Adventure classics -- Skywalker's 12th century cousin

The Talisman

by Sir Walter Scott

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PBS ran a series in the late 1970’s called Once Upon a Classic, which blogger eyeofthekat at http://tvdinnerandamovie.com/tag/pbs calls Masterpiece Theatre for Kids. I wasn’t quite a kid, but I remember putting my young daughter down for a nap on Sunday afternoons, when the series aired on the Dallas PBS station, praying she’d go to sleep before the next installment of The Talisman came on. In those pre-TiVo (even pre-VHS) days, a sleeping toddler was my only hope for seeing British heart-throb Patrick Ryecart as Sir Kenneth, the Knight of the Leopard, in Sir Walter Scott’s tale of the Crusades.

The anonymous blogger eyeofthekat describes Rycart’s version of Sir Kenneth as “Luke Skywalker’s curly-haired English cousin, a knight with a sense of honor beyond his years.” That’s for a character loosely based on the twelfth-century Prince David of Scotland, who also held the English title, Earl of Huntingdon.

The novel is set at the time of the Third Crusade (1189-1192) with King Richard I of England as de facto military leader of the European forces fighting to win control of the holy city of Jerusalem from the Muslims (aka Saracens) led by Saladin (Salah ed-Din), the great Kurdish sultan who united Syria and Egypt.

Scott was deeply in debt and writing with desperate haste to pay off his creditors at the time of The Talisman’s publication in 1826. And, soul of honor though he was, he played fast and loose with a few facts to enhance the novel’s appeal and his financial stake. The historical counterpart of Sir Kenneth was probably in his late forties at the time the action was set, Saladin the same (although historically describing himself to Richard as in his fifties, due to the difference between Muslim lunar and European solar calendars). But they appear significantly younger in the novel. Apparently, ageism has been with us for a long time.

Scott also got dings from a Mr. Mills, author of History of Chivalry and the Crusades, as Scott himself mentions in the introduction to the 1832 edition of The Talisman, issued shortly before his death, for inventing the character of Lady Edith Plantagenet. This was a vaguely-related cousin of King Richard’s -- actually one of Scott’s more sensible heroines -- and Sir Kenneth’s lady-love in the novel.

To Mr. Mills’ objections, Scott replied that “romantic fiction naturally includes the power of such invention, which indeed is one of the requisites of the art.”

To summarize the story, Sir Kenneth, traveling incognito, meets with and is befriended by Saladin (also incognito). He fails a test of honor set by King Richard, but only because he believes Lady Edith demands his service. Saladin not only saves the life of Sir Kenneth’s dog (fulfilling a major requirement for sympathetic heroes in Western fiction), but comes to the rescue of the knight, who restores his honor in King Richard’s eyes, marries Edith, and receives the healing talisman of the title.

That’s compressing way too much information. You’ll have to read the book, since, alas, the Once Upon a Classic series apparently has never been released on DVD. Of course, the book form of The Talisman is still available on
www.amazon.com/. Scott’s story is impervious to time.

(Next Wednesday -- Adventure classics stays in British mode with what may be the late Rosemary Sutcliff’s greatest novel, The Mark of the Horse Lord.)

Adventure classics -- A pilgrimage to save his life

The Travels of Ibn Jubayr

by Abu al-Husayn Muhammad ibn Amad ibn Jubayr

translated by Roland (R.J.C.) Broadhurst

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“One day in the year A.D. 1182,” relates translator Roland Broadhurst in his introduction to the journal of ibn Jubayr, “the Moorish Governor of Granada, then the wealthiest and most splendid city of Spain, summoned his secretary to discharge some business.”

The governor was a prince of the Almohad dynasty whose current ruler was Yusuf I. And but for a fit of pique at his secretary, ibn Jubayr, the governor’s life on this earth would be as little remembered as Yusuf’s dynasty, which the Reconquista would sweep from power within the next few decades.

image: Wikimedia commons

As the story goes, when ibn Jubayr entered his employer’s presence on that day, probably in the Muslim year 578, the Muslim governor, fallen far from the puritanical principles of the earlier Almohads, offered him a cup of wine. Ibn Jubayr refused. The governor flew into a rage. After forcing ibn Jubayr to consume seven cups in punishment for the refusal, the governor in remorse lavished him with a cup of gold for every cup of wine.

And to atone for his involuntary sin, ibn Jubayr set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca. It was, of course, his religious duty to make the pilgrimage. And his capricious employer’s generosity gave him the means (as well, presumably as a suitable leave of absence).

But there have been reasonable-sounding speculations that ibn Jubayr was anxious as well to remove himself from an unpleasant and possibly dangerous situation. An employer, after all, who tries alcohol poisoning on his secretary makes the boss at The Office TV show sound stable.

At any rate, ibn Jubayr left Granada on February 3, 1183 (by the Muslim calendar, the 30^th day of the month of Shawwal, A.H. 578) and didn’t return until the spring of 1185, after the death of Yusuf I, the overlord of Granada’s governor.

During his two years away from Spain, ibn Jubayr kept an almost daily record of his travels across half the known world. He managed to see every sight along the way -- from the pyramids of Egypt to the grand mosque of Mecca to a volcanic eruption in Sicily -- and talked to or expressed opinions about most of the important people of his day, from Sultan Saladin to the secluded Abbasid caliph in Bagdad to the Norman King William of Sicily. His book brought him an immense literary reputation.

Did ibn Jubayr develop a yearning for travel from his experiences? Or did he find absence from Spain a refuge from the increasing political problems at home? He made two more trips eastward, without leaving any further account, and died in Egypt on his final journey in 1217, as the Almohad dynasty crumbled behind him. His book lives on, readily available at
www.amazon.com .

(For the next two Fridays, Adventure classics features back to back true life adventures from pioneering literary aviators Antoine de Saint-Exupery and Beryl Markham. First up -- Saint-Exupery’s Wind, Sand and Stars.)