Harold Courlander, a scholar, author and collector of folkloristic troves from Alabama to Africa and the Pacific, died on Friday. He was 82 and lived in Bethesda, Md.

Many of Mr. Courlander's books remain in print, including "The African," originally published by Crown in 1967 and reissued by Henry Holt three years ago. The book had sold 14,000 copies in hard cover and 130,000 in paperback when its author created a sensation by charging that Alex Haley had plagiarized "The African" in his best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning book "Roots."

The African" explored the baleful journey of Africans from tribal freedom into Southern plantation slavery. Mr. Haley protested that he never laid eyes on the book but settled out of court in 1978 just before the trial headed for a culmination in Federal Court in Manhattan. Mr. Courlander won a reported settlement of $650,000. The controversy and suspicion stirred by the litigation continued to plague Mr. Haley until his death in 1992.

Mr. Courlander, born in Indianapolis, graduated from the University of Michigan and started out as a farmer in Romeo, Mich. After working for the Douglas Aircraft Company in Eritrea, in Ethiopia, he became a historian for the United States Office of War Information in New York and Bombay. After World War II, he worked as an editor, analyst and press officer for the United States Informaion Agency, the Voice of America and the United States Mission to the United Nations.

He was the author of more than 40 books, including studies of Hopi traditions, of the Ashanti of Ghana, Yoruba Gods and Haitian voodoo. Among his works were "A Treasury of African Folklore" (1975), "A Treasury of Afro-American Folklore" (1976) and "The Tiger's Whisker and Other Tales From Asia and the Pacific" (1995).

He is survived by his wife, Emma Meltzer Courlander; a son, two daughters, six grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

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