Research project The tale “A Thousand and One Nights - as a historical source” using the example of the cycle of tales about Sinbad the Sailor. The tale "A Thousand and One Nights" as a historical source

What was studied in the schools of Western Europe and Byzantium in the early Middle Ages?

What heights in science did Byzantine scientists achieve?

Middle Asia. Islam spread widely in these countries, and with it the Arabic language.

It was called the “Latin of the East.” But unlike Latin in the Middle Ages, Arabic was a living, spoken language for many peoples of the East.

Product of Arab artisans

Every Muslim, if he was going to take any position, had to get an education. Primary schools were private. Education could be continued by attending lectures and conversations with experts in the Koran, Sunnah8 and Sharia. Higher Muslim schools - madrasahs - were opened at the most famous mosques9 in large cities.

Many noble people wanted to have outstanding poets, scientists, and Koran experts in their circle. Writers and scientists most often lived in the palaces of caliphs and emirs, received support and gifts from their patrons, glorified them for this, and dedicated their works to them.

There were many high schools in Cordoba, where prominent scientists gave lectures.

Ancient manuscripts were kept in huge libraries here. 2.

The science. “The most important adornment of a person is knowledge,” said Arab scientists.

The 8th-9th centuries could be called the Arab Renaissance. Then the scientific works of ancient Greek, Iranian, and Indian scientists were translated into Arabic. Especially many translations were made under Harun ar-Rashid and his son.

The “House of Wisdom” was founded in Baghdad, a repository of manuscripts where books were translated and rewritten. Following the example of Baghdad, “Houses of Wisdom” were created in other large cities.

In the 8th-9th centuries, Arab mathematicians were aware of the works of Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes, Indian astronomers and mathematicians. They created algebra and began to use Indian numerals. Gradually, these numbers, called Arabic, penetrated into Europe, became generally accepted throughout the Western world and greatly facilitated the development of mathematics and the sciences and practical knowledge based on it.

Arabic cove| patterns. XIII century

Observatories operated in Baghdad and Damascus. Using sophisticated instruments, astronomers were able to approximately calculate the circumference of the Earth and describe the position of visible stars in the sky. The scientist al-Biruni (973-1048) from Central Asia expressed a brilliant guess that the center of our Universe is the Sun, and the Earth moves around it.

Written history was born among the Arabs along with Islam. Legends and messages appeared about Muhammad, his biography, and information about how Islam arose. Historians glorified the conquests of the Arabs and summarized the history of Roman, Byzantine and Iranian rulers.

The Arabs held geography in high esteem. Arab travelers and merchants described the countries of the caliphate, India, China, and penetrated far into Africa and Eastern Europe. They compiled maps of the countries and seas known to them.

Arabian ship. Miniature of the 13th century. I

9! I Using textbook information II

guess what this ship could have carried and where it could have sailed.

In an Arab pharmacy. Miniature of the 13th century.

What could they sell in this pharmacy?

Medicine developed successfully. In Central Asia lived the great scientist Ibn Sina (980-1037) (in Europe he was called Avicenna) - philosopher, astronomer, geographer, physician, poet. He owns more than a hundred scientific works. In the East, Ibn Sina was called the “chief of scholars.” Ibn Sina became especially famous as a doctor. In his famous work on medicine, he described the signs of many diseases that before him they could not distinguish. 3.

Literature. Along with goods, merchants and camel drivers brought wonderful tales, stories about amazing travels and adventures, and funny stories from other countries. They were told in the palaces of the caliph and the nobility, in the bazaars, streets and houses of Baghdad. From these tales, the world-famous collection “A Thousand and One Nights” was later compiled, which absorbed the traditions and legends of many peoples.

Even before Islam, the Arabs developed a rich poetry that reflected the life and customs of nomads. Each tribe had its own recognized1 poet who performed at the festivals. Pre-Islamic poets sang of the brave warrior, generous and true to his word. Acquaintance with the culture of the conquered peoples changed the interests and tastes of the Arabs. The poets were now interested in eternal questions: about good and evil, about life and death, about wealth and poverty, about love and betrayal, about the beauty of the world and its sorrows.

Poetry has achieved particular success in Iran and Central Asia; here poets usually wrote works in the Tajik-Persian language - Farsi.

One of the most famous poets was Ferdowsi (934-1020). For more than 30 years he worked on the poem “Shahname” (“Book of Kings”). It tells about the struggle of the Iranian people against the conquerors, glorifying the exploits of legendary heroes. Ferdowsi highly valued knowledge: “You look for ways to understand words, go through the whole world to gain knowledge.”

Carving in the Alhambra in Granada.

Art. Of all the arts, architecture was the most developed in the caliphate. Builders erected magnificent palaces, tombs and fortresses for the caliphs. The whole world knows the Alhambra - the emir's palace in the Spanish city of Granada.

Mosques were built in cities. The mosque served not only as a place of prayer, but also as a courtroom, a repository for books and money collected for the poor, and simply a club where one could talk with friends.

The main building of the mosque is a quadrangular prayer hall, open to the courtyard.

What were the walls of buildings in Arabic architecture decorated with?

The vast courtyard was usually surrounded by a gallery with columns, where those gathered rested and took shelter from the sun; in the middle of the courtyard, believers performed ablutions by a pool of running water. Sometimes a dome was erected over the mosque, but more often the roof was flat. Many columns, graceful and light, filled the prayer hall. During prayer, everyone stood facing Mecca and repeated all the movements of the clergyman standing in front of them - the mullah, or imam.

The interior decoration of the sword

Mosque of Omar in Jerusalem. you are the simplest, there is no

End of the 8th century furniture, no expensive utensils, no

musical instruments. The floor is covered with carpets, on which visitors are seated, having previously left their shoes behind the doors; sometimes the walls are painted only with sayings from the Koran. But the Arabic alphabet is so beautiful that these sayings look like a beautiful pattern - a ligature of letters. Images of not only Allah, but also all living beings are prohibited in Islam. Minarets were erected near the mosque - high

Mosque in Cordoba

I 9| I What parts of the mosque described in the text can be found. in the photographs on p. 82-83?

towers from which special ministers called believers to prayer five times a day.

Arab buildings were richly decorated with stone carvings, tiles, and mosaics.

The walls of the buildings were covered with arabesques - complex geometric patterns of intersecting and intertwining lines. 5.

The meaning of the culture of the caliphate. Europeans received a lot of valuable scientific knowledge from the Arabs. The works of Arab mathematicians, doctors and astronomers served as guidance for the scientists of the medieval Euro- in Kairouan. Tunisia. py. From the Arabs, Europeans received not only numbers and a new counting system, but also knowledge of astronomy, including the names of many stars; they learned from them to draw more advanced maps, and later to use a compass and globe.

Avicenna's work on medicine, translated into Latin, was a reference book for European doctors until the 17th century.

Muslim art influenced the architecture, fashion and customs of Spain and Southern Italy, and many African countries.

Europeans became acquainted with the culture of the countries of the caliphate mainly through Spain conquered by the Arabs. Many works of ancient Greek scientists and writers, as well as thinkers from the countries of the caliphate, became known in Europe thanks to the Arabs.

E1. How can we explain the similarities in scientific achievements in the Caliphate and Byzantium? 2. What phenomenon in the history of Western Europe of the 8th-9th centuries did scientists name, like the Arab one? Revival? Consider why scholars have applied the same definition to these cultural eras. 3. Look at pictures of Arabic buildings and explain how their beauty is achieved. 4. Compare the images of the Christian church and the mosque: what do you see as common features, how do they differ? 5. Find out from your parents or friends if there are mosques in your city. If there is, then collect information: when were they built, according to whose designs, what are their artistic features.

Let's sum it up

You learned that:

in the 6th - 7th centuries, Bedouin tribes lived on the Arabian Peninsula and caravan trade routes passed through;

in the 7th century a new religion arose in Arabia - Islam;

as a result of the Arab conquests, a huge state arose - the Arab (and then Baghdad) caliphate;

in the Arab Caliphate, education was valued, there was highly developed science, literature, art, and large-scale construction was carried out;

Europeans adopted valuable scientific knowledge and cultural traditions from the Arabs.

