A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.
Overview
The jackal’s reputation for many tricks is challenged in two separately located opening tales. In the Béni Menacer story, it claims a hundred tricks and half of another against the hedgehog’s half-trick. Both raid a grain silo, but the hedgehog climbs on the jackal and jumps out; the jackal is left trapped when the account ends. In the Mzab story, the jackal claims ninety-nine tricks against the hare’s one. After a fruit raid, the hare escapes through the orchard opening while the jackal cannot pass. The hare refuses to advise its supposedly more resourceful companion. Captured and threatened with death, the jackal asks to farewell its children, swears that it will return, and escapes when released. That successful oath-breaking ending belongs to the Mzab account, not the unresolved silo ending.
A longer Béni Menacer account explicitly places its action in the time when animals spoke. A farmer loses one ox each day to a lion. The jackal promises to free him from the predator in exchange for a fat lamb. Its plan exploits the lion’s fear of the nems: from a distance it pretends to be searching for a lion, while the farmer identifies the animal beside him as an inert beam. The frightened lion lies down, closes its eyes and holds its breath to remain concealed. At the jackal’s prompting, the farmer strikes between its eyes and repeats the blows three or four times until it is dead.
The promised reward is then defeated by a human substitution. The farmer puts a lamb in a sack, but while he releases his oxen his wife removes it and inserts a dog. The jackal initially notices that the eyes inside shine more strongly than a lamb’s and accuses the man of deception. Reassured that the promised lamb is within, it opens the sack farther; the dog bursts out, pursues it and finally kills it. The farmer originally packed the lamb himself, and the wife performed the substitution, distinctions retained alongside the farmer’s subsequent false reassurance.
In the separate Zouaoua donkey tale, the jackal claims a painful foot and secures a ride only after promising not to deceive its carrier. It consumes the workers’ milk, bread and figs carried on the donkey. Drops, crumbs and a fig stalk fall onto the donkey’s ears and provoke repeated suspicions, which the jackal explains as matter shed from its injured foot. At the destination all the provisions are gone; it jumps down at a ridge and openly admits the trick. No dog pursuit or death is attached to that ending.
Other Zouaoua tales make the jackal the deceived party. In no. 5 it admires a partridge’s patterned appearance and accepts a fraudulent promise that it can become similarly beautiful. Instead, its attempts leave a broken leg and blindness, and the final jump into an elm kills it. No transformation into a bird occurs. In no. 6 it farms with a hedgehog, choosing the above-ground part of an onion crop and then the underground part of a wheat crop. Both choices leave the edible produce to its partner. When it demands a race to decide ownership of the grain, the hedgehog stations its brother at the wheat heap. The jackal twice finds an apparently identical hedgehog already measuring the grain; the brothers exchange positions for the second race, and the jackal finally abandons its claim.
The Mzab garden story, no. 8, supplies another successful escape. After eating watermelons, the jackal briefly flees toward a hill but returns to the garden while its owner searches elsewhere. Caught eating green melons, it pretends to be dead. The owner recognizes the pretense and asks his neighbors what to do; they propose hanging it from a palm to deter its cousins. He instead drags it by a leg and throws it outside, where it runs away. The printed episode therefore depicts a successful death-feint, not an actual death followed by revival. Source note 13 identifies Miloud as the contributor who dictated the Mzabi text at Mélika in 1885.
In the Ouargla cock story, no. 9, the jackal’s invitation to pray together follows its pursuit of hens and the cock’s escape into a tree. The cock says that they must await an imam, then names a coming greyhound for that role. The jackal immediately claims that its ablution is no longer valid and that water lies two or three days away, asking the others to pray without it. The text ends with this excuse rather than a greyhound attack. Note 15 names El H’adj Salah as the contributor at Ouargla in 1885; Basset’s comparative discussion of other prayer-and-predator versions is kept separate from this complete local ending.
A separate Ouargla narrative in Basset’s 1897 collection, no. 68, gives a different inventory: the jackal claims a hundred and one tricks, while the hedgehog claims one and a half. They raid an onion garden. The hedgehog repeatedly checks that it can still fit through the opening and stops eating in time; the jackal becomes too swollen to escape. Borrowing the hedgehog’s half-trick, it lies still as if dead. The owner’s son tests it with thorns and hears its protests, but the father dismisses the reports and has it thrown out. It runs away wearing slippers that the boy throws after him. This complete death-feint escape belongs to the 1897 onion-garden account, not the unresolved 1887 grain-silo ending.
