Abstract

Despite the impinging threat of modern life to the cultural survival of traditional peoples, the Muslim Beja of the Red Sea Hills in Northeastern Africa have maintained their identity through many social, economic, and environmental changes. Frode Jacobsen argues that the telling of mythical narratives among the Beja is at least partly accountable for their remarkable persistence.Through line-by-line analyses and examinations of "implicit" knowledge within stories, this study of a people with an unusually rich, varied oral tradition is also a model for understanding the lives of "others" while providing insight into the preservation of the familiar.