Questions and assignments for Chapter III

^ 1. Why did Islam become a world religion? 2. What was the influence of Islam on? development of the Arab Caliphate? 3. What peoples, besides the Arabs, invaded the territory of Western Europe in the 8th-10th centuries? 4. Fill out the comparative table “Empires of the Early Middle Ages in their Heyday.” Comparison questions Empire

The Great Byzantine Empire under Justinian The Arab Caliphate under Harun al-Rashid When did it reach its peak? What territory did it occupy? What peoples inhabited it? What was the state religion? Comparison questions Empire

The Great Byzantine Empire under Justinian The Arab Caliphate under Harun al-Rashid How was it governed? What goals did the rulers set for themselves? What were their main military opponents? What achievements did you become famous for? At the end of the work, summarize: highlight the similarities and differences in the development of the empires that you compared. 5. What inventions and discoveries made by the Arabs or spread thanks to them do humanity still use today? 6. Arrange in chronological order the events of the history of the Arabs in the VI-XI centuries: a) the resettlement of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina (Hijra); b) the conquest of Baghdad by the Seljuk Turks; c) the reign of Harun al-Rashid; d) Arab invasion of the Iberian Peninsula. 7. What made Ibn Sina famous for (choose the correct answers): a) wrote more than a hundred scientific works; b) wrote the poem “Shahnameh”;

c) guessed that the Earth moves around the Sun; d) described the signs of various diseases?

Creative works and projects

Research project “Tales of the Arabian Nights as a historical source.” Study the text of the Arabian Nights fairy tales (for example, the cycle about Sinbad the Sailor) from the point of view of the historical and geographical information that they contain. Find out what fairy tales can tell about people’s lifestyles, their values, attitudes towards foreigners, and the peculiarities of Arab culture and religion. Can fairy tales be considered a reliable historical source? State your findings.

Group creative project “Palace of the Caliph”. Using art albums and Internet resources, study the features of Arabic calligraphic writing, types of ornaments in Muslim art, and the most traditional colors. Imagine that you are medieval artists who received an order to create and decorate the palace of the caliph or a new mosque at his court. Discuss and draw a plan of the building. Divide individual elements of the work among group members and draw sketches of the decoration of the building. Prepare the work and act out its presentation to the Caliph in class.

Research project

on literature

Reflection of the history of the East in the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights”

Performed

10th grade student

Volkova Polina Alekseevna

VORONEZH

2016

Introduction…………………………………………………………….………..3

Chapter I. History of the collection “A Thousand and One Nights”………………4

Chapter II. Classification of fairy tales in the collection and their features……………….…….5

Chapter III. Reflection of the picture of the medieval eastern world in the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights” ………………………………………….…….… 7

Conclusion…………..………………………………………………………………………………9

References……………………………………………………………11

INTRODUCTION

There are many ways to cover history: present facts, analyze socio-economic phenomena in society, describe the life and customs of society, consider the mentality of society on a source study basis, etc. The mentality of the East was also studied on a broad source basis; here the main source of historical information was the collection of fairy tales “A Thousand and One Nights”. The East was a kind of historical “cauldron” in which peoples mixed, moved, and displaced each other. Therefore, the materials contain a mixture of various facts, which complicates research work. Therefore, it is advisable to take that territory in the East that is most affected in “A Thousand and One Nights” - the Arab Caliphate during its dawn. This is a huge territory from the Indus to the Pyrenees, from the Caucasus Mountains to the southern border with the Sahara. The chronology of the study is also limited: the end of the 8th – 13th centuries. - the period of existence of the Arab Muslim state. This four-hundred-year period was the most fruitful in the history of medieval Arab-Muslim culture. The peoples have retained their vitality, embodied in those seemingly ingenuous works that have been preserved in the main storylines to this day. Folklore was their historical memory, the loss of which was tantamount to the death of the entire people.

Thus, a fairy tale is a product and repository of folk mentality, psychology and worldview - everything that is sometimes called national character.

Many world-famous historians have turned to the collection of fairy tales “A Thousand and One Nights”. For example, Danish scholar Irme Estrup identified and classified 48 popular fairy tales from the collection. Fairy tales were also studied by A. Ya. Gurevich, M. Blok, J. Le Goff, V. Ya. Propp, E. B. Tylor.

We are our own purpose We set out to find out facts that can tell us about the way of life of people, their values, the characteristics of Arab culture and religion, and also try to answer the question: can the tales of the collection “A Thousand and One Nights” be considered a historical source.

CHAPTER I. HISTORY OF THE COLLECTION “A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS”

“One Thousand and One Nights” is a collection of fairy tales in Arabic, which gained worldwide fame thanks to the French translation by A. Galland (incomplete, published from 1704 to 1717). The question of the origin and development of the Arabian Nights tales has not been fully clarified to this day. Attempts to look for the ancestral home of this collection in India, made by its first researchers, have not yet received sufficient justification. The prototype of the “Nights” on Arab soil was probably made in the 10th century. translation of the Persian collection “Khezar-Efsane” (A Thousand Tales). This translation, called “A Thousand Nights” or “A Thousand and One Nights,” was, as Arab writers of that time testify, very popular in the capital of the Eastern Caliphate, Baghdad. We cannot judge his character, since only the story that frames him, which coincides with the frame of “A Thousand and One Nights,” has reached us. Various stories were inserted into this convenient frame at different times, sometimes whole cycles of stories, in turn framed, for example. “The Tale of the Hunchback”, “The Porter and the Three Girls”, etc. Some researchers count at least five different editions (editions) of the collection of fairy tales under that name throughout the literary history of “1001 Nights”. One of these versions was very widespread in the 12th-13th centuries. in Egypt, where in the XIV-XVI centuries. “A Thousand and One Nights” took on the form in which it came to us. Individual tales in the collection often existed independently, sometimes in a more common form. It can be reasonably assumed that the first editors of the text of fairy tales were professional storytellers who borrowed their material directly from oral sources; Under the dictation of storytellers, tales were written down by booksellers who sought to satisfy the demand for manuscripts of The Arabian Nights

When selecting fairy-tale material for recording, professional storytellers always had a specific audience in mind - this is directly evidenced by the inscription on one of the surviving manuscripts of “The Nights.” Not always having material for the full number of nights, copyists resorted to repeating tales that were almost identical in plot, or filling the gap with anecdotes borrowed from numerous prose anthologies in Arabic literature.

CHAPTER II. CLASSIFICATION OF TALES IN THE COLLECTION AND THEIR FEATURES

The tales of Scheherazade can be divided into three main groups, which can roughly be called heroic, adventurous and picaresque tales. The group of heroic tales includes fantastic stories, which probably form the oldest core of the Arabian Nights and some of their features go back to its Persian prototype Khezar-Efsane, as well as long knightly romances of an epic nature. The style of these stories is solemn and how gloomy; the main characters in them are usually kings and their nobles. In some fairy tales of this group, such as In the story about the wise maiden Takaddul, a didactic tendency is clearly visible. In literary terms, heroic stories are treated more carefully than others; turns of popular speech are expelled from them, poetic inserts - for the most part quotations from classical Arab poets - on the contrary, are abundant. “Court” tales include, for example: “Qamar-az-Zaman and Budur”, “Vedr-Basim and Dzhanhar”, “The Tale of King Omar ibn-an-Numan”, “Ajib and Tarib” and some others. We find different moods in “adventurous” short stories, which probably arose in the trade and craft environment. Kings and sultans appear in them not as beings of a higher order, but as the most ordinary people; the favorite type of ruler is the famous Harun al-Rashid, who reigned from 786 to 809, that is, much earlier than the tales of Shahrazad took their final form. Mentions of Caliph Harun and his capital Baghdad cannot therefore serve as a basis for dating the Nights. The real Harun ar-Rashid was very little like the kind, generous sovereign from the Arabian Nights, and the fairy tales in which he participates, judging by their language, style and everyday details found in them, could only have developed in Egypt. In terms of content, most of the tales are “adventurous”. These are most often love stories, the heroes of which are rich merchants, almost always doomed to be passive executors of the cunning plans of their lovers. The latter usually play a leading role in fairy tales of this type - a feature that sharply distinguishes “adventurous” stories from “heroic” ones. Typical tales for this group are: “The Tale of Abu-l-Hasan from Oman”, “Abu-l-Hasan the Khorasan”, “Nima and Nubi”, “The Loving and the Beloved”, “Aladdin and the Magic Lamp”.

