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
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.
References
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