The Man of Wiles in Popular Arabic Literature

AUTHOR APPROVED The Man of Wiles - terrorist or saint? The Man of Wiles (a relation of the Master Thief, the Trickster or the Fool) appears throughout the popular story-cycles of medieval Arabic literature - proof of this figure's popularity with the audiences of Arab story-tellers. He embodies views acceptable to an otherwise inarticulate part of the population, allowing Islam to be treated in a paradoxical and sometimes humorous light in contrast to conventional piety; and he shares with Odysseus not only his wiles but his function as 'the sacker of cities', redressing the idea that classical Arabic literature is unrelated to anything outside its own borders. The study of this popular form sets out in detail the recorded lives of these Men of Wiles for those to whom the original texts are not available. Malcolm C. Lyons, sometime Sir Thomas Adams's Professor of Arabic at Cambridge University, and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, has worked on Greek-Arabic translation literature, Crusader history and classical Arabic poetry. He was a founder editor of the /Journal of Arabic Literature/ and has published a translation of /The Arabian Nights/.