Jokes and joke books - Encyclopaedia of Islam, THREE
General Material Designation
[Article]
First Statement of Responsibility
Marzolph, Ulrich
.PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION, ETC
Place of Publication, Distribution, etc.
Leiden
Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.
Brill
GENERAL NOTES
Text of Note
(2,449 words)
SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Arabic literature of the pre-Mongol period contains many thousands of jokes . From the fourth/tenth century onwards, jokes were compiled into joke books , a genre that remained popular in the post-Mongol and modern periods. A similar, although chronologically somewhat later, development took place in Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and other literatures of the Muslim world. 1. The genre The classical, premodern, and modern literatures of the Muslim world are a vast treasure-trove of jocular prose (Marzolph, Arabia ridens ; Marzolph, 101 Middle Eastern Tales ). In classical Arabic literature, jokes