“Pilicious” tales naturalistically depict the life of the urban poor and déclassé elements. Their heroes are usually clever swindlers and rogues - both men and women, for example. immortals in Arabic fairy-tale literature Ali-Zeybak and Delilah-Khitritsa. There is no trace of respect for the upper classes in these tales; on the contrary, “roguish” tales are full of mocking attacks against government officials and clergy - it’s not for nothing that Christian priests and gray-bearded mullahs to this day look very disapprovingly at anyone who holds a volume of “A Thousand and One Nights” in their hands. The language of the “rogue” stories is close to colloquial; There are almost no poetic passages that are incomprehensible to readers inexperienced in literature. The heroes of picaresque fairy tales are distinguished by courage and enterprise and present a striking contrast with the pampered harem life and idleness of the heroes of “adventurous” fairy tales. In addition to the stories about Ali-Zeybak and Dalil, the picaresque tales include the magnificent story about Matuf the shoemaker, the tale about the fisherman caliph and the fisherman Khalifa, which stands on the border between stories of the “adventurous” and “punctual” type, and some other stories.

The fairy-tale cycles that stand out in “The Arabian Nights” are “The Travels of Sinbad”, “Saif al-Muluk”, “The Seven Viziers”. These stories probably found their way into the collection through literary means and were included in it later than other tales.

From its very appearance in Galland's translation, The Arabian Nights has had a significant influence on European literature, art and even music. No less significant is the influence of “The Thousand and One Nights” on the folklore of the peoples of Europe and Asia, about which extensive works have been written, some of which are listed below in the bibliography.

CHAPTER III. REFLECTIONMEDIEVAL PICTURESOF THE EASTERN WORLD IN THE TALES OF “A THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS”

Bizarre fantasy and complex adventures are whimsically intertwined in Arabic tales with a realistic depiction of the life and everyday life of different segments of the population of a medieval eastern city. Most of the tales are dated to the reign of Caliph Harun al-Rashid (8th century), a feudal despot, to whom fairy-tale tradition attributes extraordinary wisdom and justice. Many fairy tales are reminiscent of medieval urban novels (fabliaux) with their characteristic crude comedy. The heroes are often artisans, day laborers, and the poor, who act ironically toward representatives of secular authorities and the clergy. Smart, dexterous commoners always find a way out of any difficult situation and fool the arrogant rich.

As mentioned above, one of the features of Arabic tales is their creation and dissemination in various social environments. There are three groups of Arabic tales: Bedouin, peasant and urban. The hero of a Bedouin tale is a Bedouin - an ordinary member of the tribe, or a tribal leader (sheikh) or one of his relatives. The plot of the Bedouin tale can be described as follows: the hero finds pasture for his tribe and repels the raid of a hostile tribe.
The hero of a peasant fairy tale is, accordingly, an ordinary peasant. Peasant folklore also includes some tales about animals. However, not all tales written down in rural areas can be considered peasant tales, since they could have been heard by storytellers in other cities. An example of such a tale is given in the article by V.V. Lebedev “The Verbal Art of the Heirs of Shahrazade”, where the author says that the fairy tale “The Servant and the Tsar’s Daughter”, although it was written down in the Lebanese village of Bishmizzin, is not a peasant fairy tale. Lebedev suggests that the narrator, a builder by profession, heard this tale from a Christian in Beirut or another coastal city. Most of the existing recordings of Arabic tales were made in the cities of Cairo, Damascus, Mosul (Iraq), Tripolis (Libya), Tunisia. In cities, along with urban ones, Bedouin and peasant tales have been recorded. However, in urban fairy tales you can feel the flavor of an eastern city - narrow streets, bazaars, artisan shops. Examples of urban fairy tales are such fairy tales as “The Judge and the Cook” and “Seven Divorced Women.” It is possible to quite accurately determine the social environment in which fairy tales were created and disseminated. In the countryside these are peasants of average income, in the city - the lower strata of the population: artisans, traders, small employees.
Fairy tales reflect the people's worldview and express people's ideas about social justice. The most stereotypical outcome can be called the marriage of a hero from the people to the king's daughter or the marriage of a simple girl and a prince. There are also more original stories where heroes achieve improvement in their well-being in other ways.
Arabian tales are extremely varied in content. In some of them, the geographical discoveries of the Arabs and the adventures of brave sailors, known from literary sources, were fantastically reflected.

The framing story motivates the appearance of the entire collection: the cruel king Shahriyar executes each of his new wives the next morning. Shahrazad, who faced the same fate, tells the king a fairy tale and breaks it off at the most interesting point. Shahriyar postpones the execution to listen to the end of the interesting story. This continued for a thousand and one nights until the king announced his decision to pardon Shahrazad, who had given birth to three sons during this time.

CONCLUSION

What is "A Thousand and One Nights"? This question is asked by an attentive reader who is trying to understand the intricacy of the most heterogeneous plots that are born here from each other, interrupting each other, which end like lines, in order to meet in a slightly modified form in the next narrative. What is included in the broad frame of the story about the resourceful Shahrazade and the cruel Shahriyar, avenging his insulted honor? Endlessly expanding, this frame contains a whole world, living according to its own laws, reflecting the life of many generations of different peoples, whose creativity for several centuries flowed into the general flow of the great Arab-Muslim culture, nourished the folk traditions of Iran, Iraq, Sirin and especially Egypt , where the collection of "A Thousand and One Nights" received its final design. Let's try to penetrate this world from the inside, to understand its patterns, contradictions, inevitable in such a complex unity.

"A Thousand and One Nights" is a striking example of the decorativeness inherent in all types of Arab-Muslim art. The verbal design of the stories is as colorful as the sparkling gold and azure ornament of oriental manuscripts, mosques, and openwork lamps, and the apparent disorder of the stories is fused by the wonderful harmony of the “eloquent word,” which united the disparate and often contradictory parts of this grandiose arch into a single whole.

United by the vibrant art of Arab folk storytellers, the Arabian Nights is home to emirs and sultans, artisans, merchants and tricksters. What is the attitude towards the various layers of society thriving in the world of this grandiose vault, who is its main character? By answering this question, we will most accurately determine who created “A Thousand and One Nights”, who selected from the boundless wealth of medieval Arab “scholarly” and folk literature the individual stories included here, fairy tales, parables and stories about famous people Arab antiquity and the Middle Ages? In the Middle Ages, books like “Mirrors” were widespread in Arabic written literature, addressed to kings and courtiers, who were prescribed strict etiquette, recommendations were given on how to manage their subjects, how to instill respect for authority. These books also included a minimum of information on the basics of all sciences known at that time.

And even the stories from chronicles and anthologies included in “A Thousand and One Nights” about real historical figures - caliphs, theologians, scientists and poets who became famous in different parts of the caliphate in the 7th-12th centuries, during the era of the greatest flourishing and glory of Arab-Muslim culture, seem to have a fairy-tale halo. These stories represent, as it were, the finishing touch, and without them the world of One Thousand and One Nights would have lost its uniqueness. It is difficult to say which part of The Arabian Nights is more interesting - each has its own merits. But, having become acquainted with “A Thousand and One Nights”, with its fairy tales and short stories, instructive parables and stories of extraordinary adventures, you feel that you have entered a new, wonderful world that will remain in your memory for a long time, if not forever.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Selected fairy tales, stories and stories from “The Thousand and One Nights” (4 books). - M., Pravda, 1986.

2. “The Book of One Thousand and One Nights”, trans. from Arabic, preface. and comments by M. A. Salye, ed. acad. I. Yu. Krachkovsky, ed. "Academia". - M. - L., 1929.

