Review

Reviewed Work(s): The Art of Story-Telling. A Literary Study of the Thousand and One
Nights by Mia I. Gerhardt
Review by: G. E. von Grunebaum
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Jan. - Mar., 1964, Vol. 84, No. 1
(Jan. - Mar., 1964), pp. 85-86
Published by: American Oriental Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/597072

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 Reviews of Books 85

guistic studies: " Zwei tiirkisch-mongolische KIor-
respondenzreihen " by Ia?re Thomsen and " Uber
einige japanische Kulturwbrter altaischen Ur-
sprungs" by Schichiro Murayama. Mr. Thomsen
proposes that, since both modern dialects and the
earliest Mongolian documents in Arabic, Chinese,
and 'Phags-pa scripts show long vowels where the
documents in vertical script employ the syllables
aya, ege, igi, oyo, aga, uyu, iigii, these can be con-cation of the papers presented at the meetings of
sidered simply as traditional notations for long
vowels. Mr. Murayama in a fascinating article
lists Altaic etymologies for a series of words for
cultural objects in Old Japanese, and suggests that
these are loanwords from an early period when
the proto-Japanese were in close contact with
Altaic peoples, presumable on the Asian mainland.
It is regrettable that the detailed report on
Japanese contributions to Altaic studies submitted
by Professor Shir6 ilattori and mentioned by the
editor in the Foreword could not be included in
this collection. Also regrettable is the fact that a
summary of the discussions after each paper could
not have been included.
It would be very welcome, indeed, if the publi-
the PIAC could continue in yearly collections,
hopefully without need for the haste that unfortu-
nately mars some of the contributions in this
collection.
JAMES BOSSON
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY

The Art of Story-Telling. A Literary Study of her trust in Littmann's translation and besides her
the Thousand and One Nights. By MIA I. assessment of the other aids at the disposal of a
GERHARDT. Pp. x + 500. Leiden: BRILL, scholar barred from Arabic material is sober and
accurate. It would be gratuitous to tell Miss Ger-
1963. Fl. 52.
hardt what obviously she knows, to wit: that here
The Orientalist will always have to overcome and there familiarity with the original might have
something of a prejudice when he is confronted modified her opinion on the composition of one or
with a book on one of his privileged subjects whichthe other tale and the manner in which this or that
is written by a scholar who takes her legitimation motif is hinged onto a given narration. It seems
precisely from the fact that she is not an Orien- more to the point to note that her approach has
talist. Specifically, the difficulty lies in the Orien- yielded a very interesting scaffolding of the total
talist's ingrained unwillingness to concede author- collection in its several variants, a truly delightful
ity on an important segment of Arabic literature to comparative study of the major translations and a
an investigator who not only freely avows that she very circumspect grouping of the materials that
does not know Arabic but is animated by the con-make up the enormous corpus. Her observations
viction that this " deficiency " enables her to make on structure in general and on what she calls the
a contribution sui generis to a much explored but " Hlriin Cycle " in particular are well worth
still in many regards enigmatic cycle of problems. reading.
Miss Gerhardt (University of Utrecht) has her One comes away from Miss Gerhardt's book with
base in Western medieval literature. Years ago an awareness bordering on surprise of the technical
she succumbed to the fascination of the Arabian finesse which is reflected in many of the stories
Nights, a literary critique of which she is now and at the same time one is struck by the realiza-
putting before us. Miss Gerhardt is highly self- tion with what intensity the corpus or at least
conscious about her method and its limitations. significant sections of it have been integrated in
She has an admirable command of literary analysisthe common literary possession of the West. It is
and an equally admirable command of pertinenttrue that both these facts were known before M1iss
theoretical studies. After a bit of uneasy reflec-
Gerhardt wrote but there are different kinds of
tion, this reviewer, on having read the first chapter
knowledge and to have substantiated and spelled
or two, was gripped by the discipline and enthusi- out in incontrovertible detail a sentiment and a
asm of Miss Gerhardt's research and decided to go general perception is an achievement not to be
along. He certainly did not have to repent his underrated.
decision.
This reviewer is not completely convinced that
Miss Gerhardt is no doubt justified in placing conclusive proof has been furnished that Arabic

