SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This chapter explores the intertextual relationship between Sīrat al-Malik Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan (The Adventures of King Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan), a medieval Egyptian popular epic, and the “Prophetic Königsnovelle” (Prophetic “Kings novel”), an Egyptian “discourse” dating to the Greco-Roman period. Through a comparative reading of two particular variants of Sīrat Sayf and the Prophetic Königsnovelle, I argue that, just as the Prophetic Königsnovelle is a response to the cultural trauma inflicted by external threats and foreign rule in ancient Egyptian times, the story of the foundation of Egypt in both Sīrat Sayf variants can be read as a veiled reworking of the history of the Arab conquest of Egypt in 639–642 CE. Furthermore, despite being separated by centuries, all three texts express the fears surrounding the loss of integrity of the socio-cultural unit through a shared conceptualization of kingship and power. The two Sayf variants branch out to follow quite different plots in their later stages, but the intertextual echoes of the Prophetic Königsnovelle that can be traced within them lend them subtextual thematic conformity, and indicate that the worldview expressed in the older Prophetic Königsnovelle lives on in this late-medieval epic.