ISTAN BUL ÜNİVERSiTES İ

EDEBiYAT FAKÜLTESİ

Türkiyat Araş~ma Merkezi

BEŞİNCİ MİLLETLER ARASI ·

TÜRKOLOJI- KONGRESİ İstanbul, 23 -28 Eylül 1985·

Tebliğ/ er il. TÜR!< EDEBİYATI ·

cilt 1

EDEBİYAT FAKP'LTESİ BAS~ !STANBUL - 1985

.SOME REMARKS TO THE NARRATOLOGICAL AND NON-NARRATOLOGICAL .LEVELS IN RABGHUZI'S

QIŞAŞ .AL-ANBİYA (The Tales of the Prophets) .

• c

Marc van DAMME

I •

lntroduction

For some time now we have. been studying the Tales ~f the Prophets of Rabghuzi. Naturally, in the course of time, apart from the pure .study of the text, I b~came more and more interested in the contents of these stories. So as a ma'!:ter .Of fact. I c~e to stumble-upon the riarratological theories :whlch aı;e at present developed, and I decided ;f;o try to linJr the

. Tales of the Pr.ophets to the field of narratology. As there are many versions and redacti_ons· of the Tales of the Prophets in Q.ifferent Turkish languages, we will limit ourselves within the scope of tıiis paper .tô the redaction of Raıbghuzi, which is preserved -~ London (signature: Cod. Mus. Brit: Add: 781). It is also the önly ms . . published in facsimile (K. GrS!ln~ach, «Rabghuzi, Narrationes de Prophetis», Copenhagen, 19~8).

Moreover, it is generally believeci to be the oldest Turkish ms. stili in existence. As much as one becomes aware of the fact that the Tales of . . the Prophets are a. literary genre attested in the r~alms of J ewish, Chris-tian and Islami.ç cuiture by a vast number of maybe several, hundreds of mss., just as much eme realize~ that handling such a huge amount of material calls for a fresh approach. What we meazı_ is that a.theoretical main frame is neeçled, which .can function asa kind of instrument to help the individual resear.chers in drawing up a list of priorities, being at the same time a reference frame in which the specifi~ results of the indivi­dual investigators .can l;ıe gemmed and interconnected. The open blanks then will clearly come to light. In this paper we think of course especially of the .Turkish qişaş-tradition.

The re/erence frame

The Tales of the Prophets ı'aises three types · of questions :

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I. Questions which touch on the text itself within the realm of philology.

II. · Questions which touch on the kind of t~e text of the Prophet stories. As the title already strongly suggests, those questions are mainly of a narratological nature.

m. Questions concerning the precise relatiqn of the London-ms. to the other mss., and the interpretation of these texts within their broader socio-cuitural sphere, including reception history, traİ:ıslations, po­pular and poetic adaptations, a.s.o.

w:ıı,en applyin.g these questions to our redaction o~ the Qişaş, we found out that all these questions had to be answered by ten differen.t instan­ces, four belonging to the non:narratological levels, and six to the nar­ratological ones, as displaytıd in the following reference frame :

outside ~- within the narratological field ----? outside SlA SlB S2A - S2B . S3 R3 R2B- R2A RlB-RlA

personage <:::} personage

These ten instances can be shortly described as follows :

Sl = Sender 1 = the class· of the real author(s) outside the narrative text = the text producing instance

SlA = the instance which concentrates on the authorship of the pro­ducing instance

SlB. = the instance which coricentrates on the text as a material object

S2 _: Sender 2 = the class of the spokesman/ men

S2A = The. first spokesi:nan· in our ms:

S2B = The second class of spokesmen in our ms.

S3 .:.._ S.ender 3 = the class of the personages

R3 :..... Receiver 3 = the class. of the personages

'

R2 = Receiver 2 = the class of the adreşsees (hearers/ readers) within the narrative . text

R2B = the receivers of S2B R2A = the receivers of S2A

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R1 = Receiver 1 = the class of hearers/readers outside the narrative text = the external recipient level

R1B = the instances which produce a textological edition or study ba­sed on ali the available Turkish redactions, written or printed, including at least one diplomatic edition ·cas ·will be described later under SlB), but preferably more ·

RlA = the instances which are responsible for any kind of interpre-. tation based on the Tuİ-kish Qişaş-materia}, partially or in its

totallity.

