DAMASCUS, Syria –– Rasheed Hallack's sword whizzed over the audience's head and slammed onto a table, punctuating his reading of an ancient Arabian tale with a metallic slap.

He paused, surveyed the crowd in the central Damascus market and glared over the rim of his glasses at those not paying attention. He reprimanded a waiter who was making too much noise. He flirted with a tourist.

"Your face is like the moon, your mouth like Suleiman's rings," the 50-year-old storyteller said to her in Arabic. "Your breast is like a field. . . . I love you."

Hallack's craft may have both religious and political roots, but in modern Damascus it has assumed a distinctly theatrical flair, entertaining locals who gather to hear him nightly at the Nachabia teahouse and drawing a steady flow of foreigners as well.

The sword he waves over his head at key moments in the tales is his own addition, as are the asides he builds into every reading. Sometimes a cheer or boo from the audience will lead him to improvise, sparing the life of a doomed character favored by listeners or doing away with someone they despise.

In baggy traditional trousers and a red fez, hollering his story over the din of rattling glasses and through a haze of smoke from his listeners' water pipes, he is not trying to teach the Koran or distract from the vagaries of Turkish rule, as his predecessors did.

If he can crack a few jokes, get a rise or two from the audience with his sword antics and collect some tips, the evening has been a success for Damascus's reigning hakawati.

"I try to act as a social guide, teaching the new generation" the central tales of Arab culture, Hallack said.

He also teaches them to show off. "Photo! Photo!" he called out, encouraging a group of tourists to gather around the raised chair from which he reads. "I am," he said, "like the Syrian flag."

Arab identity is closely bound to language, and books and storytelling have played an important historical role in the region. The early Muslim rulers in Damascus, Baghdad and Andalusia encouraged poets and storytellers in the same way that European princes patronized painting and sacred music.

Perhaps the central feature of Arab culture is the Koran, which Muslims consider perfect, not just because of its spiritual and moral content, but because of the Arabic language in which God is believed to have revealed it to the prophet Muhammad. Secular tales--such as "A Thousand and One Nights," the work of numerous poets--are also important touchstones.

From the early poetry of tribes on the Arabian peninsula--from which the classical Arabic of the Koran developed--stories recounting common themes were adapted to local settings as the language and Islam spread throughout the Middle East. The retelling of tales such as those of Antar Ibn Shaddad, the folk hero who was born to a slave, "had more than a purely literary significance," historian Albert Hourani wrote in "A History of the Arab Peoples." "It served to give a legitimacy to newly Islamized or Arabized peoples by fitting their history into an Arabian pattern."

Hallack said he considers Caliph Omar, founder of the Arab empire who told of Muhammad's revelations, to be the first true storyteller. The tradition became more fully established during the Ottoman era, several centuries later, when storytellers regaled all-male crowds with stories about Arab Gen. Saladin and other historic figures. Hallack said the Ottoman-era storytellers also served a political role--keeping an eye on the audience for the central government and distracting attention from any political conversations that might arise.

Although storytellers still operated in Syria when Hallack was a child, they disappeared in 1970 when Hafez Assad became president and began to exert tight control over public discourse and gatherings. Hallack was reluctant to talk about this--a reflection of the hesitancy of some Syrians to talk about the late ruler, even three months after his death. It was 20 years before readings like Hallack's were allowed again, in 1990.

It's not surprising that the craft reemerged in Damascus. The city was the center of one of early Islam's great dynasties, the Umayyad caliphate, and developed a deeply nostalgic sense of its Arab identity under Assad. Its economic isolation may also have contributed: Compared to a city such as Baghdad, where almost all traces of the early Islamic years have disappeared, or to more recently developed places such as Amman, Jordan, and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Damascus still has the feel of a circa-1950s downtown.

The streets are full of cars from that era, there are few theaters and the nightlife still centers around coffee shops, restaurants and a handful of bars.

"How can you compete with satellites and television?" Hallack said of a craft that was once a common feature at teahouses throughout the Arab world, but is rare today. "But people do still like to hear the old stories."