I. YAKOVLEV CHUVASH STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY BULLETIN

Musaylima, Quran, false prophets, kahins, tribes, Arabia, sacred text, rhymed prose.

Medieval Muslim sources, including historical and literary anthologies, as well as theological works, contain the utterances attributed to the false prophet Musaylima from the oasis of Yamama, who was a contemporary of the Prophet Muhammad. The authenticity of these texts has been repeatedly challenged. Nevertheless, the formulaic nature and variability of the fragments cited in the sources could be evidence of prolonged oral transmission of these texts. The structure of the texts, their close relation to the traditions of religious speech in pre-Islamic Arabia, including the widespread use of syntactic parallelism, rhymed and rhythmic prose and other artistic means characteristic of the speeches of pre-Islamic kahins, imply the possibility of these texts being created in tribal Arabian society in the 7^th century A.D. The oral transmission of the text after the victory of Islam, up to their fixation by medieval Muslim authors, could be explained by a sense of tribal solidarity with the author of the utterances.

Розов Владимир Андреевич – лаборант-исследователь Научной лаборатории анализа и моделирования социальных процессов Санкт-Петербургского государственного университета, г. Санкт-Петербург, Россия; e-mail: vladirozov@yandex.ru