3. Shidfar V. BOOK FAR AND NEAR. - M., 1975

4.Estrup I., Research on the history of “A Thousand and One Nights”, its origin and development. Translation from Danish by T. Lange, ed. and with a preface. prof. A. E. Krymsky, “Works on Oriental Studies published by the Lazarevsky Institute of Oriental Languages,” vol. VIII.- M., 1905.

14. News from the Kazan diocese. 1873. No. 11. P.328-330. TsGA CR. F.225. Op.1. D.286.L.

15. Calculated according to the data of the Central State Archive of the Czech Republic. F.225. Op.2. D.36. L.311-314, 472; National Archive of the Republic of Tatarstan (NA RT). F. 4. D.5240. L.51-52.

16. TsGA CR. F.225. Op.2.D.67. L.499; NART. F.4. Op. 1. D.5361. L.5-6.

17. Calculated according to the data of the Central State Archive of the Czech Republic. F.225. Op.2. D 2. L.37-80.

18. ON RT. F.4. Op. 62. D.36. L. 144-317; TsGA CR. F.225. Op.1.D. 117. L. 1-361.

19. Guiding decrees of the Holy Governing Synod for the Orthodox clergy, 1721-1878. M., 1879. No. 90.

20. Mikhailov S.M. Why do the Chuvash choke and what measures should the government take to prevent this phenomenon // Mari Archaeographic Bulletin. 2003. No. 1 (No. > 13). P. 160; NART. F.4. Op.82. D.212. L.401-579; TsGA CR. F.225.0p.1.D.257. L.2-319.

21. ON RG. F.4. Op. 1. D.5238. L.16, 24, 29-30, 65-66, 69-73, 91-94, 121-122, 127-128, 141143.

EVDOKIMOVA ANZHELIKA NIKOLAEVNA was born in 1976. Graduated from Chuvash State University. Postgraduate student of the Department of Source Studies and Archival Studies, assistant of the Department of Medieval and Modern History of the Fatherland. He is studying the history of the Christianization of the Chuvash people. Has 6 publications.

I.A. LIPATOVA, A.I. NAZAROV

TALES OF “THE ONE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS” AS A SOURCE ON THE HISTORY OF THE EASTERN MENTALITY

There are many ways to cover a story. You can present the facts of political history (the emergence and collapse of states, wars, etc.) or focus your attention on the analysis of socio-economic phenomena in society, you can study the history of spiritual culture, describe the life and customs of society; to establish what motivated an individual, as well as the masses of people throughout history, what made them act this way and not otherwise. The answer to this question is sought in the study of the deep forms of human culture and human consciousness - in mentality.

This word is now often used in cultural literature. They talk about the mental state of different eras, different peoples, different social groups. The term “mentality” itself was actively put into circulation in the historical studies of the French school “Annals” (Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre, Jacques Le Goff, etc.), which examined the mentality of the Western European Middle Ages on a broad source study basis and comes from the Latin word mens - mind, thinking, way of thinking, mental disposition.

For several decades, mentality as a scientific problem was almost not studied in our country; in any case, its study was reduced to a minimum. The official voice of the past era, of course, negatively assessed such exceptions. In recent years, signs of a changing situation have been especially clearly visible. They can be seen in the appearance of the still few books, articles and even collections of articles about certain aspects of traditional mentality. In general, in Russian historiography, the problems of the history of mentality have so far been poorly covered and therefore provide ample opportunities for research.

Since the tales of “1001 Nights” were studied as a source on the history of the mentality of the East, it is necessary to keep in mind that the East is an ancient cultural cauldron in which streams of peoples moved, mixed and displaced each other. In this space there are all stages of culture from the almost primitive Ainu to the Chinese who reached the highest cultural peaks. Therefore, there is a mixture in Eastern materials, which makes research extremely difficult. And to make our work easier, let’s take the territory in the East that is most affected in the tales of “A Thousand and One Nights” - the Arab Caliphate during its heyday. This is a huge territory from the Indus to the Pyrenees, from the Caucasus Mountains to the southern border of the Sahara.

Hence the limitation of the chronology of the study. The field of research will be the end of the 8th-13th centuries. - the period of existence of the Arab Muslim state. This four-hundred-year period, starting from the second half of the 8th century. and until the beginning of the 13th century, was the most fruitful in the history of medieval Arab-Muslim culture.

Turning to the study of folk culture, you are faced with the lack of development of both the problems and the sources - their very search and selection represent a new task, interesting and difficult. It's not that there are few sources. We only need to find out what exactly should be considered sources for the study of a given subject, that is, to find these sources among the monuments that are well known to specialists, but usually not used for the purposes that interest us. The peoples have retained their vitality, embodied in those seemingly ingenuous works that have been preserved in the main storylines to this day. By passing on their culture to their descendants, the peoples of the East thereby preserved that unbreakable thread of time that connects the past with the future. Folklore was their historical memory, the loss of which was tantamount to the death of the people.

Thus, a fairy tale is a product and repository of the people’s mentality, that is, their (the people’s) historical memory, psychology, worldview - everything that is sometimes called national character.

It is known that the development of issues related to the study of mentality requires either new approaches to known historical sources, or

attraction of non-traditional materials. In this case, folk tales, as an integral element of folk culture, are quite suitable as a source on the history of mentality.

Currently, the latest quantitative research methods are widely used in many areas of historical science. This is primarily due to the great interest of historians in the use of mathematical methods that provide a deeper and more comprehensive study of the historical process, as well as the advent of computers with a significant amount of memory.

However, in recent years, along with the traditional classical analysis of the content of documents, historians have begun to actively use quantitative, formalized methods of analysis. The “core” of quantitative methods used to analyze the content of text sources consists of statistical techniques. Their essence boils down to finding such easily countable signs, features, and properties of a document (for example, the frequency of use of certain actions and terms), which would necessarily reflect the essential aspects of the content. Then the qualitative content becomes measurable and becomes accessible to precise computational operations. The results of the analysis become more objective.

This work does not pretend to be a complete analysis and is purely exploratory in nature. Its base is a small corpus (48 fairy tales). This can cause a number of errors, in particular, the loss of certain types of fairy tales from view. At the same time, such a sample seems representative for fulfilling the objectives of the work.

The identification of the 48 most popular fairy tales from the collection was carried out taking into account the Danish scientist Irme Estrup. He gave a direct logical conclusion to everything that was done by his predecessors in the study of these tales, therefore the selection based on his classification is considered completely justified.

The literature used can only be described as supporting. These are works devoted to the philological study of the fairy tales “1001 Nights” (I. Estrup, M. Gerhardt), issues of mentality (A. Ya. Gurevich, M. Blok, J. Le Goff), problems of oral folk art (E. M. Meletinsky , V. Ya. Propp, E. B. Taylor), as well as collections of articles edited by I. D. Kovalchenko and B. M. Kloss, which are specifically devoted to the application of mathematical methods in historical research.

The purpose of the work is to recreate some elements of the mentality of the peoples of the East (Arabs, Persians, Hindus) using the fairy tales “A Thousand and One Nights” translated by M. Salye as a source.

The book “One Thousand and One Nights” is a gigantic collection that became known in Europe from the beginning of the 18th century, when in 1704 a small book was published in the Barbin bookstore in Paris, the success of which exceeded the wildest expectations of its publishers. The tales of the Arabian Nights owe their enormous popularity in Europe to a large extent to the talent of their first translator A. Galland. Galland's translation did not introduce Europeans to the entire “A Thousand and One Nights” - it contains only the initial part of the collection we now know.

It is now absolutely clear that “A Thousand and One Nights” was not the creation of any one author. Parts of this amazing monument were formed and polished over many centuries, and only by the 16th-18th centuries. the vault was formed in the form in which it is known to the modern reader.

Like other works of folk literature, “A Thousand and One Nights” was the product of the work of many generations of professional storytellers and copyists and does not have any specific author or even compiler. That is why its language is not the same, in some places it is almost highly classical, in others it is almost common; That’s why the division of the collection by night and the order of tales in different lists are different; This is why the same motifs and even the same fairy tales are repeated in different nights of the Arabian Nights often, sometimes even with literal accuracy. However, the authors of individual stories in the collection, regardless of the degree of artistic talent, consciously or unconsciously obeyed collectively developed norms in their work and created in the spirit of a common tradition. This gives the book’s motley composition a certain integrity and makes the collection a unified work of art.

