LAST week, we explored the circumstances under which Abu Zaid (the hero) was born and how he was expelled with his mother because of his black skin color and adopted by the Emir of Zahlan. As we will see in the story, there is a lot of resemblance between the dramatic situations of this long story of Hilalyah and different writings of Western novelists.
The first resemblance is like in Shakespeare’s “Othello”. The protagonist is a dark -skinned person who bears noble values and is rejected by his own people. Then as we see in the next part, a war would burst between the Hilalyah tribe and that of Zahlan, where Abu Zaid lives. In that war, Abu Zaid is obliged to fight his father without knowing that he is his father. During that fight, a strong drama takes place, where Abu Zaid gets hold of his father and is about to kill him, but his muscles would freeze. At another point in time, he fights his uncle (mother’s brother) without knowing him too. This type of battle reminds us again of similar situations in the writings of Shakespeare.
In fact, the Hilalyah Epic is full of heroic tales that always confirm the different courageous values of Abu Zaid.
The first episode recounts two such stories; the story of Khatfa and the story of Handal. In the story of Khatfa, the Sherif of Mecca invites Khatfa and his group to a battle, where Khatfa captures and imprisons the Hilaly horsemen. Abu Zaid fights Khatfa and his men for three days, kills him, as well as his cousin the Emir Magr and then Abu Zaid disguises as Khatfa himself, proceeds to the dungeons where the ninety Hilaly horsemen are imprisoned and frees them.
The second story is that of Handal, who is an Arab ruler. The story is in a surrealistic form. It is in the form of a dream in which Abu Zaid dreams that his tribe Hilalyah is attacked by Handal, who in the dream killed Serhan, wounded Rizq (Abu Zaid’s father) and seized the Hilaly women. Abu Zaid travels for seven days and nights to reach Handal’s orchards. After several adventures, Handal commands the Hilaly women to dance and while they are dancing, he gets drunk and joins them. Abu Zaid takes the opportunity to smash Handal to the ground and frees the women.
The Sirah continues by recounting the migration of the Hilaly tribe from the Arabian Peninsula through Sinai to Upper Egypt. Later on, the Hilaly tribe was incited to march to North Africa to punish and fight the ruler of Tunisia Al-Zanati Khalifa, who had declared his independence from Cairo. This historical event forms the basis of different cycles of the Sirah, which deals with their migration, their conquest of North Africa and their eventual defeat a hundred years later. In fact, this had automatically generated two different versions of Al¬Sirah Al-Hilalyah: one from the Egyptian side and one from the Tunisian side.
