[citation needed] A mixture of epic and pure fantasy, it is inspired by the life of Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan, a semi-legendary king of the pre-Islamic Himyarites (present-day Yemen) who reigned in the 6th century CE.
The Sīrat Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan was produced in reaction to the Christian Crusades;[citation needed] it sought to portray the triumph of Islam indirectly, by recalling one historical defeat of the Aksumite Empire.
We are told how he and his armies were converted to monotheism thanks to his vizier Yathrib, a learned man who had read the holy books, and who believed in the imminent arrival of Muhammad.
He marries Qamarīyah, a sorceress sent by Sayfa Ar'ed to poison him but who fails in her mission Despite everything she manages to make him fall in love with her and he names he his regent after his death.
Wash Al-Fala resumes his original name Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan, converts to Islam and takes his destiny into his own hands.
Sayf, with the aid of beings with supernatural powers manages to free the waters of the Nile and directs them into Egypt, making a prosperous and rich land where he settles.
Jean-Claude Garcin has gathered a collective of researchers to produce articles on this work in Lecture du roman de Baybars,[2] which permits an historical approach to this type of source.
In the opposite camp we find numerous motifs of oriental and Islamic phantasmagoria such as jinns and ghouls[5] which even assume the form of Sayf's mother Qamarīyah.
Despite this flood of the fantastic and of magic, there are quite a number of motifs taken from the literary tradition of a Thousand and One Nights,[6] the sīrat of Sayf is essentially a collection of various tales.
The episode of the Admirers of the Rams which depicts Shamah in the world of giants is inspired by a Buddhist tale from the Chinese Tripitaka translated by Edouard Chavannes.
[8] Finally experts can also recognize the influence of popular stories and legends originating in Ancient Egypt and from the Pharaonic civilization, which mean that the sīrat is an entirely different kind of Egyptian work.
In estimating that the Sīrat of Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan dates back to around the 15th century we are placing it in the historic context of the Mamlūk Empire.
This anonymity enables them to write openly and tackle themes that would not be possible in an Islamic empire where the Ulamā, important religious scholars, are firmly opposed to such romantic biographies.
[10] The hero Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan is an example, the ideal Muslim prince, and more precisely a practical example of Arab chivalry (furūsiyyah): handsome, charismatic, intelligent, courageous, generous and resigned to fate.
The chronological gap between the historical existence of Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan and his anachronistic and romanticized use in the sīrat allows a freedom of auspicious tone to the criticism of the regime at that time.
The theme of conflict between Muslims and Christians, Egyptians and Ethiopians, also enables us to examine a topic of hot debate at the time this work was written: that of relations between blacks and whites.
The Christian Ethiopians close to the Egyptian Coptic community, black eunuchs are everywhere in Cairo in the 15th century and this fact actually raises concerns for the population, as does the question of being pro-slavery.
The Sīrat Sayf ibn Dhī Yazan gives a ready-made justification for the domination of the Arabs over the Ethiopians and over the blacks in general, by means of a Muslim and Medieval interpretation of the Biblical text of the curse of Ham.