As can be deduced from this reference frame the first type of questions is to be located in SlA and SlB, the second ones in the rectangle which i,ncluded the instances ranging from S2A to R2A, and tıie thirth one in RlB and. RlA. Assum.ing, for the time being, the validity of this refe­rence frame we will try in this paper to draw in outline a systematic picture of the most salient questions each instance raises, withçmt of course aiming at exhaustiveness. As this study of the Tales of the Prophets is stili of a tentative and preambulatory character, concentra­tion on the story of one single prophet has to be considered in this stage as premature. It should lead us astray in a host of details of a secondary order which in their majority are at this very moment not ·yet ready to be solved. So, the following r~marks are based ona ·general approach/ viewing of our Lo~don-ms.

I. The plvilological non-narratological Zf!vel ·

A. Instance S1A tries to find and bring to light' as many bits of infor­mation as possible concerning the identifi.cation of the real author, to work out his biogi'aphY. and to look through: otlıer sources which may shed some more light on his stili very sh;:ı.dowy personality. At this moment, the biographical data on the author of our ms. are very scarce: It is limited to what Rabghuz:i. himself discloses in his OWn text about.himself: The author names himself Naşir ud-din ibn Burh~ ad-din ar-RabghfızI 9r just Naşir R~bghüzI. He states that he compo.sed in 1310 a.c. his Tales of the Prophets, ·commonly known as the Qişaş RabghfızT, an abbreviation introduced by the tP.e author himself. He also names himself a cadi and a learned man,

48 . . .

who wrote his book under the instigation of Naşir ud-dln TUq Bugha a young,prince of Mongol lineage but Muslirµ faith'. At one place he writes to be indebted to an other source, the Tales of the Prophets of NishabürI. These are the only facts we know about Rabghuzi and his Mongol prince. His plaçe 'of origin Ribat Oghuz in Transoxiana or Sinkiang/ Turkistan may never be properly ~ocated.

B. Irı..Stance S1B makes the tex to his object of investigation. The first thing to do is to prepare an edition ,of the text. After long weighing the pros and cons .it seems at this early stage . best to decide for a diplomatic edition of the London ms. with the aid .of computer facilities.

The basic reason foı; this choice is the fact that every copyist adds a ·. personal touch to his copying work. When ·one compares a copy

with its 'layer· (exa~ple) three 'kinds of variants in the text of the copy can be attested :

...,.--- tb.e copyist adjusts the orthography to the common usage of his own time

- moreov~r, when the lapse of time between the layer and the copy is considerable .and when in the mean time the lan­guage has undergone substantial modifications in its .evolu-. tion, the copyist also conforms the text to his oW'n contem­porary dialect

. . - even more, especially in this · kind of narrations, a copyist

can also decide to make 'his text up to date as to the con­tent, reflecting 'more or less the fashions of his öwn time w.ith regard to the evolution the text has undergone since tiriıe of the la yer: Some new material in.ay be adP.ea,"· ~ome ideological . changes as to some tales may have qccurred (a ta,le which becomes very' popular tends to grow in the course of time, ect.); Or the copy may reflect the special

·wishes of a Qommissioner. ·

Looking at the London-ms. there is even a fourth reason pleading in fa­·vor of a diplomatic edition: not one, but at least four different copyists may be discerned. The name of one ·of them, a certain I:IajjI.MuJ;ıammad ~bn Düst Muf.ıammad I:lajji VazirI, is preserveci on the obverse of the last folio. Studying thei,r mutual differ.ences regarding orthography, ·ete.,

' may . best be done with the aid of a computer.

