traditional stories about the patriarch Abraham and King Solomon. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Full Well Ventures
• Release date: Mar 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9788835395126

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Moslem Traditions

© 2020 Full Well Ventures

On the Cover: Kerbela in Iraq is the second holy city of the Shiite Moslems. The great mosque with dome and minarets are overlaid with gold (1932).

Originally published in February 1859 issue of The Knickerbocker magazine

KNICKERBOCKER

Moslem Traditions

DRAMATIC EXHIBITIONS, and the entertainment of printed fiction, are wanting in the East, but the imaginative Orientals find a congenial amusement in listening to the recital of marvelous stories. Throughout the lands of Islam, from Belgrade to Bassora, from the Moetian Estuary to the unknown fountains of the Nile, you will find the roaming romancer. Sail upon the Tigris or the Nile, bury yourself in the Hedjaz, or in the delicious solitudes of Arabia the Blest, traverse the deserts of Irak, or the wastes of Syria—everywhere you will meet with the wandering storyteller, ready to delight the people with his simple narrations; everywhere you will behold eager groups impatient to catch the bewitching words that fall from his lips.

In the larger Turkish cities the Meddahs (storytellers) form corporate bodies, with a sheik at their head, called Imeddah. They may be seen in the caravansaries and khans. They linger lovingly in the kahvés of Oriental cities, prolong the pleasures of the delicious kief, and practice their poetical profession in barbershops and baths.

The Meddahs always commence with an invocation to the Most High: ‘Praise to Allah, and to his favorite Mohammed, whose black eyes beam with sweetness! He is the only apostle of truth!’ The audience, ‘fit, though few,’ responds Amin, and the narration begins. Some of them improvise, but for the most part they relate new and marvelous histories, or embroider the arabesques of imagination and the imbroglios of adventure upon some well-known theme. Now they suddenly break off the narrative at the climax of interest, like the ingenious sultana of the Arabian Nights, and now, to prolong the story and multiply the expected paras, weave in other tissues of romance, varied by a thousand nuances of surprise and interest. And then again, with marvelous ‘skill of song-craft,’ they intermit, from time to time, their silvery prose with the luxury of verse. But the object is ever to reverse the maxim of the Latin poet:

‘Semper ad eventum festinat; et in medias res ​

Non suis ac notas, auditorem rapit.’

The Arabs call these social reunions Musameril, discourses by moonlight, or by the glimmer of the stars. When the sun touches