Ibn Daniyal's bawdy shadow-puppet comedies
About the work
Imported from the workbook's Full reassessment sheet, revised 7 October 2026 (record ID 89). The assessment below is the workbook's comparative judgment under its stated criteria; source links and limits are retained.
Workbook assessment: Plausible
Date or witness: Late 13th–early 14th centuries; playwright 1248–1310
Region: Cairo, Egypt
Workbook date-sort bounds: 1270 CE to 1310 CE; these bounds are not automatically invention or disappearance dates.
Description
Shadow plays deploy rogues, sexual and bodily jokes, comic social types and elaborate verbal performances. Three texts preserve a medieval Arabic popular-comedy repertoire.
Evidence of adoption or transmission
Medieval Cairo's shadow-play tradition belongs to popular performance culture; Ibn Daniyal's texts preserve its varied social types and vernacular entertainment.
What remains uncertain
Evidence for a non-elite entertainment setting is stronger than for courtly scrolls, but professional performance of authored plays does not by itself show a specific motif being independently copied by ordinary participants.
Candidate-index family 24: Ibn Daniyal's bawdy shadow-puppet comedies
The workbook groups records 89 here and rates the family Plausible. This is a research shortlist, not proof of an independently established meme family.
Dated evidence: Late 13th–early 14th centuries; playwright 1248–1310
Region: Cairo, Egypt
Shortlist uncertainty: Evidence for a non-elite entertainment setting is stronger than for courtly scrolls, but professional performance of authored plays does not by itself show a specific motif being independently copied by ordinary participants.
Workbook revision note: Reassessed using grassroots criteria