Other Worlds : The “Prophet’s Ascension” as World Literature and its Adaptation in Swahili-speaking East Africa

Abstract

Abstract

en World literature as a study beyond paradigms of national literature is a seemingly open project inviting to study any transnational or transcontinental circulation of texts. So far, however, in many studies, circulation has largely been measured by a text’s contribution to the Western literary reservoir. In this contribution, my aim is to broaden the view on world literature by leaving the West as point of temporal, spatial or intertextual reference. I will open up another perspective on the circulation of texts across space, time and languages in a “world” outside of the West. More specifically, I will take the example of a ramified Islamic text, the so-called micrāj, the story of how the Prophet Muhammad travelled the heavens in one night. After outlining its broad circulation, I will follow the story of the Prophet’s ascension to the Swahili-speaking coast of East Africa at the shore of the Indian Ocean. By reversing the perspective and focusing on the “small” Swahili literature, into which the Islamic narrative becomes adapted, my contribution does not only study different adaptations, but also questions the novelty and uniqueness of transnational and -continental circulation, often celebrated as a product of Western modern times and its new outlook on both the nation and the world.