Summary
From Drower’s collection of Iraqi folktales.
Text
A royal hero called Melek Ahmad sets forth alone in the world, to earn money for marriage. He comes to a beautiful garden, begins to eat, and a rider approaches him like the wind. “But when he came near, he saw that Ahmad was young and comely and sweet to the sight, and instead of striking him, he softened, and took his hand and kissed it. Ahmad returned the kiss, and they sat down and conversed with each other and became friends.” (cf. the encounter of Gilgameš and Enkidu).
Later in the story Tar Aswar said to his friend: “There is a sultan called Qarari Gawer, who has taken tribute (koda, sheep-tax) from me for the past seven years. Let us go and fight with him and get it back from him, so that you may have the money to take your bride.” The king Qarari Gawer has in his army the Pehlewans, who are giants. They fight successfully with the army of giants, until at the last time “they took Melek Ahmad prisoner, and bound his hands … bound him in irons and put him in a hole in the ground. …
As soon as Tar Aswar perceived that Ahmad was not there, he fell to the earth, and did not know day from night, and was like one dead. When he recovered his senses, he wept and neither heard not spoke, until he said, “Servant! If they have not already slain Ahmed, I will bring him back, even if he were seven layers deep in the earth, or seven heavens high in the sky. But if he is dead, I will kill myself.” He rescues his friend, killing two lions guarding the door of the Sultan’s house. Wazir advises the king: “Forty of your ministers and chief people must go barefoot, and bare-headed, with their handkerchiefs about their necks like halters, and you yourself at their head, and must seek Tar Aswar and must say to him, ‘We are yours and all our country is yours’” (cf. Gilgameš and the King of Aratta). Messianic rule of two friends in the country last for seven years, Ahmad takes a wife for himself.
Source (list of abbreviations)
Iraqi folktales
Bibliography
| Buckley 2007, 351-360 | Buckley, Jorunn Jacobsen. Drower's Folk-Tales of Iraq. Piscataway NJ: Gorgias Press 2007. |
Amar Annus
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001567.php
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