As a kind of devilish genie, the ghoul was part of beliefs held by Arabs long before the advent of Islam and was a perceived reality for most people living in Arabia. This paper discusses the nature of the ghoul as depicted in various Arabic sources from the eighth century onwards. Throughout different historical and religious periods, the character of the ghoul remained the same, being represented as an ugly human-like monster that dwelt in the desert and secluded locations, in order to delude travellers by lighting a fire and thus leading them astray. In some cases, this creature was said to have killed travellers. However, when Antoine Galland translated the Arabian Nights into French in the eighteenth century, some features were added to the ghoul in order to intensify its fearful characteristics. For example, Galland emphasised that the ghoul used to dig graves and eat corpses if it needed food, an idea that was never mentioned in any of the Arabic sources. Accordingly, numerous English writers follo...

The Arabic Ghoul and its Western Transformation

Puppets, presence, and memory : the training methods and workshop techniques of Compagnie Philippe Genty, Stuffed Puppet, and Inkfish's 'Three Good Wives'

I argue that the tales told by Hannā Diyāb to Antoine Galland in 1709 (“Aladdin,” “Ali Baba,” “Prince Ahmed and the Fairy Pari-Banou,” “The Enchanted Horse,” and “The Two Jealous Sisters”) are heavily colored by European fairy-tale conventions; that “The Two Jealous Sisters” derives from Giovanni Straparola’s Pleasant Nights ; and that Hannā Diyāb told his tales to Galland not in Arabic but in French. Galland’s journal for 1709 provides direct evidence for the argument, with sixteenth- to eighteenth-century Levantine political history, commercial practice, and educational institutions along with Hannā Diyāb’s autobiography providing explanatory context.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/marvelstales.28.2.0302

East Meets West: Hannā Diyāb and The Thousand and One Nights

"Primary Classic Reader" is a three-level series of classic tales comprising some of the best loved children's stories. The tales have been retold and carefully adapted for ELT. There are five books for each level: Primary 1, Primary 2 and Primary 3. The books are graded in terms of vocabulary and grammar to reflect student's capabilities at each level, making reading for pleasure in English simple and enjoyable. Each book contains: full-colour illustrations alongside the text to support students in their reading and increase motivation; a picture glossary at the back to build up student's vocabulary; a three-page activity section designed to revise and consolidate the vocabulary found in each tale; an accompanying CD with each tale narrated by professional actors.

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves

Here the author explores the varying influences affecting a classic Charles Perrault tale, including possible roots in Arabic "ogre" tales and the impact of the Catalonian oral tradition.

Charles Perrault's "Le Petit Poucet" and its possible Arabic Influences

Published between 1704 and 1717, the first European translation of the collection of stories commonly known in English as The Arabian Nights, is the work of the French Orientalist scholar Antoine Galland (1646-1715). His twelve-volume collection bears the generic title Les Mille et une Nuit,1 contes arabes traduits en francois (The Thousand and One Nights, Arabic tales translated into French). This title veils both the sources exploited and the strategy practiced in rewriting. The collection's initial eight volumes and the beginning of volume 9 are based on Arabic manuscripts of Alf laylah wa-laylah (literally: A Thousand Nights and a Night). In accordance with the practice current in the seventeenth century, they contain an adapted translation of the Arabic source material. The collection's final volumes are based on the oral tales procured from the narrator Hanna, and it was Galland who inserted them into the corpus of his Mille et une Nuits. These tales-particularly the stories of Aladdin and Ali Baba-in the following came to be regarded as prototypes of the stories in the Nights. At the same time, except for the tale of the Ebony Horse, these tales do not form part of the Arabic redaction of the Nights known in scholarship as Zotenberg's Egyptian Recension (ZER). Drawn primarily from oral sources, the set of tales deriving from Hanna's performance leaves more room for creation than do those tales translated from a written source text. In my earlier study on Galland's version, I studied the first part of his collection and, by comparing the translation with the source text, was able to show that Galland had adapted the original Arabic text without essentially distorting it (Larzul, Les traductions). In the present contribution, while taking into account the conclusions from my previous study, I propose to examine the collections second part, the one based on Hanna's tales. In introducing this matter, it is useful to briefly recall Galland's sources. A Work of Creation In the initial eight volumes of his collection, published between 1704 and 1709, Galland exhausted nearly all the material from the Arabic manuscripts of Alf laylah in his possession. The "Histoire du dormeur eveille" ("Story of the Awakened Sleeper")-accomplished by the end of 1708 (Omont December 20, 1708) and published in volume 9 in 1712-is already taken from an Arabic manuscript not belonging to the tradition of Alf laylah. When his written source material was exhausted, Galland in vain tried to obtain more tales from the Levant. Then, in 1709, he had the fortune to become acquainted with Hanna, a Christian (Maronite) Syrian from Alep, in the home of his friend, the traveller Paul Lucas. From him he was able to collect a total of thirteen Arabic tales2 from oral storytelling. Between May 6 and June 3, 1709, he took down the summaries of twelve tales in his journal. Already on May 5, 1709, the "Histoire d Aladdin" ("Story of Aladdin")-with its title alone being mentioned in the Journal-had become a part of his collection. As mentioned in a later notice, Hanna provided him with a copy of the tale in Arabic (Omont, November 3, 1710). At one point, Galland also received a written version of the "Aventures du calife Haroun al-Rachid" ("Story of the Adventures of the Caliph Hârun al-Râshid" [Omont, January 10, 1711]), though the exact status of the final tale contained within this frame story, the "Histoire de Cogia Hassan Alhabbal" ("Story of Khawâja Hasan el-Habbâl") is not clear. Galland might even have received a written copy of the "Histoire d'Ali Baba" ("Story of Ali Baba"), mentioned as "Hogia Baba" in his summary. Unfortunately, none of the written texts prepared by Hanna have survived till the present day,3 and so the only available source for these tales remain Galland's summaries (Abdel-Halim 428-70). In his Journal, Galland never referred to Hanna's narratives as tales of the Mille et une Nuits. Nevertheless, as of November 1710, eighteen months after having heard them, he used these tales when he began to write new tales that he linked to the previous ones by having Shahrazâd tell them. …

Sylvette Larzul

Papers

Further Considerations on Galland's Mille et une Nuits : A Study of the Tales Told by Hanna