Raphael Patai's (1910-1996) lifelong fascination with Arab
folktales began on a Ramadan night in 1933, at a cafe in Jerusalem
where, for the first time, he heard a famous ""qassas"", a
storyteller, tirelessly relate story after story from his vast
repertoire of Arab folktales. In ""Arab Folktales from Palestine
and Israel"", a collection of 28 tales gathered in Palestine and
Israel and one of Patai's last books, Patai explores this rich
cultural tradition. He studies tales from three separate times:
those recounted by a German scholar in 1910-11, those read over
Jerusalem Radio in the winter of 1946-47, and those recorded by the
Israeli scholar Yoel Perez in 1982-84. These fables, part of the
cultural heritage of a small corner of the Arab world, are
translated into an English that remains faithful to the original
Arabic text, presenting to foreign readers a sense of the original
style and a picture of traditional Arab life and customs,
attitudes, social and cultural norms, psychology and values. In
their mingling of the everyday and the fabulous, the stories reveal
both the embellishments on and the deviations from ordinary life
that characterize folklore around the world. The stories tell of
the trials and tribulations of ordinary human beings, the struggle
between good and evil, rich and poor, and men and women, at
different historical moments in response to different stages of
modernization. They also describe fantastic creatures, such as
animals that speak, encounters between humans and supernatural
beings such as jinns and ghouls. Providing insight into Arab
culture, Patai offers extensive notes and commentary on particular
Arabic phrases and images, as well as the ways of speaking and
thinking found among the Arab population, especially the Bedouins,
in Palestine and Israel. Patai also places the stories in the
context of global folktales, and traces the transformations in the
art of storytelling. This collection as a whole presents a
colourful slice of traditional Arab life, value, customs, attitudes
and sociocultural patterns.
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