In the Arab and Mediterranean world, and especially before the age of radio, television and the Internet, the hakawati played a central role in a society's culture, defining modes of expression and entertainment and reflecting the importance placed on oral histories, improvisation and mythmaking. Homer, who hailed from Asia Minor, was a hakawati.
In 2008, Lebanese novelist Rabih Alameddine published The Hakawati in the United States, an epic novel that gave new life and meaning to the word. The novel includes a fine definition of the word:
What is a hakawati, you ask? Ah, listen.Alameddine's book is itself a hakawati's--and his listeners'--dream.A hakawati is a teller of tales, myths, and fables (hekayât). A storyteller, an entertainer. A troubadour of sorts, someone who earns his keep by beguiling an audience with yarns. Like the word "hekayeh" (story, fable, news), "hakawati" is derived from the Lebanese word "haki," which means "talk" or "conversation." This suggests that in Lebanese the mere act of talking is storytelling. A great hakawati grows rich, and a bad one sleeps hungry or headless. In the old days, villages had their own hakawatis, but great ones left their homes to earn fortunes. In the cities, cafés were the hakawatis’ domain. A hakawati can tell a tale in one sitting or spin the same tale over a period of months, impregnating it with nightly cliffhangers.
It is said that in the eighteenth century, in a café in Aleppo, the great one, Ahmad al-Saidawi, once told the story of King Baybars for three hundred and seventy-two evenings, which may or may not have been a record. It is also said that al-Saidawi cut the story short because the Ottoman governor begged him to finish it.[...]