The Elephant’s I: Looking for Abu’l Abbas

Abstract

The Elephant’s I is an experimental approach to the writing of an animal biography that takes an elephant, its human companion, and the writer/researcher as three prongs in the construction of the story. The elephant Abu’l Abbas was purportedly gifted to Charlemagne by caliph Harun al-Rashid of Baghdad. Most likely an Asian elephant, scant traces indicate that he was gifted to the previous caliph by an Indian king. The larger project, to which this essay is a general introduction, constructs a plausible tale of this elephant’s travels in the company of a mahout (an elephant handler). Their intertwined experiences of intimacy, isolation, confinement, migration, and intelligibility form the tale, posing the challenge of telling stories across species and time.