Under pretext of having something to discuss, he drew the Envied to one side, and pushed him into an old well. The well was haunted by a group of demons who saved him and broke his fall. They also overheard them saying that the Sultan of the city would shortly come visiting to consult the holy man about the health of his daughter, who seemed mad but was in fact bewitched.
She could be cured by fumigation. The Envied is saved by his disciples next day, and duly meets the Sultan and cures his daughter. One day he comes across his old enemy the Envier, and rewards him greatly instead of punishing him.
The Ifrit, unimpressed, turns the prince into an ape, and in this form he succeeds in finding a place on board a ship. The ship comes to a port whose King is looking for a calligrapher to replace his previous chief minister. The entire crew, including the ape, are made to write some lines on a scroll. On showing his new acquisition to his daughter, however, she reveals that her magic arts tell her that he is actually a prince.
Their magical conflict is long, and she succeeds in killing the demon, but at the cost of her own life. The King is wounded, and the prince loses one eye from hot sparks. He is, however, turned back into a man. Afterwards the angry King banishes him from the city, and he takes on the robes of a dervish and travels to Baghdad. Dismissed like the others, he prefers to stay and hear the remaining stories.
A Prince goes sailing, but his ship is overtaken by a storm. After some days, they come to a mountain which draws out all the iron in their hull and wrecks them. The prince survives, and finds a way up the rock.
A voice tells the prince in his dream to shoot at the brass horseman on top of the dome at the summit of the rock, and thus rid mankind of this affliction. He does so and, as the dream predicted, the waters rise up the rock, carrying with them a skiff with a brass rower inside.
After ten days, in sight of his destination, the prince forgets this prohibition, and is immediately thrown into the sea. He swims to an island, and there sees a youth taken ashore from a ship and put into an underground hiding-place. After the ship has left he uncovers the trap-door and talks to the youth, who has been hidden away by his father because of a prophesy that he will be killed by the prince who shot the brazen horseman.
The prince lives with him for forty days, but then kills him by accident with a knife on the very day predicted. The prince stays on the island until the tide subsides and it is possible for him to reach the mainland. There he finds an old Shaykh who lives with ten young men. He stays with them, and notices their habit of lamentation, which they will not explain.
Finally they reveal to him a route to a distant palace. He reaches the palace where he is welcomed by forty damsels. He lives with them in bliss, but they are forced to absent themselves for forty days at New Year, and accordingly give him the keys to forty chambers, with strict instructions not to enter the last one. He eventually does and is carried off by a winged horse which deposits him back with the old Shaykh, putting out his eye with its wing as it departs.
The Shaykh and the young men refuse to let him stay, so he dresses as a dervish and sets out for Baghdad. Next day the Caliph send for the three sisters and demands that they tell their stories. The two dogs are her elder sisters by one mother and the other two women are her younger half-sisters. The two older sisters made unfortunate marriages, and had to be rescued by her on two or three occasions. Eventually they persuade her to go on a trading voyage with them, and they reached a city where all the inhabitants have been turned to black stones with the exception of one young man.
The eldest lady brings the youth back with her, but her two sisters, jealous, throw them both overboard. She swims to an island but he is drowned. On shore, she saves a serpent from a Dragon, and the former turns the two wicked sisters into bitches in gratitude.
She also tells the eldest lady to beat them three hundred times every day in order to avoid being punished by her. She married young and was left a young widow. One day she is invited by an old woman to attend a wedding but when she reaches her destination, it turns out to be the palace of a young lady who tells her that her brother is in love with her. The brother is attractive, so she agrees to marry him. After a month of bliss she is persuaded by the old woman to kiss a young merchant who will not accept her money.
He bites her on the cheek, and her husband, refusing to accept her explanations and excuses, has her beaten nearly to death and thrown out of the house.
She has not seen him since, but now lives with her sisters in seclusion. The Caliph has the eldest lady summon the Jinniyah, whom he commands to disenchant the two bitches. She also tells him that the second Lady's husband is his own son Al-Amin, so he commands him to take her back.