The slippers provide the jackal’s next deception. A lion admires them, and the jackal pretends that its entire family are shoemakers. It requests two fat she-camels, rejects the fat animals as thin and accepts thin replacements as fat. Using their hides and palm thorns, it fastens leather around the lion’s paws and continues up its body toward the neck while calling the layers shoes, boots and clothing. It tells the lion to wait for the leather to dry. The lion’s feet swell and the hide stiffens, preventing it from rising. When the jackal returns, the lion seizes its tail; the escaping jackal leaves the tail behind.
To defeat recognition by that injury, the jackal takes its cousins to the onion garden and ties their tails to young palm branches while fastening an onion leaf in place of its own missing tail. At the owner’s approach the others tear their tails off while it cuts the leaf and escapes. The healed lion later catches it, but it calls the tailless cousins as witnesses and they all claim to have been shoemakers. The lion tries a pepper test, declaring that whoever cries out must be the offender. The first jackal makes a noise with its shoes while insisting that it has not cried out; the lion dismisses them all. The narrative ends with their departure, not the death of the jackal or lion.
Basset’s source note 133 identifies Mohammed b. Ahmed ben Sa’demou as communicating the Ouargla account in 1885. It also points to an earlier text and transcription in his Étude sur la Zénatia du Mzab, pp.139–144; that earlier publication has not been independently examined here. The complete 1897 story and its named contributor form a distinct witness alongside the 1887 tales. The opening of the following comparative note discusses parallels, but its whole argument has not been read and does not establish direct descent from one ancient or European narrative.
Origins & earliest records
René Basset, Contes populaires berbères (1887), complete nos. 1–6 and 8–9, printed pp. 3–15 and 18–19. Notes 6, 7 and 9 identify manuscript no. 17 for nos. 4–6; note 13 identifies Miloud/Mélika/1885 for no. 8 and note 15 El H’adj Salah/Ouargla/1885 for no. 9. Notes 1 and 4, pp. 131 and 134, name Moh’ammed ’Abdi for nos. 1 and 3 at Cherchel in 1884; note 3, p. 134, names Miloud for no. 2 at Mélika in 1885, identifying him as a rider attached to the Arab bureau. A separately inspected Ouargla story appears as no.68 in Nouveaux contes berbères (1897), pp.12–17. Note133, p.255, names Mohammed b. Ahmed ben Sa’demou and Ouargla, 1885; its earlier-publication reference is an indirect lead here.
Records & interpretation
Complete original French narratives inspected in DjVu pages 41–53 and 56–57. Specific source notes 6–9, 13 and 15 inspected on original printed pp. 136–137, 144 and 146. Separate confinement, escape, deception and death endings are retained. Comparative publications cited in notes are bibliographic leads, not independently inspected additional witnesses. Original notes 1, 3 and 4 inspected in pages 169 and 172, printed pp. 131 and 134. Note 2’s extended comparisons do not supply missing actions to the main silo narrative. The complete 1897 no.68 was independently read in original French page images, printed pp.12–17, with source note133 on p.255. Only the beginning of comparative note134 was inspected. Its trick totals and final pepper-test release remain distinct from the 1887 accounts.
Selected bibliography
Documented works and useful reading. This is not a list of every appearance.
- 01
Contes populaires berbères
Complete nos. 1–6 and 8–9, pp. 3–15 and 18–19; source notes 6–9, 13 and 15, pp. 136–137, 144 and 146; preface xiii–xiv. Source notes 1, 3 and 4, pp. 131 and 134.
- 02
Nouveaux contes berbères
Complete no.68, Le hérisson, le chacal et le lion (Ouargla), pp.12–17; source note133, p.255. Only the opening of comparative note134 read. The earlier Étude reference has not been independently inspected.
Family & connections
A source-supported family tree or inspiration record has not yet been compiled for this profile. Related reading below indicates a connection in subject matter, not a proven lineage or creative influence.
References
Sources supporting this profile. Linked pages have their own scope and editorial standards.
- Primary collected narratives; original facsimiles inspectedOriginal edition, eight complete regional jackal talesResearch access: 2026-10-05
- Primary collected narrative; original page images inspectedBasset (1897): complete Ouargla hedgehog, jackal and lion narrativeResearch access: 2026-10-05
Image credits
A sourced illustration has not yet been added. This gap is included in the coverage record.