by The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman- The Arabic Epic of Dhat al-Himma (retail) (epub)
Like Mark Polizzotti (Sympathy for the Traitor: A Translation Manifesto, 2018), I see the translator’s job as one of interpretation of the author’s art, re-creating or representing the source text to make it intelligible in the same way that it would be to the original audience. For the original audiences of Sirat al-amira Dhat al-Himma, it was primarily a story of heroic action. I have aimed to retain the excitement and adventure, but I measure the violence against the priority to maintain the sympathy of the protagonist. My version of this sira is, to quote the author Jhumpa Lahiri, “just one of many that might have been. . . . Translation is an act of doubling and converting, and the resulting transformation is precarious, debatable even in its final form.”7 As a scholar and an avid reader, I find this epic entertaining because of its captivating storyline, including reversals of fortunes, revelations of secrets, and reimaginings of the past. Translating a source text some nine hundred years after these tales were composed, I have made every effort to retain its ability to entertain. My hope was not to copy and paste it into English, but to convey its stories as a storyteller, engaging a contemporary audience with an old and largely forgotten tale of a woman who dazzled, persevered, and succeeded against the odds.
NOTES
1. Dhat al-Himma’s greatest part in events takes place in volume 1 of 7, although her death is not mentioned until the final pages of volume 7. There are 951 pages in volume 1 of the Maqanibi edition, with Fatima/Dhat al-Himma starring until the last line. After volume 1, episodes tend to circulate between characters, with many of them focusing more on her son ʿAbdelwahhab, the warrior Al-Battal, and others.
2. Kruk and Ott, “ ‘In the Popular Manner,’ ” 189.
3. ʿAlī ibn Musā al-Maqānibī, Sīrat al-amīra Dhāt al-Himma wa-waladihā ʿAbd al-Wahhāb . . . (Beirut: Al-Maktaba al-Shaʿbiyya, 1980). Initially, I acquired this copy of Sirat Dhat al-Himma because it was the version available in Morocco, where I was working in the early 2000s. This was significant because I was interested in having a copy of the text used by storytellers in Morocco at that time. Wen-chin Ouyang has used this same Beirut edition in her scholarship. It consists of seven volumes, seventy parts, and about six thousand pages. Scholars such as Malcolm Lyons, Remke Kruk, and Rachel Schine have opted for the Cairo 1909 edition, also seven volumes and seventy parts. Other scholars and I have only just begun comparing the Cairo and Beirut printings. There do not seem to be great differences, but this is an area for future research, as is the degree of difference between the other various manuscript and printed editions.
4. For those interested in the translation process of popular Arabic texts, Lena Jayyusi employs a technique for distinguishing between summarized sections (paraphrase) and translated sections (closer to word-for-word literal translation). In her translation of The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan, there are two different fonts, one for paraphrase and one for translation. In an early stage of translating Sirat Dhat al-Himma, I tried using this technique. However, I found it excessively challenging and constraining to have to keep to such a distinction. My most readable translations of this text result from a certain measure of freedom to select, reduce, summarize, and re-create in the interest of retaining the literary value of this entertaining text.
5. Students of Arabic can refer to the Principal Characters section that precedes the English translation for a transliteration of names with all diacritics present.
6. Alta L. Price, “Women Translating the Classics: An Interview with Emily Wilson, Sholeh Wolpé, and Arshia Sattar,” Words without Borders, undated, https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/women-translating-the-classics-emily-wilson-sholeh-wolpe-arshia-sattar.
7. Jhumpa Lahiri, introduction of her translation of Trick, by Domenico Starnone (New York: Europa Editions, 2016), 20.
Acknowledgments
This is a dream project: bringing a fascinating, fun text to light in a new language. It is an honor and pleasure to be the midwife for Dhat al-Himma’s debut for an English-reading public.
I would like to thank the following individuals for reading portions of this manuscript in earlier versions and for encouraging me to continue this work: Carolyn Baugh, Kristen Brustad, Amanda Hannoosh Steinberg, Marcia Lynx Qualey, Rachel Schine, Laury Silvers, Mary Dockray-Miller, and the anonymous evaluator of the translation of an excerpt at the Medieval Feminist Forum.