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Ali these variants should not be considered as a nuisance, but as an enrichment. A textcritical edition in trying to reconstruc't the oldest and most original version of the text just picks out one . of the available variants (based on a stemmatological study), and -disregards ali the orthographic, dialectical and . contentional variants of the treated text material. In this way, some fundamental inforrİıation as to tlıe lıistory and the traditiön of tlıe text ~s lost. ·

<

';('he London-ms. has to· be treated as a value in itself, which can only be preserved in tlıe form of -a diplomatic editioiı, rendering in print as accurately as possible tlıe text of 6ne source, in casv, the London-ms.

A texcritical edition results in a fully noi·malized text in its orthograplıy and language. In a diplomatic edition normalization of the text appears only in the .following points: - As tq paleotipy two r.emarks should be made:

' - when an old lettertype or a combination of two suc lett.ertypes stands for two diff erent phone­mes (fe. I = i or e) the editor has to choose for one transcriptioiı. His choice ,may be based on some internal evidence or on İıis knowledge of Turkish comparative linguistics. In any case, his choice must be accounted for in the appara­tus criticus~

The same is applied when a defectiv~ writing is rendered as plene in print.

- Abbreviations in the ms. are f ille.d up betWeen round brackets in print (f,e. 'alay-hl 's-sala) ~) .

-As to the stratification of föe text, the barrea·words, letters written ove:r and above each otlıer, ete. may pertain _ to an underlying stratum, which could be con-

. - sidered as belonging to a «rougb, copy». In print the text as corrected l;>y the copyist is rendered, but in tb.e · apparatus criticus the barren version is indica­ted.

- As to conjectures; guesses to be made Wlisible words - or passages, hiatus, rotten places in the parchment ete.), these «crux's» can be left open in . the printed

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text. However, they may be cracked by making an external use of some other mss., if available. E~ter-·

nal use here means that the editor of a diplomatic edition restricts himself to the use of one of more mss. solely and only when a crux appears in his text. The choice he then makes between the different va­riants of the other mss. is largely defiiıed by his tas­te, his knowledge of the language, stylistics and cul­tura,l history. Each conjecture must, of course, be indicated in the apparatus. criticus. As long as the text remains readable ana understandable the other mss. variants are neglected (de Haan, 258-262) .

- A last issue concerns interpµnction. An interpunctional or diacritical interpretation of the text is unavoidable wheµ working with a computer: Without interpunc­tion any later syıitactic investigation on a mechanical base is out of the question.

(Far pro'blems regarding transcription and translit­teration, see Röhrborn, pp. 2-16, Uigurisches Wör­terbuch).

II. The narratological levels within the rıarrative tea;t o{ the Q.al-A. According to the generally accepted narratological theory each nar-­rative teit, as also each tale of a prophet, consists of three different but intertwi,ned layers (ar levels as we shall from now on cali them . in this paper) :

1) a narrative text-level : The three main questions here are :

Who telis the tale, Whose text is 'embedded in whom's and what part of the narrative· ~ext is to be considered as ·narrational, as descriptional or as argu n:ıentative explicational?

2) a tale-level : The basic question here is : How is the history told or from what perspective is it told?

As there are many aspects ·of viewing_ :;ı, history, such as frQm the view-point of chronology, rhy­thmics, frequency· of ·events, personages, space, and focalization, we shall in this pape~ restrict

. '

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ourselves to the most important aspect of them ali: fo_calization. Tbe f irst question to be answe­red then sounds somewhat different: Who sees what happens, from whose perspective a descrip­tion is roade, who comments on what?

. ~

Tbe second question to be answered is: Whose focalization is embedded in whom's?

3) the history-level: The ıriain question here is: Who does what to whom?

On this level one finds the ·rough material, such · .as actors, events time and · place, out of which

the abstract structure of the history is build. Bringing this abstract structure into the open is a task any .µarratological theory must be able to fulfill.

These three narratological levels can be corobined in one general formula:· «A tells that B sees that C does», whereby A stands for the riarrative text-level produced by one or more narrative instarı,ces; B stands for the tale-level consistµıg of the specific unique tale as produced by the foca­lization (orcommentin_g) activity of -the narrators aıid of the different personages; C stands for the history-level, i.e. the history of the actors in relation to the events, time and place, rendering the bare structural content of the history. It is the material of this level ( C) which has to be «presenf.ed» in a unique· tale (B), and told by some specific narrating instances (A). (See Bal, 14-17).