Most oriental fairy tales are short stories; in second place are magical tales, and the last place is occupied by tales about animals, cumulative, etc.

A mature fairy tale begins with a special formula, which researchers call a fairy tale beginning. It is always of an indefinite nature: “It has come to me, O happy king...”. More than half of the Arabian Nights fairy tales begin with this very beginning. The fairy tale itself usually opens with a plot - a conflict. The fairy tale always ends with a denouement.

Based on the study of oriental fairy tales, the following features of the oriental mentality can be identified. An important place in determining mentality is to clarify the problem of the main character. The ideal personality in fairy tales is reflected in the appearance of a positive hero; he becomes the central figure of the fairy tale. The ideal hero is an exponent of the public ideal, and his happy fate is a means of realizing the people's ideal. The antihero, in his own right,

In other words, it acts as a bearer of unacceptable, condemned human qualities.

In general, 85.4% of all the main characters of eastern folk tales (magical and everyday) are men, 10.4% are women and 6.3% are children. Moreover, the age of men in fairy tales is predominantly average - 50%, young people (under 30 years old) become the main characters in 39.6%, and only 10.4% - old people.

The most popular social types are as follows: merchants (33.3%), artisans (27.2%), sultans and their children (18.7%), travelers (12.5%). Calculations are complicated by the fact that over the course of many fairy tales the hero changes his social position (for example, Aladdin, who from the son of a tailor becomes the son-in-law of the Sultan; or Ali Baba, who turns from a woodcutter into a merchant). This proves that social mobility in the traditional East, except for caste India, is very noticeable; it cannot be compared with class isolation in feudal Europe. Yesterday's slave often becomes an all-powerful emir, a poor man - a high-ranking intellectual official in the system of the ruling bureaucracy.

As for the appearance of the antihero, much more attention is paid to women here (29.1%), these are, as a rule, witch wives or old women-procuress. Children can also be carriers of negative qualities (6.3%). Men here (66.7%) represent the six most popular social types: artisan - 22.7%, thief, robber - 18.5%, king, sultan - 16.5%, vizier - 16%, ifrit, spirit - 13 .4%, merchant - 12.9%. Regarding their age, we can say the following: 50% are middle-aged people, 29.1% are young people under 30 years old and 18.7% are old people.

Based on the data of mathematical and statistical analysis, we can conclude that the most optimal social type is the merchant. This encouragement of a commercial streak in the character of the protagonist is understandable. The role of transit trade, including shipping, was unusually large. Trans-Arab trade contributed to the emergence and flourishing of a number of Arab cities, such as Mecca, which became large trading centers in the middle of the 1st millennium. Yesterday's nomad, today's merchant, was a passionary in relation to the peasant farmer. The peasant does not want change, he fears it. The merchant, and especially the artisan, and the entire city life are closely connected with the market. It is here that there is wide scope for initiative, entrepreneurship, and business energy.

From the point of view of the historical sociology of personality, interpersonal relationships are of great importance for establishing behavioral types.

The problem of conflict is one of the main ones in assessing mentality, which implies different ways to overcome it - through confrontation or compromise - depending on the type of conflict: social, intra-family

main, supernatural - and other circumstances. Naturally, conflict is the plot of most fairy tales (92.9%), and in one fairy tale there can be several of them, as well as ways to resolve them. The relevance of various types of conflicts is as follows: the most popular are social (37.5%) and domestic (22.9%), followed by family (20.8%), supernatural (18%) and military (6.2%). At the same time, the Eastern mentality has a very original approach to the way of overcoming conflict: preference is given to cunning (39.5%), but they often resort to confrontation (33.5%) or compromise (14.5%), but the tendency is to resolve the dispute through waiting very rare (12.5%). The initiator of the conflict, as a rule, is an antihero (68.8%) and less often the instigator is the hero of a fairy tale (31.2%).

This situation is quite understandable. Although at first glance the predominance of social conflicts over supernatural and military ones seems paradoxical. The average resident of the Caliphate was not socially protected both from attacks on his property (which was not much) and on his life. Sharia laws justified any arbitrariness not only of the supreme ruler, but also of local authorities. In addition, the entire existence of the Arab-Muslim state was accompanied by constant social uprisings, which could not but leave its mark in fairy tales.

Based on materials from folk tales, one can determine the nature of such phenomena as friendship, deception, shame, and chance.

Friendship is not an obligatory element of oriental fairy tales (18.8%), and its distinctive feature is its selective nature. This suggests the conclusion that the feeling of collectivism is a characteristic feature of the Eastern mentality. This lack of individualization of characters reflected the corporate ideas of medieval society, in which the individual had not yet separated from the class and was not perceived in his individual uniqueness.

Deception occurs in the plots of 68.7% of fairy tales. Moreover, in most cases (36.8%) it is positive. Here one can clearly see admiration for clever tricks and skillful tricks, delight in resourceful, witty answers, a predilection for the comic, crudely obscene (“The Tale of a Thief and a Simpleton,” “The Tale of a Fisherman,” etc.).

Shame is a fairly common phenomenon in oriental fairy tales (37.5%). Shame is a characteristic feature of Muslim morality, which seems paradoxical given the frequency of deception. “Only do something if you do not feel remorse” or “conscience is part of faith,” this is how the Prophet Muhammad appeals to the universal sense of conscience. This is probably why the main character is not afraid to repent of his committed act, which sometimes helps him avoid deserved punishment (“The Sultan’s Jester”).

Chance influences the course of the tale in 62.5%. And the fairy tales themselves are permeated with the spirit of fatalism. Fate, predestination, trust in fate - this is what the main characters of fairy tales believe in. The idea that a person faces unpredictable turns of fate at every turn corresponded to the everyday experience of the inhabitants of Iraq, Syria, Mamluk Egypt and other areas of the Islamic world, which constantly suffered from the arbitrariness of the authorities, political and economic instability. Belief in the possibility of a happy turn of fortune, a good chance in which, according to the ideas of a medieval Muslim, the will of almighty Allah was realized.

If we talk about the position of a person in the Caliphate and his place in public life, then the first place here is occupied by a lawyer (29.5%), who knows the Koran and all the precepts of Islam “... and we called a lawyer so that he could teach us the laws of Islam and rules of faith." They were respected, and communication with them was considered beneficial, since there was a close connection between law and religion. The influence of religion on public and private life in the East was more significant than in the countries of Christian Europe, where civil, criminal and state law did not depend on the church and where laws were issued by secular authorities.

Doctors and healers were highly respected (27.5%) “... and then I called the doctor, and he began to follow me and tried to cure me.” Merchants were also highly respected (23.6%), which confirms the conclusion made earlier. The craftsman does not have the highest rating (19.4%), but peasants occupied a lower social position.

As for property, the following picture is observed here. The main character is 62.5% rich and 37.5% poor. The attitude towards wealth in fairy tales, despite its predominance over poverty, is quite calm. Suffice it to recall that by the era of great geographical discoveries at the turn of the 16th-16th centuries. It was the rich East that seemed to the half-poor Europeans as a fabulous kingdom of luxury - and indeed the eastern cities and residences of the rulers were rich. But wealth is an objective indicator of the development and prosperity of a country. Of course, one should not exaggerate: not everyone was rich. But there was no overly glaring property difference. The main thing was that everyone had as much as he was entitled to, corresponding to his position in the state and society. Presumptuous owners who violated this unwritten norm were usually relatively easily put in their place. None of the eastern owners ever thought of themselves as anything other than submissive subjects to power, even if they were handling millions. It is known that anyone who comes from the common people, having become rich (of course, this does not apply to those who went up the administrative ladder, acquiring with each step a legitimate new portion of prestige and what was attached to it in strict accordance)

vii with the rank of wealth), cared most about prestige. The concept of “time is money,” so characteristic of any entrepreneur associated with the free market, did not exist in the East and could not appear there. But the desire to become like someone who has prestige was a constant impulse.

