178
Antichrist and another monster (Jassāsah) waiting to break loose at the approaching end of the world.
This more than apocryphal tradition[1] is the basis of a story hitherto known only in its Malay form, and in which all the data of the ancient Moslim history are turned topsy-turvy and even made a mockery of. We are told that Tamīm was kidnapped by an infidel jén while bathing at Medina, and thereafter forcibly borne away on a highly adventurous expedition through the upper and lower worlds, in the course of which he was withheld far from Medina for one hundred years.
Among the many encounters which he had we are told of that with Daddjāl (Antichrist), the believing and infidel jéns that made war on one another, and the prophet Chidhr.
Meanwhile Tamīm's wife was divorced from her husband seven years after his disappearance, by the caliph Omar (for to this period the story belongs), and joined in marriage with another husband. Before the consummation of the marriage, Tamīm was brought back by good spirits, and his wife found him at the well; but he was covered with long hair and quite unrecognisable. After the necessary change of shape they were re-united, and Tamīm at Umar's command related to the faithful all that he had beheld and experienced in other worlds invisible to man.
This Malay story[2] has been translated into Achehnese with much foreshortening and license. In the Achehnese poem Tamīm has been wrongly called a "helper"[3] of the prophet; he is given three children (two too many), while his wife bears a name thas does not belong to her.
The narration of the occurrences is as insipid as can be, and would only please an audience which likes the absurd for its own sake. With
- ↑ Probably this tissue of impossibilities originated in South India and was brought thence to the Eastern Archipelago. In W. Geiger's Balucische Texte mit Uebersetsung (Zeitschrift d. deutschen morgenländ. Gesellschaft Bd. XLVII S. 440 ff.) we find on pp. 444–45 a story about a nameless infidel merchant in the time of Mohammad, whose adventures in the main recall those of the Tamīm of the Malay and Achehnese legend, though the details are very different. In the catalogues of the Fathul Kareem Press at Bombay there appear versions of the story of Tamim Ançari in Urdu and Afghan.
- ↑ This may be found in the collection of Von de Wall (Batav. Genootschap) under N° 101. See p. 17 of Van den Berg's Verslag and Van der Tuuks notes in "Essays relating to Indo-China", 2° series, p. 34, in which mention is made of the copies preserved elsewhere and of a lithographed edition.
- ↑ This is the proper meaning of Ansa, which is a corruption of the Arabic Ançār.
