Harap Alb
fairy tale
"Harap Alb" or "Harap-Alb" (Romanian pronunciation: [haˈrap ˈalb]) is the protagonist as well as the title of a Romanian-language fairy tale by Ion Creangă, known in full as Povestea lui Harap Alb ("The Story of Harap Alb"). He is the youngest of three princes.
"Harap Alb" received much posthumous attention from literary critics, and inspired works in other genres. These include Ion Popescu-Gopo's film De-aș fi Harap Alb, a Postmodernist novel by Stelian Țurlea and a comic book by Sandu Florea, alongside one of Gabriel Liiceanu's theses in the field of political philosophy.
Name
Harap Alb in Romanian signifies "White African" or "White Arab". The word harap is an antiquated form of arap derived from "Arab" means "black person" or a "Moor". It may also refer to a handsome man, usually with dark features.
The arap or harap are a stereotypical race in the folklore of the Balkans, from Turkey in the south to modern Romania in the north, often, but not always, portrayed in a negative light. Cognate terms exist in Albanian (arap in the Tosk, harap in Gheg) and Bulgarian-language (арап, arap or арапин, arapin).
The name may also be an allusion to the protagonist's slave-like condition of "degradation and submission", as alp may be readily associated with the African slave trade or the enslavement of minorities in the Slavery in Romania.
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This entry incorporates text from “Harap Alb” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.