I would like to thank the following organizations for the financial and institutional support that helped make this work possible: New York University’s Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies for funding the research and first translations that were part of my masters thesis; the Center for Cross Cultural Learning (CCCL) in Rabat, Morocco, and especially Zhor, for helping me locate my copy of the source text; the National Endowment for the Arts for choosing this project for a translation grant; and Penguin Classics for helping to create and distribute this extraordinary book.
Thank you to the following scholars for advice regarding historical research: Marilyn Booth, Khaled Fahmy, Benjamin Koerber, Ulrich Marzolph, Hussein Omar, Dwight Reynolds, Christopher Rose, Everett Rowson, and Maha Saleh.
Thank you to the following people for their helpful communications: Thomas Bauer, Remke Kruk, Malcolm Lyons, Jeannie Miller, and Claudia Ott.
Thank you to the following professors for teaching me how to read and think about literature: Kristen Brustad, Philip Kennedy, Frank Lewis, and Samer Ali.
There are of course many others who helped and who have been an inspiration, and I am deeply grateful. All errors or misjudgments in the text are, of course, entirely my responsibility.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Heath, Peter. The Thirsty Sword: Sirat ʿAntar and the Arabic Popular Epic. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1996.
Hull, Denison. Digenis Akritas: The Two-Blood Border Lord. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1972.
Irwin, Robert, ed. Night & Horses & the Desert: An Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature. New York: Overlook Press, 2016.
Jayyusi, Lena. The Adventures of Sayf Ben Dhi Yazan: An Arab Folk Epic. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press, 1996.
Kruk, Remke. “Back to the Boudoir: Arabic Versions of the Sîrat al-amîr Ḥamza, Warrior Princesses, and the Sîra’s Literary Unity.” In “Der muoz mir süezer worte jehen”: Liber amicorum für Norbert Voorwinden, edited by Ludo Jongen and Sjaak Onderdelinden, 129–48. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997.
———. “Sirat ʿAntar ibn Shaddad.” In Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, edited by Roger Allen and D. S. Richards, 292–306. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
———. The Warrior Women of Islam: Female Empowerment in Arabic Popular Literature. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2014.
———, and Claudia Ott. “ ‘In the Popular Manner’: Sīra-Recitation in Marrakesh Anno 1997,” Edebiyat 10, no. 2 (1999): 183–97.
Lyons, Malcolm. Introduction. Vol. I of The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
———. Analysis. Vol. 2 of The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
———. Texts. Vol. 3 of The Arabian Epic: Heroic and Oral Storytelling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
———, transl. Tales of the Marvellous and News of the Strange. New York: Penguin Classics, 2016.
Magidow, Melanie. “Epic of the Commander Dhat al-Himma.” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality. Subsidia Series no. 9. Medieval Texts in Translation 6. (2019).
Ott, Claudia. “From the Coffeehouse into the Manuscript: The Storyteller and His Audience in the Manuscripts of an Arabic Epic.” Oriente Moderno 83, no. 22 (2003): 443–51.
Reynolds, Dwight Fletcher. “Epic and History in the Arabic Tradition.” In Epic and History, edited by David Konstan and Kurt A. Raaflaub, 392–410. Chichester/Malden,
MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.
———. Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995.
———. “Popular Prose in the Post-Classical Period.” In Arabic Literature in the Post-Classical Period, edited by Roger Allen and D. S. Richards, 243–69. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Schine, Rachel. “Conceiving the Pre-Modern Black-Arab Hero: On the Gendered Production of Racial Difference in Sīrat al-amīrah dhāt al-himmah.” Journal of Arabic Literature 48, no. 3 (2017): 298–326.
———. “Imagining Africa in Arabic Popular Literature: The Racial Worlds of the Popular Sīras.” Middle East Librarians Association (MELA) lecture series. Autumn 2020. Available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FcDTY_mr9A.