The hero of oriental fairy tales sees happiness in luck, business in 56.2% of plots, in 52% of cases the hero is content with wealth (“Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves”), in 50% he rejoices in health, in 18.7% he sees happiness in victory. A noble person is happy in 12.5% of cases, but not by birth, but by merit (“The Tale of the Fisherman”), which is quite consistent with the earlier conclusion.

Thus, the oriental fairy tale communicates the relationships between people characteristic of the folk mentality. In general, interpersonal relationships are characterized by a lack of individualization and a strong corporate element. A significant place is occupied by deception, which sometimes crosses the permitted boundaries, and in order not to suffer, the hero has to sincerely repent of what he has done. It is through cunning or, in extreme cases, through confrontation that the fabulous representatives of the eastern people see a way out of a conflict situation. However, as follows from fairy tales, successfully overcoming a conflict lies more in the personality of the hero than in choosing the most suitable method.

In the plots of 62.6% of fairy tales, the action takes place within the Arab Caliphate, with 35.4% of them in Baghdad. In 22.9% outside it, but in neighboring countries (for example, in Byzantium, China, India). In 14.5% of the stories, the location of the action is not indicated: “... went to some country” (“The Tale of the Merchant and the Spirit”). Such “homebody” is not a characteristic feature of the mentality, although travel in the Middle Ages was a dangerous and lengthy undertaking. Dangerous, since robbers were almost an integral feature of the road: “...we looked closely at them and see -

these are...robbers on the road...” (“The Story of a Porter and Three Girls”). Long, since the means of transportation were not in better condition than the roads. “Whoever enters the sea is lost, whoever leaves it is born again... there is no safety on the journey...” - this is what the father teaches the main character in “The Story of Adjib and Garib”. Such mobility of the heroes of an oriental fairy tale is quite understandable. Property as a material or psychological reality was almost unknown in the medieval East: “poverty and wealth are nothing more than the shadow of a ghost.” Each person had someone over him with a more powerful right, who could forcibly deprive him of not only his property, but also his life.

In addition, the geographical location and features of the country’s political structure have a great influence here. For an ordinary resident of the caliphate, a state created through military conquest, the neighboring governorate is already a foreign country. Hence the type of traveler - either small

an artisan (“Maruf the Shoemaker”) or a merchant (“Sinbad the Sailor,” “The Tale of the Merchant and the Spirit”). Hints of fragmentation are contained in 25% of fairy tales - these are those cases when the hero builds his palace in one night opposite the palace of some ruler (“Aladdin’s Magic Lamp”) or when a previously enchanted city is discovered within the domain of some caliph (“The Tale of about a fisherman").

The medieval resident of Arabia compares himself with the rest of the world and measures it by his own scale, and he finds this measure in himself, his body, his activity. Man here physically becomes the “measure of all things,” and above all the earth. The world did not seem diverse and heterogeneous. Man was inclined to judge him by his own small, narrow world. So, no matter where the tale takes place (in Byzantium, Egypt, India or China), nothing changes: neither the form of government, nor clothing, nor the landscape (“The Tale of the Hunchback”). Only random, fragmentary and sometimes unreliable information was received about the outside world. The stories of merchants and pilgrims about what they saw in distant countries were overgrown with legends and fantastically colored (“The Tale of Sinbad the Sailor”). The geographical horizon was at the same time the spiritual horizon of the Muslim world. The reality was the Muslim world. It is in relation to him that the main character determines both the rest of humanity and his place in relation to others. From here, the desert appears to him as twilight, the sea as temptation, and the road as a search.

Inaccuracy and approximateness are a characteristic feature of not only spatial measures. In general, in relation to everything that had to be expressed in quantitative terms - measures of weight, volume, number of people, dates, etc., great arbitrariness and uncertainty reigned.

As for the reflection of time in fairy tales, 68.8% of the plots cover a long period of time from several days to several years (usually magical); short-term events unfold in 31.3% of fairy tales (mainly in moral tales).

The action of 58.4% of fairy tales takes place in the distant past: “...in ancient times and past centuries and centuries...”, 41.6% of the plots describe events in the present at the time of the story. And a completely clear distinction between the past, present and future becomes possible only when “... the linear perception of time, coupled with the idea of its irreversibility...” becomes dominant in the public consciousness. Thus, time in the Arabian Nights fairy tales is not something divorced from current events. The chronological connection of events can be clearly traced here.

An essential aspect of time is the counting of generations. Having determined a person’s belonging to a particular generation or establishing their subsequent

reliability, received completely satisfactory ideas about the connection of events, the course of things and the validity of legal claims. “Know that...my father’s father died and left ten sons, and my father was among them and he was the eldest of them...and my father got me...” (“The Story of a Jewish Doctor”). Thus, the fairy-tale hero acts as a real bearer of connections connecting the present with the past and transmitting them to the future.

The length of the journey is also measured by time (the number of days of sailing on a ship or moving on land). Great accuracy was not required to determine the distance. When measures of path length are mentioned, it turns out that these measures do not correspond to any fixed, standard unit.

It is well known that the Arab-Muslim family was patriarchal. Every fairy-tale hero considers it his duty to acquire a wife, since deliberate celibacy is considered a grave sin. And the fairy tale begins with the fact that someone gets married and only then does the plot begin. In this regard, the contrast with the Russian fairy tale is interesting, where all the events take place first, and only at the end the main character receives a wife and half a kingdom in addition.

Preference, as a rule, was given to consanguineous marriages (37.5%). However, there were mixed-type marriages (29.1%), where it was the groom who won, not the bride. This happens in cases where there are no successors in the male line.

As you know, Islam has very strict morals. But this, apparently, does not warn fairy-tale heroes too much, since extramarital relationships are quite common here (54.1%). This is due to several reasons. Firstly, there is a shortage of women in Muslim countries. It would seem like a paradox, but the whole point here is the main feature of marriage relations in Islam - polygyny. Every harem with at least two wives is a mini-population, closed, isolated within the entire population of Muslim society. And in this mini-population there is precisely an excess of women, and a shortage of men.

Secondly, in history, there has never been a rule that was not violated at least once. It’s the same here: the more severe the punishment (100 lashes), the sweeter the forbidden fruit.

Strict morality concerns only the external side of social life. Within the family, any manifestation of boundless sensuality is allowed, but all this remains hidden from prying eyes, the veil for which is lifted in fairy tales. There is a cult of male sexuality, often exaggerated. So, one of the heroes captured forty women during the night, thirty times each.

It is widely known that women in Muslim society are placed in an unequal, inferior position compared to men. This is reflected in fairy tales. But it also shows the other side

woman's life. As soon as she becomes a mother, she begins to be respected, since “mothers have the right to feed and raise their children.” Only a mother is capable of true love, only she can surround a person with selfless care and affection, understand and share sorrows, alleviate suffering, therefore “heaven is under the feet of mothers.”

Historians usually study the history of adults. The children's story remains little known. The dominance of the father, husband, and master in the family and in society led to the fact that all attention was paid to men, their affairs and activities. Fairy tales are no exception. They don't cause much interest. They are mentioned in passing all the time. Boys (66.7%) still prevail over girls (33.3%). And if they become the main characters (which is very rare), they immediately grow up. However, the importance of having children is always mentioned in fairy tales: “He who does not have a son is not remembered.” In fairy tales, childbearing and having many children are encouraged in every possible way. A woman's infertility is considered a punishment, a huge misfortune, while intentional childlessness is a grave sin.

This work examined various aspects of the medieval picture of the Eastern world. This review could be continued and new topics introduced. It would be possible to deepen and expand the analysis of already selected categories of culture, presenting them in a more differentiated manner. However, this kind of detail or further expansion of the range of issues can be considered in special studies.

The aspects of the Arab-Muslim picture of the world discussed above may at first glance seem unrelated. However, their careful study reveals the interconnection of these categories. Their connection is determined primarily by the fact that the world itself was perceived by people of the Middle Ages as a unity, therefore, all its parts were perceived as fragments of the whole and had to bear its imprint. That is why it is possible to correctly understand the meaning of individual ideological categories only in their unity. They should not be considered in isolation, but as components of integrity.

