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{ M~djtrrrnnran .~ta ASIA •Jerusalem Cairo• EGYPT 0 \~ Medina t.,,."'\ ARABIA The Thousand ~"::-'- i \.Mecca V and One Nights AFRICA A.rttbiun ) .'i:L'd (c. 850-c. 1500) MEDIEVAL ARABIA ver since the writer Antoine Galland trans­ Scheherazade is a spellbinding storyteller Elated The Thousand and One Nights--or The and a clever woman besides. Each night she Arabian Nights' Entertainments-into French in entertains the sultan with a new tale, but she the early eighteenth century, this collection of delays revealing the ending until the following tales has been the best-known and most widely night. The captivated sultan keeps postponing read work of Arabic literature in the West. The her execution in order to hear the end of each often fantastic adventures of the characters Ali story. After one thousand and one nights of Baba, Aladdin, and Sindbad are known through­ tales, he abandons his plans to kill Schehera­ out the world today. zade, and the couple remains happily married. The original stories in The Thousand and One Nights came from many oral and written sources, including such collections as the In­ dian Panchatantra (see page 171) and tales brought by travelers from China, India, and every part of the Middle East. Scholars have identified sources for many of the stories, but the true origins of many others remain unknown because they exist in more than one version and in more than one language. The earliest references to The Thousand and One Nights appear in manuscripts from as early as the ninth century. Kept alive by Arab story­ tellers throughout the Middle Ages, the collec­ tion grew and changed. By the mid-sixteenth century, an unknown Egyptian had put the sto­ ries into the form we know today. The tales were first published in Arabic in I 548. The tales in the collection are loosely held together by a frame story. In the frame story a sultan, Shahriyar, is enraged at his wife's unfaithfulness and orders her executed. He then takes a new wife each day but has her killed at dawn the next day because he believes that no woman can ever be faithful. The Princess in the Kitchens by Edmund Dulac. Illustration The supply of potential wives is running low for a 191 I edition of Th'e Arabian Nights. Lithograph. when the sultan takes Scheherazade Private Coll ection/The Bridgeman Art library. Reproduced by permissio n (sha.her'a.zad') as his wife. of Hodder and Stoughton Lim ited. 178 The Middle Ages Before You Read from The T4ird Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor Make the Connection Background Think of monsters you might find in popular Sindbad is a rich young man from Baghdad stories and movies today. What qualities do (now the capital of Iraq) who goes to sea to these monsters usually have? What does a regain his fortune after recklessly spending all - typical monster or villain look like? What his wealth. His marvelous adventures at sea are his or her habits? How does he or she are the subjects of the three Sindbad stories feel about other people? Where do these that form a story cycle in The Thousand and monsters liv~that is, what settings are One Nights. Some scholars believe the tales associated with them? originated in Baghdad, but others argue persuasively that they came from Oman literary Focus (a country on the southeast coast of the Archetypes Arabian Peninsula) and only later became An archetype is a very old pattern used in associated with Baghdad. storytelling. An archetype can be a plot, a character, a setting, or even just an object. One of the most universal archetypes is the Vocabulary Development "monster-slaying story." If you have read disconsolately (dis. kan'sa. lit, le) adv.: Homer's Odyssey, you might even recognize dejectedly; unhappily. the monster in this Middle Eastern story. This is a characteristic of archetypes: They corpulent (kor'pyoo, lane) adj.: fat. cross borders and cultures. In storytelling, approbation (ap'ra. ba'shan) n.: archetypes seem co satisfy or excite the approval. most basic human needs and longings. nimbly (nim'ble) adv.: in a quick, light way. contrived (kan, trivd') v.: managed. An archetype is the basic pattern or model of a character, a plot, a setting, or an object that recurs in storytelling. For more on Archetype, see the Hand­ book of Literary and Historical Terms. Reading Standard 3.6 Analyze the way in which authors through the centuries have used archetypes drawn from Sindbad the Sailor being carried by a sea monster, myth and from One Thousand and