Arabic-L:LIT:Conversion Story responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Arabic-L: Wed 11 Dec 2002
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
[To post messages to the list, send them to arabic-l at byu.edu]
[To unsubscribe, send message to listserv at byu.edu with first line
reading:
           unsubscribe arabic-l                                      ]

-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1) Subject:Conversion Story response
2) Subject:Conversion Story response

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date:  11 Dec 2002
From: Franklin D Lewis <flewis at emory.edu>
Subject:Conversion Story response

Dil:
   There is a great example of this in Farid al-Din Attar's _Conference
of the Birds_ (Mantiq al-tayr), which Dick Davis has translated
from Persian to English verse for Penguin Classics.  The Story of
Shaykh Sam`an (pp57-75 in Penguin ed.) is about an old Muslim
man - a Sufi saint - who converts to Christianity for love a girl, but
in the end he returns to Islam and the girl converts to Islam as well.
    Attar's poem dates to the late 12th century of the common era,
and so is quite a bit earlier than Cervantes.
     yrs, Frank

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
2)
Date:  11 Dec 2002
From: Dwight Reynolds <dreynold at religion.ucsb.edu>
Subject:Conversion Story response

Dil,

Not a fiction account but an historical one, the autobiography of
`Abdullah al-
Turjuman (Fray Anselmo Turmeda) recounts his conversion to Islam in the
15th
century.  It is a fascinating account that has received little
attention in
English, though it is well known among Spanish scholars due to an
edition and
translation by Mikel de Epalza.

An English translation of the first chapter of the text, which recounts
the
conversion, appears in <Interpreting the Self: Autobiography in the
Arabic
Literary Tradition> (U of California Press, 2001).  The book includes 13
translated autobiographical texts plus an annotated bibliography of 140
Arabic
autobiographies dating from the 9th to the 19th centuries.  Among them
is also
the conversion autobiography of Samaw'al al-Maghribi who converted from
Judaism to Islam in the 12th century.  Both texts are essentially
polemical
works directed at the authors' former co-religionists.

In addition, leaping to more modern times, there are dozens of folk
<Qisas al-
mashayikh> performed at mulids all over Egypt that purport to be
conversion
narratives from all periods of history of Christians, Jews, and Fire-
worshippers to Islam.  I would assume that some of these can be found in
print, but don't have any citations to give you offhand. I would also
assume
that they represent the continuation of a long oral tradition of such
tales,
but again, don't have specific cites for you.

I will be interested to hear of other conversion narratives, fictional
or
otherwise.

Salamat from Granada, Spain,
Dwight

------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
End of Arabic-L:  11 Dec 2002