Another Arabic Parallel to the Tale of the Bygone Years: Legend of Poet Ufnūn al-Taghlibī’s Death and the Old Russian Chronicle Account of Oleg the Clairvoyant’s Decease
Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences
For citation: Mishin, Dmitry E. Another Arabic Parallel to the Tale of the Bygone Years: Legend of Poet Ufnūn al-Taghlibī’s Death and the Old Russian Chronicle Account of Oleg the Clairvoyant’s Decease // Drevneishie gosudarstva Vostochnoi Evropy (The Earliest States of Eastern Europe). 2021: Eastern Europe and the World of Islam. In honor of Tatjana M. Kalinina. Editors of the volume B.E. Rashkovskiy, E.V. Litovskikh, E.A. Melnikova. Moscow: Dmitry Pozharsky University, 2021. S. 458–463.
DOI: 10.32608/1560-1382-2021-42-458-463
Abstract: The theme of inevitable, pre-determined death was widely spread in the Antiquity and Middle Ages and appears, in particular, in the Russian legend of Prince Oleg the Clairvoyant. In the Arabic culture that theme occurs in the s tories of merchant Ṣuraym Ibn Maʻshar who lived in the pre-Islamic times and was nicknamed Ufnūn. The latter is said to have heard a prophecy s tating that he was doomed to die at a certain place, and he died there despite all his attempts to avoid death. So, long before the legend of Oleg the Clairvoyant the theme circulated in the Middle Eas twhere the Rus' travelled later.
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