Hilali Epic
Even though the Hilali Epic was born in Yemen and spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt is the place where it is most welcomed and continues to be preserved.
Kadal gurun (desert lizard) is a popular term in Indonesia because the spread of sectarian and anti-Semitic issues have become a toy for politicians. Lizards are scaly reptiles, while the deserts referred to in this context are deserts in the Arabian Peninsula, not in Australia or China.
The scientific name of the desert lizard is Phrynosoma platyrhinos. Its habitat is in western North America. I will not go into more details about the lizards, but will appreciate the desert setting in world literature. The epic Al-Sirah Al-Hilaliyyah was created by the Bedouins or Badawi or Badui, who were nicknamed “desert dwellers” or “desert wolves.” The epic, which is also known as Sirat Bani Hilal or Taghribat Bani Hilal or Hilali Epic, is a poem about Bani Hilal, one of the Bedouin tribes. UNESCO designated the Hilali Epic as a Masterpiece of Oral Culture and Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2003 and 2008.
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The Hilali Epic is set in the 11th century. This epic includes four parts. The first part tells about the birth of Abu Zayd, the main character, in Yemen, as well as the birth of other characters and the story of their youth. In this part, the leaders of the Bani Hilal are killed by enemies.
The second part, famine and drought forces Abu Zayd to find a new place and the Bani Hilal makes an exodus to Najd. In the third part, Bani Hilal makes another exodus, this time from Najd to the west (tahribat) or North Africa. On the way to the west, they carry out many battles. The fourth part tells the tragic end for Bani Hilal.
Dwight Reynolds, a professor of Arabic language and literature at the University of California, analyzes the epic Sirat Bani Hilal in his article in the Arabic Literature anthology in the Post-Classical Period. He unravels the cause of destruction of the Bani Hilal; not by enemy attacks but by internal divisions.
Diyab, one ofAbu Zayd's fighters and friends, kills Hasan, their leader. Abu Zaydbecomes blind because of crying over the death of the leader and has to fight in blindness. Another warrior character, the intelligent and beautiful woman Al-Jazya, prepares to kill Diyab.Reynolds concludes, “All the adventures and heroic feats in the epic are undertaken against the final annihilation of a tribe … and that fate is the result of their own actions.”
A militant from the Movement for the Salvation of Azawad (MSA), a Tuareg political and armed movement in the Azawad Region in Mali, rests in the desert outside Menaka on March 14, 2020 while on patrol.
It was not certain when the Hilali Epic was created. The oral form certainly developed ahead of the written form. The text of this epic is more than 8,000 pages long. Ibn Khaldun, Egypt's foremost philosopher and historian, copied several poems from the epic in the 14th century and Reynolds' research shows that Ibn Khaldun's copy was in agreement with the oral form, which is still performed in Egypt today.
Even though the Hilali Epic was born in Yemen and spread throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Egypt is the place where it is most welcomed and continues to be preserved. Some of the epic figures are idolized by the audience, especially Abu Zayd, who is considered capable of leading his nation against enemy threats and all kinds of disasters. The Rababah, a Middle Eastern stringed instrument, is commonly played in epic readings.
In the 14th century, when the Hilali Epic began to be sung by poets at wedding or circumcision ceremonies, Sureq Galigo is thought to have started to be written based on its original oral form. UNESCO designated Sureq Galigo or I La Galigo as a World Memory in 2011.
Sureq Galigo is an oral literature created by the Luwu people in South Sulawesi, which was later copied into a nearly 6,000-page manuscript. I Colliq Pujié Arung Pancana Toa Matinroé ri Tucaé, daughter of Datu Tanete, contributed to the copying of the epic.
Press conference ahead of the I La Galigo stage in Jakarta, on Thursday (13/6/2019).
The Luwu people are known as nomadic people, not desert nomads like the Bani Hilal, but sea nomads. The Sureq Galigo language is the ancient Luwu language, which is called the To ri Langi language or the Language of the People in the Sky. The sureq singer is called passureq. Like the poets who sang the Hilali Epic, passureq were trained to memorize the contents of Sureq Galigo since they were a child.
In the Hilali Epic, the power of the heavens or magical things is not at the center of the story. The miracle is narrated at a glance, namely the main character Abu Zayd who was born black to a white mother and father because his mother prayed to have a son like a black bird flying over a well. Meanwhile, Sureq Galigo is an epic about a god who descends from the sky and then incarnates a human on earth to spread the Maddara Takku or white blooded descendants.
Sureq Galigo divides humans into two layers, namely the ruling layer and the ruled layer. The commoners are said to be red blooded, while the rulers of the heavens are said to be white blooded. The practice of testing blood has become a mandatory ritual in a series of marriage ceremonies for Luwu high nobles in the real world. One of the bride's fingers is pricked to make sure their blood color is really white.
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Theater performance "I La Galigo" at Ciputra Artpreneur, Jakarta, Wednesday (3/7/2019).
Christian Pelras, a French ethnologist, described this ritual in his book, The Bugis. “In the late 16th century Portuguese observers reported with amazement that such a miracle had actually occurred among the rulers of Luwu,” he said.
The Luwu people wandered the seas without coercion, but the Bani Hilal in fact leaves the Arabian Peninsula due to punishment. In the 10th century, when the Fatimiyyah dynasty, a Syiah Ismailiyyah dynasty based in Cairo, ruled the Arabian Peninsula, the Mediterranean, North Africa and Sicily, there was the Qaramithah riot, an extreme movement that wanted to purify the teachings of Islam. The Kaaba was destroyed. The stone of Hajar Aswad was taken away to Bahrain. Bani Hilal is involved. As a result, the Fatimiyyah rulers punish the Bani Hilal and their cousin tribe, the Sulaym, whose total number reached 1 million people, to leave the Arabian Peninsula.
Linda Christanty
Linda Christanty, The Woman of Letters and Cultural activist
(This article was translated by Hyginus Hardoyo)
