I have recently purchased a copy of the book “Folktales of Egypt”, which is a product of the interviews and other fieldwork headed by Dr. Hasan M. El-Shamy. Finding any information whatsoever on contemporary Egyptian folktales has been very annoying; at best one may find a brief mention in a paper, or one story nestled in a book largely consisting of Maghrebi stories. As such, I will be sharing a few of these stories online, as I strongly believe information should be freely accessible to the public. However, I do recommend buying a copy for yourself; I will not be recounting every story, and there are interesting pre-amble discussions about Egyptian history and the classification of Egyptian folktales. The follow is from the foreword by Richard M. Dorson, and seems to have been originally recounted in Edward Lane’s work (why can’t I escape that man?). I have a copy of the book, and have referenced it before; however I’ll admit to being too lazy to search through it and compare accounts at this moment as I have a PDF copy and it’s incredibly sluggish to load. This story immediately caught my attention for it’s comedic and rebellious value.
“In the town of Ṭanṭā in the Delta, the Turkish governor, Suleyman Aghā, had acquired a reputation for barbarous cruelty. One night he found two peasants sleeping in the government granary, and on interrogating them he learned that one had brought 130 ardebs of corn from an outlying village and the other 60 ardebs from the lands of Ṭanṭā. On hearing this, the governor tongue-lashed the local peasant, who protested that he brought in corn daily, while the village peasant brought his share in but once a week. “Be silent,” thundered the governor, and directed a servant of the granary to hang the peasant from a nearby tree.
Next day the governor returned to the granary and beheld a peasant bringing in a large measure of corn. The hangman explained, “This is the man, sir, whom I hanged by your orders last night; and he has brought 160 ardebs.” “What!” cried out the governor, “has he risen from the dead?” The servant responded, “No, sir; I hanged him so that his toes touched the ground; and when you were gone, I untied the rope; you did not order me to kill him.” The Turkish governor walked off muttering about the ambiguities of Arabic, a tongue in which hanging and killing required different words.”
PG XV, Folktales of Egypt, compiled and translated by Hasan M. El-Shamy
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