Fabulous Islam
Fables serve almost every ethic and principle of Islamic tradition. They open up a series of dazzling and thought-provoking vistas in the work of the six writers included in this edition.
Edited by: Shahrukh Husain
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Fabulous Islam – the journey of fable in the Muslim world
Shahrukh Husain
Fables serve almost every ethic and principle of Islamic tradition. They open up a series of dazzling and thought-provoking vistas in the work of the six writers included in this edition.
Jungian analyst Shahrukh Husain on Islamic fables, their impact on Muslim culture and how they continue to thrive alongside other literary works.
The ‘Aha’ moment – Islamic fable and healing
Farah Naz
Crossing the desert with their donkey on their backs, I felt the mullah and his son in the fable were fellow sufferers in my lonely desert of Birmingham.
Psychotherapist Farah Naz on a fable told to her by her mother that has stayed with her through her life and work.
A fabulously transformative journey
Jasmine Shackle
A war of attrition ensued between my two great-grandmothers, each claiming the other had ‘stolen’ the fable. So where was it actually from? The Middle East or the Iberian Peninsula?
Jasmine Shackle researches the universal fable of the trickster smuggling donkeys across the border.
Hamza the Ayyar
Adnan Madani
The illiterate son of a warrior family, raised in the military camp rather than in a court surrounded by tutors, at night, as a child, the future Mughal emperor Akbar had stories read to him.
Responses by the Pakistani artist and writer Adnan Madani to the text of the Hamzanama, or Book of Hamza, begun in 1562.
The fable of the naked faqir
Shueyb Gandapur
The crowd was dumbstruck. The faqir’s headless body rose and clutched its severed head in its own two hands. Holding the head, the body started walking towards the emperor sat on his throne.
Travel writer, painter and calligrapher Shueyb Gandapur on the poet and translator Sarmad Shaheed, beheaded outside Delhi's Jama Masjid.
The Chenab River
Khaldoon Ahmed
Maybe the treacherous waters my parents crossed did not lead them to a secure shore. My mother taught us the words of the Urdu poet Iqbal: ‘Stay attached to the tree, and wait for spring’.
NHS psychiatrist and writer Khaldoon Ahmed on the Punjabi Sufi fable of Sohni Mahiwal, passed down to him by his Pakistani parents.
Balancing patience, knowledge and humility
Salma Raheen
An opportunity to consider wonder, the magical and the unknown, fable gives us the chance to reflect on ourselves and our own limitations.
Salma Raheem reflects on the way in which Islamic fables afford us the opportunity to consider wonder, the magical and the unknown.