Oriental Features in the Giaour

Oriental features in “The Giaour”

“The Giaour” is a Turkish tale written by the greatest figure in the history of literary art; Lord Byron, and published in the 19th century. During his grand tour to the East, Byron accidentally overhead the story of the poem by a story teller in a Turkish coffee house. The poem is a narrative which juxtaposes the Eastern and Western concepts of love, life and the afterlife, and centers the Giaour as a Byronic hero who is involved in a love triangle with Hassan and Leila. Due to the poem’s exotic frame and context, “The Giaour” is, therefore, marked by its rich Oriental materials; starting with Byron’s implication of the Oriental diction, moving to his noticeable use of oriental images concerning the afterlife and finally presenting Leila as a stereotype of the oriental woman.

On the one hand, “The Giaour” includes countless Oriental expressions. For instance, “Afrit” is an Arabic word for Demons that are mentioned in the Quran. Byron used the term when he drew a comparison between the wild Afrits and the Ghouls. In addition, “Allah”; the Arabic equivalent to God that was used by Muslims to describe God and similarly by Byron’s characters. Furthermore, “Al-Sirat” which means ‘way’ or ‘path’. It indicates a bridge narrower that the thread, sharper than the edge of the sword and only people with good deeds can easily pass over it. Another example of the Arabic diction in the poem is “Eblis”; Byron explains Eblis as the “Oriental prince of darkness” and the companion of the “infidel Giaour”.

Moreover, Byron provided several Oriental images related to the afterlife which every Muslim believes in and rarely known by non-Muslims. An obvious example of such images is the depiction of ‘the maids of Paradise’, an Oriental image that has always fascinated the West. A scene in The Giaour where the Houris warmly welcomed Hassan in Paradise after his death at the hands of the Giaour: “But him the maids of Paradise/Impatient to their halls invite, / And the dark Heaven of Houris’ eyes / On him shall glance for ever bright”. Beside the image of the Houris, Byron mentioned Monkir and Nekir which are believed by Muslims to be the inquisitors of the dead.

On the other hand, Leila represents the stereotype of the Oriental women subjected to tyranny and deprived from her personal and sexual freedom. Byron’s Leila is a silent character; a “heroine as a passive victim”. Within a poem of 1334 lines she does not spell a word and the reader learns about her from the fisherman’s reference to her treachery and the Giaour’s description of her beauty. Leila’s beauty leads to a tragedy; the two men in their pursuit of it are similar to a child attempting to catch the charming butterfly of Kashmeer, a chase that will either end with futility or with the ruin of the object wanted. Throughout the whole poem, Leila is portrayed to the reader as the heroine who experiences a life of servitude as the only choice beside her tragic death.