Tn order to prevent future misunderstandings it seems appropiate to de­fine unambiguously the narratological terms which will be used in the course of -our further discussion : ·

· te~

narrative text'

a finite structured whole of language signs

a text wherein an instance tells a tale (or narra­tes · a tale or story)

.. tale . ~story, narra.tive): a his_tory pres~nted in a peculiar way

history a series of events logically and chronologically in­terconnected, which are caused or uiıdergone by actors

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event

actor

a transition from one situation to another

an instance who perlorms actions ·

personage

acting

if an actor is a human or a humanized being, he is called a personage (Bal, 87)

to cause an event (Bal, 13-14)

· The. term «texb> obviously refers to the philological non-narratological level Sl. As we ha ve seen, on this level two instances operate: SlA who concentrates on the personality of the real author, and S1B who takes

· care of · the . diplomatic edition. How do the three narratological levels apply to our text of the Ldndon-ms?

Instance 82 : As our text is in fact a «narrative» ale there. has to be someone who telis the tale: S2 sta°:ds for the instance (s) who teli the tale. In our text it happens all the time that one instance gives his «turn of sp·eaking» to another instance who tlien does the actual telling. Tlıis leads us to introduce two different ıiarrating instances, a first spokesman S2A and a second spokesman/men S2B.

1. Instance 82A a:nd Instance 82B

S2A as the first spokesman is responsible for the whole· text. It ıs he who decides which tales will be told or not, wh.ich spokesmen will be cited or not, which personages · will appear in which tale or not, and what events will be mentioned or not. The first spokesman is not only the first narrator of qıe whole text, but he is at the saıne time the instance which determines how the narrative text is told: On the narrative level he is the first spokesman and on the tale-level he is the first focalizer.

His identity is a -fictitious on~: There always remains a principle dİf­f erence between the . re al person Rabghuzi as the non-narratological text producing instçı.nce SlA and the first spokesman of the whole narrative text S2A. For this situation there are some imperative nar­ratological reasons (see therefor Bal, 127-132) .

. .. In our text the instance S2A plays no role whatsoever in the narra-tive text: he is never a personage, but only an external narrator and focalizer. As the first responsible instance . S2A has to answer for the whole lay-out of the text: the choice of the argu mentative e~plica-

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tive, the descriptlve and the pure narrational parts, which together make up the complete narrative text. The argumentative and explica­tive segments in our text are in most cases introd.uced by a subtitle (in red ink) such as «~ikmat, bifarat, ~adis, tafsir, qira'at, ma'nasi; suval-cavab, iSarat, fayçla, hadis ilahi or a Quran-citation. The precise usage, function or meaning of these terms has sti,11 to be subjected to a closer loc:ik.

The descriptive p~rtS ha ve in general no particular introductive mark; however, someti.mes the term · «şif at» may appear at the head of the description. Descriptions a~e found of objects (f.~. the arclı of Moses), institutes (f .e. the kingship of Israel), persons (mostly in the form of a eulogy introduced by the formula: «Ol kim ... nabi-dur», or so­metim.es by means of a si'r, ghazal or bayit), rituals or prayers (mü­nacat), a.s.o.

In the .argumentative-explicative and descriptive parts there are less spokesmen than there. are focalizers, far without giving his turn of speaking to another instance · the first spokesman may render the opinion of another one (f.e. in the formula: «Tafsirde kelür kim»). The pure narrative segments are of two different kinds: they are pre­sented either in the form of a direct report, or in the form of an undirect report.

a. direct report :

- S2A may give his «turn of sp~ech» to himself. In this case the two instances. S2A. and S2B are identical and the focalizer S2A and the focalized object S2B are the same. T.ılls happens in our text very seldom, I noted only its occurence four tiİnes, but there may be some more examples. It is precisely in these passages that we experie~ce some inf orm.ation about the his· torical person Rabghuzi SlA.