He marries the eldest lady and her elder sisters to the three Dervishes, and finally marries the third Lady himself. There are several fantastical elements that play a major thematic role in the Arabian Nights. Traces of supernatural creatures like flying carpets, automatons and genies, living islands, underground rivers, magnetic mountains, flying griffins amongst others are present throughout the tales.
For example, the following episode from the Sindbad tales seems to reflect motifs of classical Greek literature in addition to traditional supernatural elements found in Arab and Persian folktales. On the one hand, many characters in the tales are at the mercy of their fate and are unable to fight their destiny.
At the same time, human agency is given a lot of significance in many of the tales where readers are exposed to characters that are able to use their efforts and intelligence to achieve seemingly impossible success. The most evident example of this is Shahrazad in comparison to the many other women that are killed by the cruelty and wrath of King Shahryar. Those women are all unable to change their destinies and so are doomed to very young deaths. Shahrazad in contrast to them is able to use her creativity and intelligence to save not only her life but also the lives of the many women that the King would have continued to harm following her.
The tales within the frame tale are no different. T he story of the Potter and the Three Ladies is an illustration of this, where the second dervish appears to accept the fact that he is powerless against his fate and acknowledges that there is a higher power which governs his daily life.
In spite of all of these preventative measures, he killed his friend by accident. This reinforced the concept of the the all-powerful nature of God, and how no mortal can escape the fate that is ordained for him. However, in the same story, characters are shown to take charge of their fate when the porter and all three of the dervishes tell stories to avoid being killed by the three ladies, and when the second dervish tells the tale of the envied and envious to the demon.
Much like Shahrazad, they are able to alleviate impending death by using creativity and intelligence. Eroticism and sexuality are a major theme and motif within the Arabian Nights. In the frame story, King Shahryar struggles with accepting his wife's sexual desires that lead to her unfaithfullness when he is away during war.
The same is the case with his brother. The telling of the tales at night, in the sleeping chamber add to the theme of sexuality and eroticism that is prevalent in many of the tales. The couple are in an intimate space, where the reader is allowed to enter.
The king spends a night with every woman before he kills her - his rage and wrath being channelled into sexual desire and lustfulness.
Additonally, this same theme of lust and sexual drive is present in many of the tales. The long descriptions of the sexual foreplay - with elaborate descriptions of genitals and various crude sexual innuendos and activities form a large part of the story. This is significant on multiple levels. Firstly, it is obvious that the women as well as the porter are equally lustful and enjoying the sexual pleasure of their actions. At the same time, the reader is aware that these stories are being told to the king.
The fact that a woman is telling these erotic, hyper-sexual tales is significant because this adds to the theme of a strong female sexual drive and ability to act on sexual desire be it through the creativity of her stories as in the case of Shahrazad or through foreplay and sexual activity as in the case of the three ladies and their crude, erotic games with the porter.
Many of the men in the tales of the dervishes are also similarly seduced by women. The dervishes are all guilty of lust, and lack of self control. The Role of Women is presented in a very subtle and nuanced way throughout the collection.
On the one hand, there are many strong and intelligent female characters. On the other hand however, women are also depicted as oppressed, socially unequal and unfaithful or immoral. However in the same frame tale, Shahrazad is presented as the center of beauty, faithfulness and intelligence. The countless women that die at the hands of Shahryar are helpless and lack the agency to control or alter their own fate. At the same time, Shahrazad is able to outsmart the king and change his wrath and bitterness into love and understanding.
The Arabian Nights are not just Arabic, but Persian and Indian as well, so perhaps a better name for them is simply The Nights , one of the world's great collections of stories. The Nights are a wonderful example of Folk literature and how it develops, through the telling and retelling of stories over a long period of time. There were many creators of these stories, many re-tellers, and many rewriters. There are, consequently, many different texts of the Nights , and stories were added to the Nights for many centuries.
