People’s democratic republic of algeria ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research University of Tlemcen Faculty of Letters and Languages Department of English Orientalism in Lord Byron's Turkish Tale

2.2. Summary of 
The Giaour
: 
Byron's poem 
The Giaour
subtitled “A Fragment of a Turkish Tale” is a 
disjointed fragment of an Oriental tale. First published by John Murray in 
late March 1813, it was finally completed in December 1813. The poem 
deviates from any of Byron's poems by remaining the only one ever revised 
after the initial drafting. The first version constituted 375 lines and it has 
been, in Byron's words, "lengthening its rattles" (Marchand 359) until the 
seventh edition when it reached its final length of 1,334 lines. 
According to one of Byron's letters, "the circumstances to which the 
above story relates are not very uncommon in Turkey" (quoted by Garber 
351). He overheard it "by accident recited in one of the coffee-house story-
tellers who abound in the Levant" (quoted by Garber 321). However, 
regarding the fragmented style, he put the blame on a "failure of memory". 
The poem suggests a story at the level of a narrative which juxtaposes the 
Eastern and Western concepts of love, life and the afterlife, as well as a 
binary opposition between East and West, Islam and Christianity. 

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Chapter Two: Orientalism in Lord Byron's Turkish Tale 
The Giaour
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„Giaour‟ or Gâvur in modern Turkish means infidel or non-believer, 
and the poem centers on a Byronic hero, the Giaour of the title, involved in 
a doomed love triangle with Hassan and Leila. „Leila‟ is a Circassian 
maiden in the Haram of a Muslim noble man, „Hassan‟ pasha. Without 
consideration to the structures of her society, Leila took the Giaour as a 
lover and eloped with him on one of the nights of Ramadan. Upon 
discovery of her act of infidelity, Hassan, in the Mussulman manner, sew 
her in a sack and drowned her into the sea. The Giaour arrived as the 
messenger of fate and gloom and reciprocally turned the palace into a 
tomb. He opened the doors of the abyss, became an angel of death and 
commenced a long epic battle with Hassan, throughout which he avenged 
his lover and put her killer to death in a bloody ambush. On the other hand, 
Hassan's mother cast a spell on the Giaour to be forever cursed, to writhe 
around Eblis as a vampire on earth, tortured by his inward hell to suck the 
blood of his own race.
To the Giaour, Leila was a form of life and her death buried his stained 
soul with guilt in his living body. The cursed, woeful, self-destructive 
Giaour wandered about in a constant search for solace and penitence and, 
therefore, turned to a monastery pretending to be a monk. One night, in a 
fevered wakefulness, he saw a vision of Leila where she has beckoned him 
to join her; it was then that he realized he will be dead by the morning. 
Subsequently, he confessed his story to the priest and revealed a desire to 
leave his grave blank of any marker for his story will remain as the stone 
marker of his life. The result was that: "This broken tale was all we knew / 
Of her he loved, or him he slew" (1333-1334). 

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Chapter Two: Orientalism in Lord Byron's Turkish Tale 
The Giaour
26