Title: The Greatest Animal
Artist: Participant B (Girl, Age 13)
Year: 2025
Transcribed story
Title: The Greatest Animal
In the pond lays three animals: a fish, a toad and a newt, arguing about who was the greatest animal in the pond.
The fish begins to say, “I am the greatest animal in the pond! My scales glitter and glow shades of coral and terracotta in the sun and my gills allow me breathe underwater.”
The toad begins to laugh, “Oh fish! Look at me! I have an elegant shimmer that can only be seen in certain light and my skin blends into the intricate cracks of the rocks in the shallow waters of this river.”
The newt, who silently gazes at both the fish and the toad says, “Oh toad, oh fish. I too have stunning, bewildering designs on my back. I have a long, swift tail which lets me swim at astonishing speeds but why compare? We all have our own sublime features but toad, without your abilities to camouflage or your elegant shimmer, would your name still be toad?”
“And fish, without your coral glow in the sunlight and remarkable gills could I still call you fish? We all have things that make us different, things that explain why I can call you toad, you fish and myself newt.”
Curatorial Note:
This piece was created by Participant B, a 13-year-old girl based in the UK, during an individual Story Design Workshop conducted as part of the Sufi Storytelling Project at the University of Edinburgh
The young storyteller described what she wished to narrate:
Participant B: “I see this story as definitely like, when like, you shouldn't compare yourself, because like I said, like before, without your features, like, you couldn't call yourself. You would be a different person. So, your features and your, like, things that make you wouldn't be yourself without them. So, you should like, really, like, not compare them. And you shouldn't. You should like accept them and like, show them off, instead of just comparing and wishing you had other people's features, because then you wouldn't be you, if you didn't have your features.”
Researcher: “In your opinion, how does it connect to Sufism?”
Participant B: “I think that, like definitely the nature. And also like accepting the way Allah has made you and not trying to like, change yourself for other people, and just accepting because Allah made you, Allah know how to like, Allah doesn't make mistakes obviously, so, like you shouldn't, because that's like saying, you know like “I wish I all something else,” but you should be proud of what Allah gave you.”
Themes:
Environment, Islam, Self-acceptance
Citation:
Participant B. (2025) The Greatest Animal. In: Digital Museum of Sufi Stories and Art by Children and Families (curated by H.E. Üzümcü). University of Edinburgh. DataShare Repository. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/8173.
Copyright & Licence Statement:
© 2025 Participant B. This work is published in anonymised form with the consent of the participant and her caregiver for research and educational purposes as part of the Digital Museum of Sufi Stories and Art by Children and Families, University of Edinburgh. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) licence. You may share and adapt this work for non-commercial purposes, provided appropriate attribution is given.
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