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86 Journal of the American Oriental Society, 84.1 (1964)

literature will yield its secrets to the Arabic
but he is willing to concede that in one book
written about one representative of this literature,
one non-Arabist has made a valuable contribution
which no Arabist ought to by-pass.
A few minor observations:
P. 358, n. 1: The word "sultan" predates the
Fatimid and Mamluk periods. It was quite cur-
rent as early as the 8th century.
P. 358-9: The story quoted from Littmann, III,
623-25, is an elaboration of an edifying anecdote
told for example by al-Ghazzali.
P. 452, n. 1: Bouvat (1912) was right in deny-
ing that the ancestor of the Barmakids was a fire-
worshipper. The name Barmak goes back etymo-
logically to pramukha, the " praepositus " of a
Buddhist monastery, a function which the member
of the family who first adopted Islam appears to
have held before his conversion in the Nava Vihdra
(NaubahAr), the New Convent, of Balkh.
On p. 379, Miss Gerhardt develops her observa-
tion "the trend towards recognizing and particu-
larizing the individual continues to stand out in
writing." She also notes the rather differ-
non-Arabist
ent conclusion to which my research had led me
and suggests that the reason "of the divergence
seems to lie in the different points of comparison,"
since she took medieval European and I Greek and
Hiellenistic literature as basis of comparison. This
diagnosis is well taken but may perhaps be supple-
mented by indicating that to me the mere naming
of the fictional characters and their rapid char-
acterization by descriptive adjectives does not equal
individualization. I have no qualms in admitting
that in a small number of stories true individual
characterization has been attempted and even
achieved. By and large, however, I feel that the
characterization could without forcing the matter
be said to be akin to the outlook on its figures
typical for the Mirchen as analyzed by Max Liithi,
Das europaische Volksmdrchen. Form und Wesen
(Bern, 1947). At the same time I am under the
impression that our disagreement is, for the most
part, a disagreement in the usage of words.
G. E. VON GRUNEBAUM
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, Los ANGELES

most of which he could have avoided if he had

A Short History of Islam. By SAYID FAYYAZ
taken the trouble to consult works easily available
MAHMUD. Pp. x, 724. Karachi-London-Dacca:
in print.
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1960.
The author surely does not mean, though he
In the ordinary way, the appearance of a appears
new to say, that there was no faction in Me-
history of Islam from the Pakistan branch ofdinah
the before the arrival of the Prophet (p. 24);
Sa'd ibn abi Waqq5,s, the conqueror of Ctesiphon
Oxford University Press is something of an event,
(al-Mada'in), was commander of a fleet (p. 66),
and the present volume is bound to arouse interest,
apparently by confusion with 'Abd Allah ibn abi
if only on that account. It is of course an ex-
Sarh (cf. p. 98); the great Almanzor (al-Mansu-r,
tremely difficult task to bring the whole Islamic
development, the ideas and events of so many Muhammad ibn abi 'Amir) died on the battlefield
(p. 185); al-Fardbi, here called Muhammad ibn
teeming centuries, within the covers of a single
volume. Among previous one-volume works Muhammad
on ibn Yarkhan (instead of Tarkhan),
Islamic history, Ameer Ali's somewhat dated Shortwho is known to have died in 950, was born during
History of the Saracens (first published 1889,the butreign of al-Ma'miin, i. e. 813-833 (p. 124) ; and
still in print in 1953 and later) no doubt stands Erasmus translated, not the Greek New Testament
nearest to Sayyid Fayyaz Mahmud's new book. into Latin, but the Bible into Dutch (p. 378).
It has to be said that in many respects the new Other hard sayings of Sayyid Fayyaz Mahmud
work falls short of its predecessor. It has in are that, according to Mucawiyah, " Ali, as a repre-
fact,
at first sight, all or most of the marks of a sentative
bad of Bani Omayyah, was answerable to him
book. The production is inelegant (a strange faultfor the assassination of Osman" (p. 53); Harfin
in a work bearing the Oxford stamp), the maps visited
are Egypt (p. 106); the name of al-Mut!', de-
poor and occasionally inaccurate, the text is fullscribed
of as a puppet Caliph, means the Tame (p.
148); more than ten million Muslim coins have
omissions, misspellings, and mistakes of all kinds,
been discovered in various parts of northern
the author permits himself inconsistencies and con-
tradictions and is guilty of a great many errors, Europe (p. 131); there was an observatory called

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