African Folktales at Internet Archive: The Sultan's Fool

Since the focus in Week 4 was on stories from southern Africa (specifically stories of the San people, or Bushmen), I decided to switch this week to a focus on northern Africa. The countries of  Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Sudan are considered to be "north African" countries, although there are many different groupings used by different political and cultural organizations; see the Wikipedia articles on North Africa and on MENA (Middle East and North Africa) for more information. The Arabic term Maghreb includes the countries of Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia (while Egypt and Sudan are part of the Mashriq, or eastern part of the Arab world). As these different groupings indicate, north Africa has strong cultural affiliations with the Middle East, with much stronger Arabic and Islamic cultural influence than in sub-Saharan Africa. 

So, for this week of stories from northern Africa, I'll start with this book by Robert Gilstrap and Irene Estabrook: The Sultan's Fool and Other North African Tales, which is just a click away at the Internet Archive.

The authors collected these stories while stationed at a U.S. air base in Libya in the 1950s, and the book was published in 1958. Arabic is the main language spoken in Libya, and the stories in this book reflect Arabic storytelling traditions, stories of sultans and caliphs, of viziers and their courtiers, along with court jesters and fools, all quite different from the stories of indigenous traditions in sub-Saharan Africa that have been the focus of the books in previous weeks.

The illustrations are by Robert Greco; here's a charming illustration for the story of the goat and the jackal:

And here is his illustration for the man who learned the language of the birds which is a story from India that, like many other stories from India, also became popular throughout the Arab world; you can see many versions of this famous folktale collected by Dan Ashliman: The Language of Animals.

So, if you would like to broaden your knowledge of Arabic folktales and also to learn something about north Africa, then this book of folktales is a fun place to start, all just a click away thanks to the Internet Archive!

The Sultan's Fool and Other North African Tales

by Robert Gilstrap and Irene Estabrook