---, S~A tells the tale j.n his own words :

a) narr.ativization of the tale: linguistic utterances of a per­sonage are not quoted in direct speech (f.e. «The shaytan .explained his .plans»; Here, S2A disregards the actual wording tlıe devil used; The spokesman j ust mentions or tells us about this particular language deed)

..

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b) using direct speech, by introducing a personag~ as a_ third spokesman S3, or using a dia_logue, by .introducing two per~ sonages S3-R3. A dialogue is not a narrative, but a dra­matic text, but one should bear in mind that the direct speech of S3 and the dialogues of S3-R3 are embedded here within the narrativization by S2A.

· In · our text the first spokesman S2A in his narrational parts renders of course in each tale the main story, but now and then he breaks into his own story with a personal digression, generally· cut. off by a formula like «Yana maqşudga keldük». In a direct report the number of embedded narrational layers equals in most cases the number of einbedded focalization layers.

b. undire~t report :

- S2A may quote an impersonal source · without giving his turn of speech to this unpersonal instance. We find here formulas like «Qişşaşlarda kelür, l:ıabarda kelür, 'Ulamalar ibtilaf qilmis­lar / 'ulamalar arasında ibtilaf bar/Q~vlda/ya:.na bir qavlda/ yana bir qavlda/yana bir qavıaa· ol turur : ..

l;likayatda andag kelür/.l;ıikayatda kelmis/ !tikay_atlarda bu tu­rurfl:ıi:kayatda kelür· ... Rivayat/rivayatda andag kelür/taqi bir rivay~tda/ba'zi rivayatlarda kelmis/ bir rivayatda: kelmis/yana . bir rivayatda/a.s.o., a.s.o. Using these evasive formula:tions may indicate a certain degree of uncertainty . on the part of S2A. The number of .focalization layers outnumbers here tlıose of tlıe narrationai embedded iayers. ·

- S2A may quote a personal source. In these cases the first spo­kesmaıi S2A seems apparently to give away his turn of speech t9 a second spokesman S2B. In our tex~ this happens ıiundreds · of times. Who then may be thiş s~cond spokesman in our re­daction of .the Prophettales?

. . S2B i~ - intı:oduced by S2A by a range of forriıulas which may give u~ t~e key to reveal his identity.

So ~ar we have gathered the following formulas :

a) - Aymislaı:/Yana ba'zi 'ulamalar aymislar/aymi~lar kim/ 'ibarat içind~ aymislar/ba'zi aymiSlar/yana biri (ayı:nis-

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lar) /ama 'ulamalar aymislar /taqi aymislar /'ulamalar aymislar/ba'zilar aymislar

- MuJ:ıaqqiqlar ayınislar

- 'Alimlari aymislar

b) - Fulan ayturiyana fulan aytur/mufassirlar ayturlar

c) - Rivayat qilmis fulan kim/rivayatda kelür fulan-din kim/ ftılan rivayatinca/rivayat qilurlar 'Alidin/yana bir riva­yat qilurlar/fulan rivayat qilur/rivayat qilmislar/ ...

d) - Andag 1}.ikayatlar qilurlar

S2A focalizes the tale by not doing the actual telling himself according to his own vision, but · by introducing either an impersonal , source whose opinion then is quoted by S2A, or by introducing a second spo­kesinan S2B who apparently gives his own version of the story. To what extent the use of an impersonal source or a personal one is re­levant for the interpretation of the narrative text is not yet ele ar ..

