The Infraction of the Religious Codes in the Mediterranean Folk Literature: The Case of the Islamic Ǧuḥā and the Sicilian Giufà

Ǧuḥā, also known as Nasreddin Hoca, is a cunning-fool hero; more than a thousand years ago he became the lucky protagonist of a series of comic stories known all over the Mediterranean area. Ǧuḥā’s legend, born in the Arab world around the 8th century, was spread in the Ottoman age all over the Turkish dominions; and eight centuries after the Arabs left Sicily, his stories are still alive in Sicilian lore.

This paper examines a particular aspect of Ǧuḥā’s stories, which has emerged as a result of a comparative study of the Arabic, Turkish, and Sicilian traditions; the study deals with Ǧuḥā’s behaviour towards religious codes and death.