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Beggars, vagrants and frauds of the Arab-Muslim East in the 10th-14th centuries

Beggars, vagrants and frauds of the Arab-Muslim East in the 10th-14th centuries

Bożena Prochwicz-Studnicka, Beggars, vagrants and frauds of the Arab-Muslim East in the 10th-14th centuries [Żebracy, włóczędzy i oszuści na arabsko-muzułmańskim Wschodzie X-XIV wieku], Wydawnictwo Universitas, Kraków 2006.

The book explores the medieval world of the Arab-Muslim lower classes focusing on the marginal, mostly vagrant elements of an urban society in the Middle East in the late classical and early postclassical periods of Islamic history. The study is based on Arabic sources, written in this period and inspired by the Banū Sāsān tradition as well as those devoted entirely or partly to it. In medieval Arabic literature, the Banū Sāsān (i.e. the Sāsān descendants) was the designation for a dynamic and multidimensional community of frauds, tricksters and vagrants.

The sources are interpreted from the perspective of how the lowest classes of medieval society lived outside the established kinship or professional bonds and the way they earned their livings. The social categories comprise beggars, quack doctors, itinerant amulet and talisman vendors, sorcerers and astrologers as well as animal trainers, rope-dancers, acrobats and jugglers. This part of the book is pivotal in its whole concept which subsequently develops. The last part of the study is devoted to the phenomenon of the Banū Sāsān, which as a social group is presented through the discussion of such elements as group ties, the personality pattern, common values and the inner organisation.


Key words: classical Arabic literature, medieval Islam, the Banū Sāsān, begging, trickery, vagrancy

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