African Folktales at Internet Archive: Wisdom from the Nile

So far this week's North Africa books have come from countries along the Mediterranean, but today's book is different; it's from the Sudan in northeast Africa, where Arabic and English are the official languages. You can find out more about Sudan at Wikipedia, and here is today's book with Sudanese stories, translated from Arabic: Wisdom from the Nile by Ahmed Al-Shahi and F.C.T. Moore, just a click away at the Internet Archive.

As the authors note, the stories were mostly collected by students at the University of Khartoum who worked with storytellers in the communities along the Nile in upper and central Sudan. Here's a map from the book showing the course of the Nile through the Sudan, along with the locations where the stories in the book were collected: 

As always, my favorite stories are the animal stories, and there is a tops-and-bottoms story here which is a folklore motif that you see not only in north Africa, but throughout the whole African continent. In this story, the two farming partners are the sly fox and the foolish hyena: The Deceitfulness of the Fox. As you will see, this story is actually two stories in one, with the poor hyena trying to learn from the last time when the fox outsmarted him... but failing to do so:

The fox said to the hyena, "Let’s grow wheat." 

So they sowed it together, and the wheat ripened for harvest.

The fox said, "Do you want the bottom or the top?"

"Last time," replied the hyena, "when we divided the onions, you cheated me: you took the bottom and gave me the top."

"Very well," said the fox, "this time, do you want to take the bottom and give me the top, or do you want me to take the top and give you the bottom?"

"This time," said the hyena, "I will take the bottom."

So the fox harvested the ears of grain and left the hyena the stalks of the wheat.

There's also a wonderful chain tale (one of my favorite folktale genres), too long to copy here, but you can find it on p. 172, The Cat and the Tree (and you can click here for larger view of screenshot).

Altogether there are 71 stories in this book, providing a beautiful gateway into the Arabic storytelling traditions of north Africa. I was very glad to find this book at Internet Archive! I'll be back tomorrow with more Arabic stories from north Africa... next time, from Egypt. :-)