THE Hilalyah Epic is in general like any other epic as defined by the Encyclopedia Britannica as “A long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds. It may deal with such various subjects as myths, heroic legends, histories edifying religious tales, animal stories”.
. Normally the epic starts with an original limited story. As it survives along generations, it collects additional details of that small story. Again as the story moves from one generation to another, it collects reflections from the habits and cultures that are changing in society. Moreover, as the story moves from one geographic location to another, it carries additional society features from different regions.
In fact, an epic is a very dynamic living oral heritage that goes from one generation to another and from one region to another. And as it moves, it grows and grows and becomes richer in carrying different characteristics of its society.
The mechanism that normally carries the epic from one generation to another and from one location to another is the story tellers. The story tellers in the past were playing the role of the radio and television of today. Remember that the radio broadcasting existed only less than a hundred years ago. Some remote areas in Egypt, like the Oasis in the desert, did not have such broadcasting 30 years ago.
In Egypt, there was a tradition, especially in the countryside, that the people would gather at night in a coffee shop for tea and a game of backgammon or domino. Late in the evening, entertainment would start. Sometimes a story teller would come with his musical instrument, which was a very simple instrument called Rababa; a string instrument usually composed of two strings only. The story teller would start playing music and then after a while he would start singing a part of any of the Egyptian epics. The most famous and most complete Egyptian epic is Al¬Sirah Al-Hilalyah or the Hilalyah Epic. He would sing for about an hour. Yet, the latest review of the Sirah Hilalyah shows that it takes 500 hours to cover it all (one of its versions). This means that if the story teller sings for about an hour every night, it would take him about two full years to cover the epic.
We can now feel the threat of the modern communication technology and the existence of TV sets everywhere to this tradition that survived over hundreds of years. The tradition is gradually disappearing, so are the story tellers because they are getting old and not desired as much as before.
That is why the UNESCO, in its call for the list of “Masterpieces of’ Oral Heritage”, has asked the applicants to show their strategy of saving this tradition, and to find a system so that this tradition would be passed on from one generation to the other.
