Islamic culture held popular storytelling in low esteem, unlike modern romanticizers

Evidence

Our view of the Arabic corpus of material of this kind has been distorted by the low esteem in which such “nonliterary” storytelling was held within Islamic cultures. The teller of tales (a figure much romanticized by some modern writers on the culture of Islam) belongs on the market square along with other hucksters and entertainers rather than in the mosque. Narrators of serious matters may well wish to distance themselves from the literature of entertainment. The Thousand and One Nights, which belongs to this category of entertainment, has in modern times (but not in earlier ones) perhaps begun to escape from these constraints, and may by now be in danger of being taken very seriously. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 767

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to debates about the Thousand and One Nights’ literary status and to general questions of how literary canons form and folk traditions get retroactively elevated.
• DEEPTHINKING: Subverting modern admiration for folk narrative by showing the storyteller was culturally classed with market hucksters, not mosque scholars — a genuinely counterintuitive reframing that resists simple summary.