I don't speak arabic, but in hindi we have lotsof arabic words that came to us via farsi. anyway, i surmise that the Fna is the same word in hindi fanaa, which means poison (i.e. death). I'm not certain, but it's strong possibility.

Couldn't help remembering Sheherezada when you mentioned Arab story-telling... For her telling stories equaled life, that is what kept her alive. Beautiful metaphore for the indispensability of telling...

The story about Sarouh lifting the donkey is reminiscent of a couple of stories about Diogenes the Cynic and how he would get attention and then chide his audience for being more interested in trivial spectacle than in philosophy. Maybe the stories about philosophers' tricks in the ancient world are still common currency round the Mediterranean.

Fana' in Arabic means cessation of being, annihilation, non-being and in the Sufi sense it means obliteration of the self.
There is also another Arabic word fina' which means courtyard.

However in this case the Jemaa al fana' refers to the king's custom in the Middle Ages of hanging the bodies of those put to death in the square. Jemaa= grouping . History is wonderful, ain't it!

I love listening to storytellers in the square, even when they speak in Tachelheit or Tamazight.

Also, I was wondering about the name of the square, too. In darija, "jemaa" means "mosque." As in when I tell someone, "Ana sakna hda jemaa badr." (I live close to the Badr [Moon] Mosque.) I've also seen it written "djema'a" which makes me wonder if all this transliteration is what's causing the problem.

Ooo, wait, its entry in Wikipedia suggests exactly what I said above.

"Djemaa el Fna ( جامع الفنا in arabic) is a square and market place in Marrakesh's medina (old city). The origin of its name remains unknown : it means Assembly of the dead in arabic, but as the word djemaa also means mosque in Arabic, it could also mean place of the vanished mosque, in reference to a destroyed Almoravide mosque."

Hmm...