A folk tale shows the behavioral stereotypes accepted in a particular society and contains some norms of the family, everyday and social way of life of the people. In comparison with other data on the history of mentality, conclusions drawn from the study of folk tales can become highly reliable, easily verifiable and explain many events and phenomena of the past.

Literature and sources

1. One Thousand and One Nights: Collection of Fairy Tales: In 8 volumes / Translation, introductory article and comments by M. Salye; Ed. I. Krachkovsky, with an article by M. Gorky “On Fairy Tales” and with a preface by S. Oldburg. M.: TERRA, 1993.

2. Estrup I. Research on 1001 nights, its composition, origin and development. M.: Lazarevsky Institute of Foreign Languages, 194. 120 p.

3. Gerhard M. The Art of Narration. Literary study of "A Thousand and One Nights". M.: Nauka, 1984. 456 p.

4. Gurevich A. Ya. Historical synthesis and the Annales School. M.: INDRIK, 1993. 265 p.

5. Blok M. Anthology of History, or the Craft of a Historian. M.: Nauka, 1973. 232 p.

6. Le Goff J. Civilization of the medieval West: Trans. from French / General ed. Yu. L. Bessmertny; Afterword by A. Ya. Gurevich. M.: Progress Academy, 1992. 372 p.

7. Memetinsky E. M. Hero of a fairy tale. M.: Publishing house eastern. lit., 1958. 330 p.

8. Propp V. Ya. Historical roots of a fairy tale. L: Publishing house Leningr. Univ., 1986. 366 p.

9. Tylor E. B., Primitive culture: Trans. from English M.: Politizdat, 1989. 573 p.

10. Mathematical methods in historical research / Ed. Kovalchenko I. D.

M.: Nauka, 1972. 120 p.

11. Mathematics in the study of medieval narrative sources / Rep. ed.

B. M. Kloss. M.: Nauka, 1986. 234 p.

12. One Thousand and One Nights. T. 1.S. 49.

13. One thousand and one nights. T.Z. P. 72.

14- One Thousand and One Nights. T. 1.S. 49.

15. One Thousand and One Nights. T.8. P. 123.

16. One thousand and one nights. T.4. P. 541.

17. One Thousand and One Nights. T.4. P. 70.

18. One Thousand and One Nights. T.6. P. 320.

19. One Thousand and One Nights. T. 1, p. 49.

20. One thousand and one nights. T. 1. P. 22.

21. Ibid. T. 4. P. 152.

22. Ibid. T. 4. P. 12.

23. Ibid. T. 4. P. 15.

24. Ibid. T. 5. P. 370.

25. Ibid. T. 1. P. 22.

26. Ibid. T. 1. P. 49.

27. Ibid. T. 4. P. 333.

28. Ibid. G. 5. P. 370.

29. Ibid. T. 1. P. 60.

31. One thousand and one nights. T. 4. P. 381.

32. Ibid. T. 4. P. 215.

33. Ibid. T. 4. P. 107.

34. Eremeev D. E. Islam: way of life and style of thinking. M.: Politizdat, 1990.P. 166.

35. Ibid. P. 41.

LIPATOVA IRINA ALEKSEEVNA was born in 1960. Graduated from the Peoples' Friendship University. P. Lumumba. Candidate of Historical Sciences. Associate Professor of the Department of General History. He studies the problems of socio-economic development of Asian and African countries.

NAZAROVA ANNA IGOREVNA was born in 1978. Graduated from Chuvash State University. He studies issues of the mentality of the peoples of the East. __________________________________________________________

G.A. NIKOLAEV

EVOLUTION OF THE MIDDLE VOLGA VILLAGE AT THE TURN OF THE 19th - 20th CENTURIES IN THE ETHNIC DIMENSION: GENERAL CONTOURS OF THE PROCESS

And the Grand Duke of Kievan Rus of Oleg, and the Tsarist Muscovy of Ivan the Terrible, and the Imperial Russia of Peter the Great were certainly distinguished by one common quality - the multinational composition of their subjects. This “birthmark” only progressed as the country moved from one historical stage to another - the power became more and more diverse. The living space of Russia is woven from many different degrees of advanced cultures. Since ancient times, their complex interaction has been taking place in her womb. Each nation is a special world. Lifestyle, customs, traditions, spiritual values, behavioral stereotype, worldview. Everything is intertwined...

In studying the history of the largest class in Russia during the capitalist period, the view through the “optics” of the national has not received proper registration. The importance of this aspect is more than obvious. The bourgeois evolution of the village, revealing the scale, depth, patterns and features of which is one of the main tasks of historiography, was determined, among others, by such a factor as the ethnicity of its inhabitants. Like a ray of light in an aquatic environment, it was in the sociocultural field that the vector of development of the agricultural sector was refracted in the era of modernization.

The object of our attention is the multinational peasantry of the Kazan and Simbirsk provinces. Developing the history of a multifaceted class-estate in a regional context is a necessary stage in the study of this complex and practically inexhaustible topic. This approach allows us to identify common features and characteristics in the evolution of villages in different ethnic spaces. The study covers the period of time from the 90s of the 19th century. to 1914. The author associates the lower chronological boundary with the completion of the industrial revolution in the country. The limitation of the 1914 study is due to the fact that with the outbreak of the First World War, the peasantry was placed in special conditions, which may be the subject of a separate discussion. From a wide range of issues, the most important blocks have been selected for study: ethnodemographic processes, the evolution of land ownership and land use, the dynamics of

Let's start by giving a number of quotes from recognized researchers of the Slavic community. Academician B.A. Rybakov in his work “Paganism of the Ancient Slavs” says: “ The scrupulous accuracy of Herodotus is confirmed by Slavic ethnographic material that is significant in breadth and chronological depth ". By comparing the data of historical and archaeological sciences with ethnographic data, we will be able to obtain a historically reliable and factually detailed picture of the existence of the Slavic ethnos in those times about which there are no other sources or they are extremely few in number.

Revealing this message, E.M. Meletinsky, regarding the relationship between myth and heroic epic, states: “ During the transition from myth to heroic epic, the relationship between tribes and archaic states, as a rule, historically existing, comes to the fore. ". And this is a path not only to individual historical and mythological facts or details of folk life. This is already a wide road that we can reach, by analyzing and comparing the specified data, to the very essence of the formation of the Earth’s civilization, to the centers of its origin, to the vectors of development and spread, to the identification of internal civilizational contradictions. Before – a clear and unambiguous historical picture.

However, it is clear that the task itself is extremely difficult. Because it is necessary not only to transpose the myth into a narrative historical plane, but also to identify the points of contact of this myth with material culture, that is, to confirm the fairy tale as a reality. Therefore, Academician B.A. Rybakov sums up this: “ Without correlating the folkloristic scheme (necessarily devoid of precise chronology) with archaeological periodization, which gives not only the stages of cultural development, but also the exact dating of these stages, it is, in my opinion, impossible to resolve issues of the history of folklore genres.” .

And that is why this part of the book is devoted to a detailed examination of Russian fairy-tale material. In its close contact with archaeological and historical data, since

“it is impossible to penetrate into the Proto-Slavic ideology, into the complex complex of religious-mythological and ethical-social ideas without a detailed analysis and feasible chronological systematization of the abundant fairy-tale material. The analysis of the heroic fairy tale is currently facilitated by the excellent review of H.V. Novikov, who brought into the system all the diversity of fairy tales and corrected a number of serious shortcomings of V.Ya. Proppa. The author, who did a tremendous amount of work on classifying fairy tale plots and their combinations, did not have the opportunity and did not set out to determine the origins of the fairy tale, about which he warned readers: “The problem of the genesis of the fairy tale and its early forms remains beyond the scope of this study.”

The starting point of analysis for us should be that fabulous Serpent, the fight against which is the main content of all heroic tales. The plot of “The Conqueror of the Snake” is considered by folklorists as a “moving episode”, involved in communication with others as needed. In Russian material it is combined with more than 20 subjects."

And that is why this part of the book is devoted to a detailed examination of Russian fairy-tale material. In its close contact with archaeological and historical data, since

Who does the Serpent personify in Russian fairy tales?