One Nights ( 18th century). tradition in Archivo lconografico. S. A JCORBIS. literature. The Thousand and One Nights 179 from The Third Voyage of Sindbad the Sailor from The Thousand and One Nights translated by N. J. Dawood now, my friends, that for soml' timl' after swarm of locusts. Barely four spans I in height, K my return I continued to kad a happy and they were the ugliest of living creatures, with tranquil life, but I soon grew weary L>f my idk lillk glc,iming yellow cyl's and bodies thickly existence in Baghdad and once again longed lo covered with black fur. And so numerous were roam the world in quesl L>f profit and adven­ they that we did not dare to provoke them or ture. Unmindful of the dangers of ambition and attempt to drive them away, lest they should worldly greed, I resolved to set out on another set upon us and kill us to a man hy force of voyage. I provided myself wilh a greal store of numbers. goods and, after taking them down the Tigris, 1 They scrambled up the masts, gnawing the set sail from Basrah,~ logclhn with a band of cables with their teeth and biting them to shreds. honest merchants. Then they seized the helm and steered the vessd The voyage began prosperously. We called at to their island. When the ship had run ashore, many foreign ports, trading profitably with our the dwarfo carried us one bv one to the beach, merchandise. One day, however, whilst we were and, promptly pushing off again, dimbed on sailing in midocean, we heard the captain of our board and saikd away. ship, who was on deck scanning the lrnri,.on, L>isconsolaldy we set out to search for food suddenly burst out in a loud lamenl. He beat and water, and by good fortune came upon some himself about the focc, ton: his beard, and rrnt fruit trees and a running stream. Here we re­ his dothcs. freshed ourselves, and then wandered about the ''We arc lost!" he cried, as we crowded round isl.ind until at length Wt' saw far off among the him. "The treacherous wind h,1s driven us off trees a massive building, whl'rc we hoped lo pass our course toward that island which you sel' the night in safety. Drawing neart'r, \Vt' found that before you. It is the isle of the Zughb, where it was a towering palace surrounded by a lofty dwell a race of dwarfs more akin to apes than wall, with a great chonr door whid1 stood wide men, from whom no voyager has ever escaped open. \Ve entered the spacious courtyard, and to alive!" our surprise found it deserted. In one corner lay Scarcely had he uttered these words when a a grcal heap of bones, and on the far side we sJw multitude of apelike savages appeared on the a bro,1d bench, an open uven, pob and pans of beach and began to swim out toward the ship. cnnrmous size, and many iron spits for roasting. In a few moments they were upon us, thick as a 3. spans 11. pl.: A span was a nll'asurcnwnl equal lo 11inl' inches, h:hL'd on the disl,lll(L' bL'lWL'L'll the ,·x­ kndl'd thumb and liltiL· lingt:r. I. Tigris ( ll'gris): river in soutl11wst Asia, flowing from Turkl'y through Iraq. Vocabulary 2. Basrah (hus'r,)): port .it the h..:ad of the Sh,ttt-.il-Arah disconsolately (dis• kan'sa O lit• le) adv.: dejectedly; Channel, whnL' the Tigris and Euphrates river., join. unhappily. 180 @lf¥Ufj The Middle Ages -.... ;~ Colossus by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. © Scala/Art Resource, New York. Exhausted and sick at heart, we lay down in The sight of this monster struck terror to the courtyard and were soon overcome by our hearts. We cowered motionless on the sleep. At sunset we were awakened by a noise ground as we watched him stride across the like thunder. The earth shook beneath our feet yard and sit down on the bench. For a few mo­ and we saw a colossal black giant approaching ments he eyed us one by one in silence; then he from the doorway. He was a fearsome sight­ rose and, reaching out toward me, lifted me up tall as a palm tree, with red eyes burning in his by the neck and began feeling my body as a head like coals of fire; his mouth was a dark butcher would a lamb. Finding me little more well, with lips that drooped like a earners than skin and bone, however, he flung me to loosely over his chest, whilst his ears, like a pair the ground and, picking up each of my com­ of large round discs, hung back over his shoul­ panions in turn, pinched and prodded them ders: his fangs were as long as the tusks of a and set them down until at last he came to the boar and his nails were like the claws of a lion.

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