Constructing an Event: A Narratological Perspective on Ibn Ḥaǧar and the al‑Harawī Affair

Abstract

Ibn Ḥaǧar al‑ʿAsqalānī’s accounts of the al‑Harawī affair have been extensively studied by Joel Blecher. Yet, this article proposes a new focus on that passage of the Inbāʾ al‑Ġumr, from a narratological perspective. It aims to analyse the narratological processes through which Ibn Ḥaǧar constructed a narrative of this fact, turning it into a narratological event. Compared to other chronicles, the textual space given to this academic discussion and the way the protagonists—among whom Ibn Ḥaǧar himself—are staged show how the narration is a particular occasion for historicizing the Self. The action is organised by the author according to a dialectical composition that leads to the denunciation of the fraud and the revelation of the author as the true master in ḥadīṯ, and finally announces the deferred achievement of the narrative sequence. The constructed emplotment of the event appears even more clearly through the roles that are given to each character that can be analysed thanks to Greimas’ works on the actantial model in tales. The narratological value of these roles is emphasized through the obvious shift which Ibn Ḥaǧār creates between the socio‑political life of the sultanate and the narration of this event. The emplotment of the disruption provoked by al‑Harawī’s arrival in Cairo is an occasion for Ibn Ḥaǧar to present himself as the subject of history, participating in the creation of his own fame as the restorer of religion and justice.