The stories are called the Thousand and One Nights to express the idea of a large number, not necessarily exactly The stories in the Nights are like a complex set of interlocking arguments and examples, each fitting more or less well into its frame and doing a more or less successful job of proving its point as well as entertaining. The main frame creates the setting and motivation for all the stories contained in the Nights:. They travel until they meet the Jinni demon who keeps his wife locked up in a glass chest, yet she still manages to cuckold him.
They return to their kingdoms and Shahrayar has his wife killed, and vows to marry a new wife each night and kill her the next morning, so she can't cheat on him. Father tells her The Tale of the Ox and the Donkey to dissuade her. Not successful. Shahrazad marries Shahrayar, and arranges for her sister, Dinarzad, to ask her to tell a story to pass the night.
This story, and many more, will save her and deliver the people. These three stories are successful and persuade the demon to release the merchant. Story of the Fisherman. And so on until eventually the King forgives women, accepts his marriage to Shahrazad as permanent, and all live happily ever after. The stories have been successful in curing the King and saving the people.
Because the Nights developed out of an oral tradition, there are many texts and versions of the Nights available. If you wish to read more than is included in the Norton Anthology, the best current translation is that by Haddawy, which is also published by Norton.
Although the Haddawy translation includes only a small portion of the total stories sometimes found in editions of the Nights, the translation is new, attractive, has a good introduction, and avoids the ugly racism of the more standard nineteenth century Richard Burton translation. The Burton translation, although it includes many more stories, is so marred by the racial stereotyping in it, that I cannot recommend it.
You may, if you wish, read one of the editions translated by Burton instead of the Haddawy version, but be warned, it is indeed racist in its negative stereotyped descriptions of black people.
In the Arabic stories of the Nights, as opposed to the Burton translation, the issue of race is not that of modern racism. Although it does seem that when a woman has illicit sex, it is with a black slave, and some bad jinnis are black, there are also plenty of white slaves in the stories and jinnis come in various colors. Indeed, the mystic color symbolism of some Islamic Sufis includes Black Light as the second most sacred color, only exceeded by emerald, the color of Eternal Life.
Historically, there were plenty of black non-slaves who had positions of importance in the Muslim world of the Nights. Further, the children of a man and his slaves or concubines were free citizens and potential heirs, regardless of color. The son of a king and his black slave concubine could become the next king. So, although the Nights describe a world that includes slavery and some negative images about blacks, these need to be examined in the context of the Nights, not as if they were expressions of modern western values, while no such explanation is adequate for the Burton translation.
The roles of women in the Nights are especially interesting. On the one hand, there are many female slaves and concubines who must obey the men who own them. On the other hand, it is the courage and wit of Shahrazad that heals the King's insane distrust of women and saves the remaining virgins of her city from being killed.
There are faithful women and faithless women, magical women and silly women. Their many roles and kinds are not those of the modern western world, but they have their own strengths and weaknesses and deserve to be looked at for what they are, not simply as victims of men who control them, although that too is a factor.
The power of kings and other rulers in the Nights is frightening. Shahrayar is able to marry and kill a new virgin each night for as long as he pleases. As ruler, he makes the rules, and no one can oppose him and survive. There is not the least suggestion of democratic representation; this is a world where the ruler, in a sense, OWNS the land and people he rules.
The king can save or kill the people, give away lands and their inhabitants, claim young women as his wives and concubines, in short, do whatever he pleases, while his subjects can either agree or keep silent. There are two brothers, Shahrayar and Shahzaman. Shahrayar rules India and Indo-China, and he gives Samarkand to his younger brother, Shahzaman, to rule. After Shahzaman has been in Samarkand for ten years, his older brother, Shahrayar longs to see him, so he sends his Visier his chief administrator to his brother to ask him to come and visit.
The Visier travels to Samarkand to invite Shahzaman to visit his brother in India. The Visier camps with his retinue outside the city. King Shahzaman goes to the camp to visit with the Visier, BUT, unknown to his wife, the Queen, he returns to his palace in the middle of the night.
