Raphael Patai' s (1910-1996) lifelong fascination with Arab folktales began on a Ramadan night in 1933, at a cafe in Jerusalem where, for the first time, he heard a famous qassas, a storyteller, tirelessly relate story after story from his vast repertoire of Arab folktales. In Arab Folktales from Palestine and Israel, a collection of twenty-eight tales gathered in Palestine and Israel

and one of Patai's last books, Patai explores this rich cultural tradition. He studies tales from three separate times: those recorded by a German scholar in 1910-11, those read over Jerusalem Radio in the...