Starting the analysis of Russian fairy tales with the Serpent, we will immediately focus our attention on its most important “quality” - the serpent in Russian fairy tales is the eternal personification of the southern enemy of the Slavs. He is seen as a single, whole being, but with many heads. The Slavs saw nomads as such - a monolithic moving mass. But with many small detachments, which from afar could be mistaken for numerous snake heads stuck forward on long necks. The hierophants of Egypt and Babylon called themselves " Sons of the Serpent-God" and "Sons of the Dragon" and the Celts - "I am the Serpent, I am the Druid."

“The Slavs have been fighting with the serpent since ancient times. As fortifications against him, the Trypillian Slavs built the Serpentine Ramparts - fortified earthen structures."

Serpentine shafts

Very often, the starting or ending point of the extensive Serpentine Ramparts is Kyiv and its environs. If they started yelling (Old Russian - to plow) on the Zmiya somewhere away from Kyiv, then in most cases they plowed all the way to the Dnieper:

“...they started shouting with him [the kite] all the way to the Dnieper and stretched out the furrow with him.” “Having reached the Dnieper, she [the snake] climbed into the water and began to drink...”; the blacksmiths “scoured” it [harnessed by a snake], turning the furrow with a plow, all over the countryside all around." As soon as they reached the Dnieper, the serpent grew tired and wanted to drink...”

In a number of retellings of the legend, plowing on the Serpent ends at the sea.

The motivation for the need to plow a furrow in fairy tales is given as follows: when the Slavic god - the patron of the sacred fire, blacksmithing and the hearth - Svarog grabbed the Snake by the tongue with pincers, the Snake suggested: “ let’s make peace: let there be half of your light, and half of ours... let’s share" To which I received the following answer: “ ...it’s better to turn on the light so that you don’t climb over to our side to take people - take only your own» .

Understanding the serpent as hostile tribes of nomads, we clearly see behind the mythological plowing the desire of two warring peoples (collections of peoples - Slavic on the one hand and non-Slavic on the other) in some way to divide among themselves in order to somehow consolidate both possessions. Obviously, the desire of the Slavs was based on the protection of their cultivated and inhabited territories. The desire of the serpent, obviously, consisted of his own defeats, which for the most part ended nomadic raids on the Slavic lands.

It is also obvious that the serpentine ramparts are nothing more than defensive fortifications that actually existed and have come down to us in a fairly well-preserved form. This in itself proves the historical validity of this particular set of Slavic myths.

Dating of the Serpentine Shafts

Of particular importance is the dating of the time when the primary form of the snake-fighting myth arose. Data for dating are contained both in the basic elements of the myth itself, and in the geography of distribution of its most laconic variants, not complicated by fabulous diversity.

“The snake-smith is the first blacksmith who forged the first plow (sometimes who taught farming). He is undoubtedly close to Svarog or even identical with him, since the function emphasized by the chronicler Svarog- the guardian of marriage was entirely transferred in East Slavic folklore to Kuzmodemyan."

Kuzmodemyan is a later Judeo-Christian plagiarism-pseudonym of the ancient Slavic (pagan) god Svarog.

Rybakov B.A. believes that the first blacksmiths appeared among the Proto-Slavs in the Chernoles time, that is, in the 10th – 8th centuries BC. Around this time, the first plows appeared.

“If, remembering Svarog, we talk about the emergence of a monogamous family, then for the Proto-Slavs (judging by the small dwellings of the Pustynka) the process of its isolation began even before the appearance of blacksmiths, in the Bronze Age. Everything agrees that the creation of the myth about the demiurge Svarog should be attributed to that extremely important time when the discovery of iron took place, i.e. to the time of the Chernoles archaeological culture in the Middle Dnieper region.

Based on archaeological data, one can even talk about the myth’s association with the early stage of the Chernoles culture, since in none of the versions of the Kuzmodemyansk legend do snake-fighting heroes turn into warriors or horsemen. They appear in legend as the first plowmen or the forgers of the first plow and complete their heroic deeds as wonderful plowmen, turning out boulders and plowing a shaft that stretches “who knows where,” “all the way to the Dnieper.” And they defeat the Serpent not with a sword, not with a “sharp spear,” but with their blacksmith’s tool - with tongs, although (judging by the legend of Svarog) fallen from heaven. And in the archaeological material of the 8th century BC. Finds of swords and cheekpieces (a sign of a warrior-horseman) are already frequent, and military burials of horsemen with a rich bridle set and weapons (spear, arrows) are found. These first horse warriors have not yet been reflected in the primary short-form Kuzmodemyan legends, and they appear only in heroic tales, pushing archaic blacksmiths into the background there.”

Chernoleskaya culture is the archaeological culture of the pre-Scythian (necessary clarification: the Slavs of the Chernoleskaya culture " All of them together have a name - chipped, after the name of their king. The Hellenes called them Scythians ») agricultural tribes of the Middle Dnieper region. Covers a concentration of settlements: a settlement in the Black Forest in the upper reaches of the river. Ingulets, Subbotovskoe settlement in the river basin. Tyasmina is an important center for bronze casting crafts, etc. The Chernolesskaya culture spread in the 10th – 8th centuries BC. from the forest-steppe between the Dniester and Dnieper in the river basin. Vorskla. Comes from the Proto-Slavic Belogrudov culture of the Bronze Age - 11th - 8th centuries BC. – forest-steppe part of Right Bank Ukraine. The Proto-Slavs, being descendants of agricultural tribes of Corded Ware culture, even at the turn of the 3rd - 2nd millennium BC. settled from the Northern Black Sea region and the Carpathian region throughout Central, Northern and Eastern Europe. In subsequent times, the Slavs were represented by several genetically related archaeological cultures: the Trzyniec culture of the 3rd quarter of the 2nd millennium BC. (between the Vistula and the middle Dnieper), Lusatian culture 13th - 4th centuries. BC. and Pomeranian culture 6th – 2nd centuries. BC. (in the territory of modern Poland).

Thus, at least from the 3rd millennium BC. to the beginning of AD the Slavs dominated these territories. And if you map the points from which the collectors of Kuzmodemyansk legends V.V. Gippius and V.P. Petrov received their information, then

“...you can see an oval elongated in the latitudinal direction; The Dnieper crosses it obliquely. The extreme points will be (clockwise): Kyiv - Priluki - Novomirgorod - Poltava - Glinsk - Dnepropetrovsk - Zlatopol - Mirgorod - Zhitomir - Kyiv. This includes the “serpent shafts” of the Right Bank, studied by V.B. Antonovich, and the system of shafts of the Left Bank, briefly designated by V.G. Lyaskoronsky".

We know for sure that in the Chernoles time, the Slavic agricultural tribes of the Middle Dnieper region had excellent fortified settlements, and “ Only the increasingly frequent campaigns of Cimmerian troops to the north can explain the appearance of the Chernoles culture at the second stage, approximately in the 11th century. BC, a whole system of ancient settlements". Line of border fortresses 11th – 8th centuries. BC. walked on the border of forest-steppe and steppe along Tyasmin. The main fortress was the Chernolesskoye settlement. Also grandiose was the Belsk settlement (Herodotus’ Gelon) with the perimeter of the ramparts over 30 km. A rampart extends from this fortification, called, like the ramparts of the fortification itself, “serpentine”.

“It is quite possible that at the beginning of work, when it was necessary to mark the direction of the future shaft on the ground, they resorted to plowing a long furrow, which served as a guide during excavation work to fill the shaft. From here it is already one step to the folklore image of a serpent forced to plow a furrow. If such a situation was created that the Slavs used captured Cimmerians or at least draft cattle captured from them in the construction of their first fortifications, then the folklore image acquires a very tangible real frame.”

Based on the above, it is quite reasonable that Rybakov B.A. draws his conclusion: “all this happened on the territory of the Chernoles culture of the 11th – 7th centuries. BC, i.e. in the Middle Dnieper region, on the right bank from Volyn to Kyiv and from the Dniester to Tyasmin, and on the left bank along Vorskla and Sula. The hero was Svarog, who appeared to the scribes of the 7th century. AD both a god and an earthly king associated with heaven: with him blacksmith’s tongs fall from the sky, and his son is the “god-king” Sun (Dazhbog).