Shahzaman finds his Queen in bed with the cook, and becomes so enraged that he kills them both with his sword. He says nothing of this to anyone, and leaves with the Visier to visit his brother, Shahrayar. One day, while Shahrayar is out hunting, Shahzaman stays in the palace feeling very depressed about his dead wife. He looks out at the garden and sees his brother's wife enter the garden with twenty slave girls, ten white and ten black.
They undress and prove to be ten men and ten women, who proceed to have sex together, while another slave, Mas'ud, jumps down from a tree when the Queen calls to him and they have sex. Then they all re-garb as slave girls, except for Mas'ud who jumps back over the wall and is gone. Shahzaman marvels that his fate is not so bad as his brother's, and consequently he feels much better. When Shahrayar returns, he notices that his brother is more cheerful and asks why. Shahzaman tells him and Shahrayar insists on seeing his Queen deceiving him.
This is done and he is enraged and suggests to his brother that they leave the kingdom and seek a lover who is even MORE unfortunate than they are. Only if they find him will they return home. They travel to the sea shore where they hear a great commotion. A black pillar emerges from the sea until it touches the clouds. It is a huge demon carrying a glass chest locked with four padlocks. The demon wades to shore and stops under the tree where the two brothers are hiding.
He unlocks the glass chest and pulls out a beautiful woman. He places her under the tree, puts his head in her lap, and goes to sleep. The woman looks up and notices the two kings hiding in the tree. She gestures to them to come down or she will wake the demon. He rules absolutely but his enormous love for one woman, his wife, is his vulnerability.
When he discovers that she's been unfaithful, it drives him to the point of madness, his love becomes hate, and his strength becomes weakness.
And he makes a bloodthirsty pronouncement:. This statement of total dominance--Shahrayar's vow to bend a whole kingdom to his mad will--is, ironically, a testament to his wife's enduring emotional power over him. And slowly, he succumbs to another usurpation in the form of Shahrazad's beguiling stories.
She was supposed to be his prisoner, another of his wives to be used sexually and murdered in the morning. But I believe that he becomes her prisoner--because he was addicted to his stories, to her voice, to sitting up with her through the night. Shahrazad's power over the king does not stop with her ability to keep herself alive by entertaining him.
Ultimately, she exerts far more power over him than that. Though the Arabian Nights features countless characters and voices, we must read each one as partially channeled by Shahrazad, her plea for reason and mercy.
Through all these stories, she is working on him. Educating him. Maybe she is brainwashing him. These stories, in fact, slowly teach him to give up his lust for blood and his blanket condemnation of women. Look closely: She chooses stories that mirror her predicament.
All the characters are pleading for life, in a way. She does this intelligently, of course, camouflaging with little stories here and there on different topics.
But the main line is you cease to be a human being if you steep yourself in brutality and killing. That adultery--like many human failings--happens for reasons we can sympathize with. And so one cannot be a tyrant. One must listen carefully to others, and be just.
Every story is her asking for her life, asking for the killer to stop. With time, the stories introduce a new character, a ruler to rival and subvert Shahrayar: Haroun al-Rashid, based on the historical ruler, who loved art and poetry and music, and believed people should be treated equally. He sometimes disguised himself at night as a poor man and walked about and around to bazaars and streets to see if the people were happy. He is a mirror image, of a sort, of Shahrayar, and he issues a mirror-image statement when he learns of a wrongful death:.
Here, Shahrayar's bloodthirsty proclamation is met with its polar opposite. Instead of a mandate to destroy and humiliate all women, we are presented with a vow to protect and avenge every innocent victim. We don't know much about their relationship--if she was attracted to him, if she was happy with him in bed, if she was merely a victim of his violence. But you can feel in the stories a gradual change.
At the beginning they are very brutal and dark, but they show us that adultery usually happens for a reason and that jealousy and violence typically bring misery to all concerned. With time, though, they become more about social values, adventures, they were less dark than when she started, and concern higher questions. Who are we human beings? What do we do in life? What is our aim of living? How do we become better citizens?
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