Ulrich Marzolph

Ulrich Marzolf was a member of the editorial board of the Enzyklopädie des Märchens (Encyclopedia of Folktales) from 1986 to 2015, an academic and publishing institution at the Göttingen Academy of Sciences. In 2012, he was a resident researcher at Shangri-La, the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art in Honolulu, Hawaii. From 2016 to 2018, he conducted a research project that resulted in the publication of a book titled 101 Middle Eastern Tales and Their Impact on Western Oral Tradition (2020). He retired in 2019 (GWDG, n.d.). His main research interest lies in the narrative culture of the Muslim Middle East and North Africa. His doctoral thesis presented a typology of Persian folk tales, and his second book, published in 1992, was a study on humorous tales in pre-Mongol Arabic literature. He devoted much of his energy to examining Persian folk literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, the history of One Thousand and One Nights, and the impact of Middle Eastern narratives, both regionally and internationally. (Ibid) In addition to his numerous publications on the narrative culture of the Islamic world—especially Arabic, Persian, and Turkish folk tales—Marzolf is also well known for his work on the lithographed illustrations in 19th-century Persian books. During his time at Shangri-La, he focused on researching the lithographic images in Qajar-era books. His special interest was to determine the place of lithographic illustration within the broader context of Qajar art. He sought to compare lithographic illustration with other manifestations of "popular" art common in the Qajar period, particularly glass painting, plaster decorations, tiles, as well as carpets and metalwork. Additionally, he aimed to accurately identify European influences and the inspiration from earlier Persian traditions in these images. A more accurate assessment of the social dimensions of art in the Qajar period is one of the key outcomes of Marzolf’s research.(Shangri La, n.d.).