———. “Nourishing the Noble: Breastfeeding and Hero-Making in Medieval Arabic Popular Literature.” Al-ʿUsur al-Wusta: The Journal of Middle East Medievalists 27 (2019). Available online at https://www.middleeastmedievalists.com/uw-volume-27-2019/.
———. “Race and Blackness in Early Islamic Thought.” Center for Religion & the Human. Teaching module available online at https://crh.indiana.edu/outreach/engaging-religion/teaching-modules/schine-module.html.
MORE ON ʿANTAR
BBC program on Antarah ibn Shaddad. February 28, 2019. Available online at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002r5v.
Hamilton, Terrick. Antar: A Bedoueen Romance. London: Forgotten Books, 2018.
Ibn Shaddad, Antarah. War Songs, translated by James E. Montgomery with Richard Sieburth. New York: New York University Press, 2018.
Norris, H. T., trans. The Adventures of Antar. Warminster, Wiltshire, England: Aris & Phillips, 1980.
A Note on Pronunciation
Spellings of Arabic words are based on mainstream U.S. English spellings and the International Journal of Middle East Studies (IJMES) transliteration system. In the few words that have been retained directly from Arabic, it will be helpful to readers to keep in mind that “i” is pronounced like “i” in the words pizza and taxi. This will be useful when reading poetry, such as the following excerpt:
Return to him, saying Sir Sidi,
Her dowry request is great
If you want her beauty,
You must knock her down in a duel
If you lose this combat parley,
You renounce all claims to her
Principal Characters
Al-Harith (Arabic: Al-Ḥārith): Fatima’s great-great-grandfather
Jundaba1: Fatima’s great-grandfather, son of Al-Harith
Sahsah (Ṣaḥṣāḥ)2: Fatima’s grandfather, son of Jundaba
Zalim (Ẓālim): Fatima’s uncle, son of Sahsah
ʿIsam (ʿIṣām): Fatima’s aunt, wife of Zalim
Walid (Walīd), pronounced “Waleed”3: Fatima’s cousin, son of Zalim
Mazlum (Maẓlūm), pronounced “Ma-zloom”: Fatima’s father, son of Sahsah
Salam (Salām): Fatima’s mother, wife of Mazlum
Suʿda (Suʿdā): Servingwoman, mother of Marzuq
Marzuq (Marzūq): Fatima’s milk-brother and assistant
Fatima (Al-amīra Dhāt al-Himma), also shortened to Delhimma, or called the Fiend: (al-dāhiyya) or simply the amira (pronounced “ameera”): Primary hero of the epic
Ahmed (Aḥmad)4: Fatima’s master, member of the Bani Tayy
ʿAbdelwahhab (ʿAbd al-Wahhāb): Fatima’s son
Al-Battal (Al-Baṭṭāl): Warrior who joins Fatima and her son
Shumadris5: Bishop of the Byzantine Church
Nura (Nūra): Byzantine warrior princess
The Tale of Princess Fatima, Warrior Woman
ANCESTORS: THE OPENING EPISODE OF THE EPIC1
Al-Harith (Fatima’s great-great-grandfather) was a legendary leader of the Bani Kilab tribe. He led a brave life of hunting in the rugged Yemeni deserts, steppes, and river valleys in the days of the seventh-century caliph ʿAbd al-Malik bin Marwan.2 One day, in the process of capturing some ferocious men and looting a camp, he saw a girl named Al-Rabab, and he fell in love. The girl’s father, emotionally attached to her, cried when Al-Harith approached. Al-Harith asked the father, “Why are you crying, Shaykh?”3
“I’m crying because you’re taking my daughter by force. If you didn’t take her against her will, then I would not cry. If you really want her, then marry her properly. It’s to your advantage, ultimately, to follow the prophet’s example.”
Al-Harith readily released the elderly man, his daughter, and all their people, giving the man one thousand she-camels and a hundred gold dinars as dowry. After ensuring that the marriage was legitimate and respectable, Al-Harith and Al-Rabab moved on into the wilderness.