The status to be given to the narrativization activ.ity of S2A in the Prophettales raises some fundamental yet unsolved problems. To teli is to maiıipulate. How does S2A manipulate his narrational parts? ·When reading the text, one somehow gets ·the iinpression that he pre­sents a non-fictitious story as a fic_titious ·one. The narrativization is apparently brought ~ the form of a direct speech of S2A, but a closer ştudy of tlie text in the future may well bring to light that what seems to be direct speech is in fact .some way of a hidden quoting in the form of indirect or free indirect speech .. The syntactical investiga- . tion of these two phenomena remains still to be done. üne observa­tion however points clearly in the direction of this hypothesis: More than once a segment of a narrational part, when compared to the Quran text, appears to be a genuine verse from the Holy Book, but translated into Turkish without any indication as to ~he source from which it is taken. The w~rd «h~dden» is also somewhat hazardous: What · seems to be hidqen to us people of the .20th century who are not muslims and who have nearly forgotten the'ir own christian tales, may have been q_uite transparent for a muslim of the 14th century. As for the identity of the spokesman S2B, «aymislar» seems to refer to the (sunnite) 'ulama, or to groups considered .equl td them : the mu.J:ıaqqiqlar and the 'alimlar; «Rivayet» refors·to th:e şaJ:ıaba or Com­panions of the Prophet; «Aytur» seems to ref er to the mufassirlar;

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«Babar» ref ers to the Prophet and his sunna; «Qişşalar» may ref er to a Persian or even to an other Turkish layer. Which spokesman are meant with the terms «qavl and l)ikayat» is not yet clear.

Regarding the status of the second spokesman S2B the same funda­mental question has to be raised here as w~ discussed the status the narrational parts of S2A; To what extent is S2B to be considered as a real spokesman or as another kind of a hidden way of citation? A conclusive answer can only be provided for afteı:- the whole text of our ms. will have, been thoroughly studied.

There is stili a furtlıer observation to be discussed with regard to te formulas introducing S2B. Not only do they seem to reflect a cer­tailı hierarchic order from «qişşalar, aymislar, aytur, rivayet» to «h.abar», but the text for which each of these· spokesma:n (or sources) is responsible, may as to its content be further enforce(J. by rounding off/ ending the statement of a particular. spokesman with an 'argu-_ mentative text, be it either a :Qadis qpol:ation, a :Q,adis ilahi or, as happens about approximately a 120(} times, a direct quotation from the Quran. The Quran'-quotations are cited in Arabic, as the most authoritative language in Islam, and nearly always intl'.'oduced with the formula «Qavluhu ta'ala». This process lends the text of S2A and S2B a great autlıority for impact on the intended receiver of the text. The receiver, in our reference frame the instance R2B or R2A, is in­directly b~t strongly invited not ·to question the truthfulness and the authoritatiye power of the tale. Suclı an argumentative text m.ay also function _as a kind of protection ~-a-vis S2A and S2B: by stressing the reliabi)ity of the content, it also stresses the integrity of the narrating instances S2A and S2B as manipulators of the text, creating the illusion of . an non-manipulated text. The question to what extent the second spokesman S2B acts as an external or an · internal second . focalizer in relation to what he reports is easy to answer. In view of the considerabie !apse of time be.tween the moment of telling of the second spokesman and the time the narrated tale has actually happe­ned S2B mu.st be described as an external second focalizer.

However, ~here may be one exception: Wnen a companion of the Prophet appears in a rivayat, he may also have been a personage in the story he tells. If sci, he is an internal second focalizer.

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The instances 83 and R3

In our redaction of the Tales of the Prophets the third spokesman S3 is a parsonage. A personage is a person who plays a role (actor) in the tale,

who uses direct speech 0 •

· who eiıgages in dialogues with other personages R3 ( one should bear in mind that the iııternal structure of a dialogue qelongs to the dramatological, not to the narrat<?logical field).

The sayings and deeds of the personages S3 and R3 are the first embedded text-layer and generally alsa the first focalization-layer in the narrativization segments of. the first spokesman S2A, and they are the second embedded text-layer of S2-A-S2B, as weli as in most cases, their second focalization level.

But the personage.s S3 and R3, apart from focalizing each other, may also focalize events, objects, tiı;ne and space in the story. This regards the tale-layer, i.~. when one here no longer concentrates one's atten­tion oh «how» tiıe personages tell their story, but «whş.t» they teli, and (when one) no longer looks at «how» the first and th.e second spokesman teli their narrational 'text-pa~ts, but «what» they actually tell in these narrational segments, then at last the basic, rough ma~ terial, consisting of actors, functi,onal events, time and place, come . to the surface. Only then, using some actantial model provided by the _general nar;ratological theory, is it ·possible to study. how these ma­terial is structured into a ·hlstory. This abstract internal structure of the bare history, which underli~s the tale-level which in its turn describes «how» this history is told by tfıe d.ifferent spokesman on the narrative level, is called the hi,story-level, tbe third narratological level.

