Otis Adelbert Kline wrote or co-wrote seven stories of a character called the Dragoman published in Oriental Stories and The Magic Carpet Magazine. Six of these were his work alone. He wrote a seventh, "The Dragoman's Jest," with his friend and fellow Orientalist E. Hoffman Price. The Dragoman stories are as follows:
- "The Man Who Limped" in Oriental Stories (Oct./Nov. 1930)
- "The Dragoman's Revenge" in Oriental Stories (Feb./Mar. 1931)
- "The Dragoman's Secret" in Oriental Stories (Apr./May/June 1931)
- "The Dragoman's Slave Girl" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1931)
- "The Dragoman's Jest" in Oriental Stories; with E. Hoffman Price (Winter 1932)
- "The Dragoman's Confession" in Oriental Stories (Summer 1932)
- "The Dragoman's Pilgrimage" in The Magic Carpet Magazine (Jan. 1933)
I have never read these stories and don't know anything about them except that the main character is named Hamed the Atar. By the images below, Hamed appears to be young and beardless, possibly a Westerner dressed in Eastern garb.
The word dragoman is new to me, but it's an old word, going back to ancient times, possibly even to the Hittites according to sources cited in Wikipedia. If it goes back to the Hittites, dragoman might be all that we have left from those long-ago people. Atar is also a new word for me. I'm not sure of its meaning. It may mean something like "fire." Anyway, a dragoman is an interpreter, translator, or guide, a sort of go-between in relations between Easterners and Westerners. Kline is supposed to have been fluent in Arabic and to have been well acquainted with individual people and wider cultures from what was then called the Orient. Maybe he fancied himself as a kind of dragoman.
The Dragoman was on the cover of at least three issues of Oriental Stories. I say at least three because a couple of other covers--one for Oriental Stories and one for The Magic Carpet Magazine--are ambiguous. Maybe they're of the Dragoman and maybe they're not. Anyway, these three covers appear below. The first, from Summer 1931, was by Donald von Gelb. The second, from Winter 1932, was by J. Allen St. John. And the third, from Summer 1932, was by Margaret Brundage.
Apparently, an attar was a druggist or perfumer. To quire from the first story
ReplyDelete"None remain who remember me as Hamed the Attar, for full fifty years have passed since I was a druggist and perfumer with a prosperous shop of my own."
You can several of the Hamad stories online in Roy Glashan's Library.
Hi, Carrington,
DeleteNow I find that "attar" is a word in English, derived from the Persian, which is derived from the Arabic, for "perfume" or "fragrance."
I took a quick look at one of the Dragoman stories. It looks like these are told in the first person by the title character, Hamed bin Ayyub, as an old man remembering his youth. He is not a Westerner after all but a Muslim, presumably Arabic.
Thanks for your comment and the name of the website.
TH