It was not long before Al-Rabab became pregnant. One night near the end of her pregnancy, she saw in her dreams that she was in a desert, surrounded by plains. As she neared a tall hill, her hem lifted and fire came out from beneath it in incandescent colors. When it reached the ground, it burned everything both near and far. She whirled around, and she too was engulfed in flames.
Al-Rabab started in her sleep in sheer terror. Al-Harith asked, “What’s wrong, dear?”
“I saw something terrible and had such a fright,” and she told him her dream from start to finish.
“Tomorrow I’ll get a diviner. I’ll bring you someone knowledgeable. You can tell him the dream and see what he says.”
At daybreak, Al-Harith rode to the scholar’s camp. There he exchanged greetings and introduced himself, and the men of the camp invited him to sit with them before asking what he needed. He explained, “Gentlemen, I come to you in need. I have seen you defer to this shaykh, and I understand that he is incredibly wise.” Then Al-Harith sat closer to the shaykh, greeted him, and recounted his wife’s vision.
The shaykh replied, “I see that yours is a special situation, and so the interpretation will also be uncommon. For if I am correct, based upon my knowledge of the holy books of all the great peoples, this woman will give birth to an extraordinary child, unmatched in his time for greatness, ethics, and good looks. Yet I fear that the mother will die when he appears safely in this world.”
Al-Harith found the news generally positive. “The important thing is that he will live. His mother and I have seen much, and death comes for rich and poor alike.”
Al-Harith returned to his camp with the shaykh and took him to meet his wife. He told her what the shaykh had said and asked her to recount her dream. Turning to the shaykh, she spoke in verse:
O Shaykh, by the Sacred Family,
By Mina, Zamzam, and the Maqam of Abraham,
I had an astonishing dream
Hear my words, and interpret my vision
I saw that I was in a great desert,
Spacious prairies surrounding me.
Beneath me was a tall sand dune,
My hem lifted, and my tears fell,
And from within me there came a fire
It flared and burned
In many colors, including black
It spread, burning the tent,
Burning the tribes and campsites
It turned, lighting up the darkness, and
I was terrified and afraid:
That is what happened to me in the dream.
The shaykh replied in kind:
I tell you the meaning of the dream,
And what you saw in the dark,
Your child nears, full of fury,
He will be long remembered.
He will arise, a brave and heroic warrior,
Stirring up enemies among every people
He will be raised an orphan, lacking both father and
Mother, and he will travel far and wide
From him there will c
ome a valiant leader
Opposing enemies with the sword
This is the sign I have from my studies
In interpretation of your dream.
Then he recorded the dream and the baby’s genealogy, put it in a tiny silver case, and gave it to Al-Rabab as an amulet for the baby.
Within days, Al-Harith fell ill and died. The leader’s death, in a time of instability, caused chaos. No longer held back by fear and respect for Al-Harith, nearby tribes sought to claim all that was his. For Al-Rabab, the unrest followed a time of peace made possible by her husband’s bravery. She cried hard for the memory of him and composed poetry mourning her loss. In grave danger, she decided to escape with the remaining servant, the others having already fled. Unfortunately, he had remained out of desire for her, which would prove her demise. When Al-Rabab asked the servant for help, he asked what he could do for her.
“Travel with me by night, so that no horses will come across us, and deliver me to my people or to any of the Arab encampments that will offer us sanctuary. We’ll go in plain clothes because I fear that someone might take advantage of me. You know how much your master Al-Harith used to assert himself over the Arabs. I have become a prize. . . . Some hostile leader might demand from me that which men want from women, but I swear by the Victorious, the Almighty Sovereign, I will not give in to any man, good or bad.” 4
“My Lady, I am at your service.” They rode away at night as refugees, leaving most of the wealth behind. When he swerved away from the path, she followed unknowingly. They had been nearing a camp led by a man named Darim, but the servant saw her beauty and could not resist an attempt to seduce her. Al-Rabab resisted with insults and exhorted him to protect her honor and her person, but he claimed that he had waited long enough. She screamed at him that she had declined the offers of great leaders, so how could she give in to a servant? At the height of their argument, the servant knocked Al-Rabab to the ground, and she began bleeding. The servant backed away and asked, “What is this blood?”
