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Probably in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Ménak romances were written and read especially in the North Coast districts and in East Java, Madura, Bali and Lombok. They are characteristic for the Pasisir culture which flourished in those parts. In the eigh teenth and nineteenth centuries their popu larity did not wane. Moreover at the Central Javanese Courts, first in Kartasura, in the beginning of the eighteenth century, com pendiums of Ménak romances were written. The most extensive one is the work of the well-known Surakarta Court poet Yasadi- pura. It will be discussed under a separate head together with the other products of the Surakarta literary renaissance of the eigh teenth century (31.060). The popularity of the Ménak romances in many circles of Javanese society in the nineteenth and twentieth century is apparent from the naming of boys and girls after heroes and heroines of the Amir Hamza tales, which is noticed frequently. Perhaps this use of names borrowed from Ménak romances was promoted by the preference for these tales shown by female readers. The active part played in several Ménak tales by heroines may account for this female preference. On the whole, in Javanese ro mances based on Pandawa or Panji tales female roles seem to be of less importance than they are in Ménak stories. Notwithstanding their popularity in many districts of Java, and in part even at Court, the Javanese Ménak romances, though as similated, never were wholly integrated in the great encyclopedia of mythic, epic, legendary and historic tales presented by the Sërat Kandas of the Pasisir period (22.900), the major Babad Tanah Jawi (27.000) and

the Pustaka Raja (28.400) of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this respect the Ménak tales differ form the originally In dian Pandawa cycle and the Panji romances, which did become integrated. Integration took even place in the case of the Anbiya tales, which partly supplied the mythic back ground of the major Sërat Kanda of the Pasisir period. Evidently the Javanese Ménak tales were always considered as spe cifically belonging to Islamic culture. The distinction made between the Ménak ro mance on the one hand and the Pandawa and Panji tales on the other is another instance of the bipartition often noticed in Javanese culture. The well-known bifur cation: Right Branch (prophets and saints) — Left Branch (gods and epic heroes), of the legendary genealogical tree of Central Javanese Kings is comparable with the dualism of Ménak romances and Pandawa tales. Under the present head Ménak Amir Hamza tales, developed as independant ro mances and belonging to seventeenth, eigh teenth and nineteenth century North Coast, East Javanese and Javanese-Balinese litera ture, have been registered together. The romances are arranged chronologically ac cording to the sequence of episodes of Amir Hamza’s life established by the eighteenth century Central Javanese authors of Ménak compendiums (see 31.060). Some Javanese scholars considered the Lakad tale as be longing to the Ménak Amir Hamza cycle. In the present Synopsis it is registered in Part Two, for it contains part of the history of Muhammad’s wars. It is more closely connected with real history than the Ménak tales are (see 22.020).