·. The instances R2B and R2A

R2B is that instance which stands for the target group within the narratological field of receivers. of the narrative t ext as intended by the second spokesman S2B. The relation between the instances S2B and R2B may best be characterized as an adressor-adressee relation. The beavy ideological impact whicb the instance S2B exercices on

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R2B has alreaqy been discussed under S2A-S2B. As far as we can see it now, the target group of receivers R2B aimed at by S2B, are the truly sunnite muslim believers.

R2A is that instance which stands, stili within the nar_ratolqgical field, for the different a.dressees who are in a direct way spoken to by the adressor S2A. Those adressees are the Mongolian prince to whom S2A dedicates his book as well as any other later reader of this narrative text, be they muslims or not. The attention of the adressees is mobilized by formulas such as «Maqşudga keldimiz, ete., . a point still to be investigated ın. detail.

III. The interpre_ta.tionaJ level

The instances. R1B and R1A

The interpretational level lies outside the narratological f~eld; it has, however, some correspondence with the philological leveL In more than one sense it is a widening of the latter, putting the pP,ilological approach into a broather perpspective. To take into full account all the tasks implied in the philological level Vl'.e had to introduce two different instances SlA ·and SIB. The same approach seems to be unavoidable in dealing with the interpretational level.

Thus, the instance RlB corresponds to SlB; there we advocated a diplomatic edition of the London-ms: as being the · most urgent and the most sensible thing to do. From the insta?ce RlB one expects the preparation of a broad textological study, based oİı as much ma­terial as possible, of the QiŞaş al-Anbiya-genre in order · to illustrate the whole tradition, iiıc~uding t.he ·lıistory of the text, within the realm

· of Islamic Turkish culture. .

~lA a~e ali those instances who engage in some kind of interpretative . activity in relation to the Tales of the Prophets: theii rec·eption his­tory, a study of tıie ~ranslations and of the ppetic and other adapta­tions made, an evaluation of the İnaterial from the view of an . antbropolo~cal angle, and so on.

In assuming that our reaaction of the Tales of the Prophets is basically a narrative text, we may have disregarded two aspects ·of the text which in a later stage of our investigatioiı qould force us to recon­sider the final status. of our narrating · instances. In the first place,

59 .

although it .is İıot yet proven beyond doubt, the text gives some clues pointing to the fact that our text has to be considered as a compila­tion translated fr'om a Persian layer, possibly from the hand of Nishaburi; secondly, a more thoroug}?- investigatfon of all the iıi­dividual tales may lead us to the conclusion that our text as a whol~ must be cha~acterized as a highly rhetoric text aiming at a speedy conversion of the shamanistic Turkish peoples of Central Asia.

To what extent these two aspects may effect the narratological na­t~e 'of. our text is a matter stili open to speculation .

. ,

Bibliography

Bal, M. «De theorie vaıı .vertellen en verhalen. Inleiding in de nar­ratologiıe», Muiderberg, 1980 (abbrev.: Bal)

J an vaıi Luxem burg, mieke bal, willem g. weststeijn, «lnleiding in : de literaturr/wetenschap», Muiderberg, 1985 (abbr~v. : Inl.)

\ de Haan, M.J.M. «De filologie en lıaar hulpwetenschappen>>, in «De geschiedenis van de Nederlandse taalkunde», D.M. Bakker en G.R.W. Dibbets, Den Bosch, 1977, pp. 249-268 (abbrev.: de Haan)

Gr9.1nbech, K., ~<Rabghuzi. Narrationes de Prophetis. Cod. Mus. Brit. Add. 78!51» reproduced in facsimile, Copenhagen, 1948. ·