The End of the Story?

Jorge Luis Borges once wrote a story called ‘A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain.’ When originally published it was assumed to be a work of non-fiction, but was later discovered to be a product of his imagination. In the story, Borges imagined Quain as the creator of myriad literary works, built from the same set of modular chapters. The order in which the blocks of text were placed created different stories in different genres: romance, mystery, or adventure.

As we conclude the Arabian Nights, it’s clear that this collection operates in a similar manner. Over the days and weeks we have encountered the same tropes, plugged together in hundreds of different ways, to create sagas, comedies and tragedies. The final trio of stories were built entirely of blocks we have encountered before: radiant young men on a quest, Bedouin bandits, feminine trickery, conspicuous spending, perfidious brothers, snake-jinn… and giant metal rings in the ground.

In the brief, preposterous epilogue, the king discovers that he has fathered three children with Shahrazad, and he lifts the clear and present threat to her life. But one wonders whether that’s end of her storytelling: At no point in the finale does our meta narrator tell us that Shahrazad stops talking. And I find myself doubting that Shahrazad would break her streak by taking a night off. Would Shahriyar consent to the end of the routine he has found so entertaining? I doubt that too — because there are still new ways to remix the tropes, new tales still to be told.

Continue reading “The End of the Story?”

Nights 963 to 1001: The Final Tales

963—978 Qamar al-Zaman978—989 Abd Allah ibn Fadil and his brothers989—1001 Ma’ruf the cobbler


The final three stories in the collection begin with an extremely liberal take on sex and sexuality. The titular protagonist is Qamar al-Zaman, and his face is so beautiful that even the men have lusty feelings for him. This induced fluidity of the sexualities is presented as entirely normal and permitted in the circumstances.

The effect that our hero has on the world is personified in the character of a pious dervish, who has had a chequered past. I enjoyed the simple yet telling phrase

He had experience of both nights and days
Tasting both licit and illicit love
A lover of both women and of men.

Burton has this as:

He had studied Love both by day and night
And had special knowledge of Wrong and Right;
Both for lad and lass had repined his sprite …

So the dervish seems to be openly bisexual. This is not presented as a moral failing per se, but Qamar’s father does seem anxious to protect his son from any advances, and resolves to kill the dervish if he succumbs to Qamar’s temptation. Bizarrely, in an unfair and creepy scheme, the father then encourages Qamar to attempt to seduce the dervish, the better to test the limits of the dervish’s self control. The dervish manages not to succumb and is spared, thus telling the tale of a beautiful woman he has seen in Basra. Like so many naive heroes before him, Qamar becomes obsessed with the story of this woman and sets himself the quest of finding her.

Continue reading “Nights 963 to 1001: The Final Tales”

Aladdin the Selfish

The Story of Aladdin; or The Magic Lamp


Late in the project, I’m going off-piste. The story of Aladdin, translated by Ursula Lyons, sits at the very end of Volume III of my Penguin Classics edition. The tale is not part of the Calcutta II text, but the publishers have included a version anyway. This is presumably due to its popularity and cultural impact.

However, I am reluctant to read it after I have finished the main work. After so many Nights in the world of Shahrazad, I would like the conclusion of her story to be the finale to my reading experience. So this week I skipped ahead to Aladdin. My next recap will return to the proper sequence, and the last set of stories before Shahrazad finally falls silent.

Continue reading “Aladdin the Selfish”

Nights 946 to 963: Caliphs, Incognito

946—952 Harun al-Rashid and Abu’l-Hasan of Oman • 952—959 Ibrahim and Jamila • 959—963 Abu’l-Hasan al-Khurasani


Two of the three stories in this sequence start with a caliph venturing incognito into the streets of his city. This is a common trope in The Arabian Nights, but not one to which I have devoted many words to so far. It’s not unheard of in reality: There’s a marvellous story about a young Charles I (when he was just a prince) taking a road-trip through Europe; and the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret famously ventured onto the streets of London during the V.E. Day celebrations in 1945. I do not doubt there are examples from elsewhere in the world, too. Continue reading “Nights 946 to 963: Caliphs, Incognito”

Night 930 to 946: The Disruptors

930—940 Abu Qir and Abu Sir • 940—946 ‘Abd Allah of the land and ‘Abd Allah of the sea


I had planned to recap four stories, all the way to Night 963, and I have actually read that far. But I wrote a fair amount on the first two stories, so I will post a recap of the second two (the tale of Ibrahim and Jamila; and the tale of Abu’l-Hasan al-Khurasani) later in the week.

We’re getting close to the end now. Back in Volumes I and II, and even in the early part of Volume III (before the long tale of Hasan of Basra) the nights seemed endless. A permanent fixture in my world. Now we’re on Night nine-hundred-and-something, the world becomes uncertain again. The book is contained, finite, mortal, and it is coming to a close.

Anyone who loves books or box-sets knows this feeling. ‘Bereavement’ is too strong a word, but it’s on that emotional spectrum. Re-reads and re-watches can never recreate the experience of the new. Prepare for the inevitable withdrawal, as “I am reading” becomes “I have read.” The last page of this book will be particularly jarring, because the book has dominated my reading, and my conversational repertoire, for months now. What will I talk about? Continue reading “Night 930 to 946: The Disruptors”

894 to 930: The Divine Right of Kings To Shirk Responsibility

shahrazad

896—899 The young man of Baghdad and his slave girl 899—930 King Jali ad and his son, Wird Khan • 900—901 The story of the cat and the mouse • 902 The story of the ascetic and his butter jar • 903 The story of the fish and the crab • 903 The story of the crow and the snake • 904 The story of the wild ass and the jackal • 905 The story of the unrighteous king and the pilgrim prince • 906 The story of the crows • 907 The story of the snake charmer • 907 The story of the spider and the wind • 909—910 The story of the two kings • 910 The story of the blind man and the cripple • 918 The story of the foolish fisherman • 919 The story of the boy and the thieves • 919 The story of the merchant and his wife • 920 The story of the merchant and the thieves • 921 The story of the jackals and the wolf • 921—922 The story of the shepherd and the thief • 924 The story of the partridge and the tortoises


Many weeks ago, when discussing The Arabian Nights foray into fables that begin on Night 145, I mentioned the widely accepted theory that the text has many authors. I suggested that there might be a ‘Monarchical author’ who wrote about kings (“where magic is all but absent”) and an ‘Allegorical author’ who produces the short morality tales about animals.

If that is the case, then the story of ‘King Jali ad and his son, Wird Khan’ is a collaborative effort, a tale produced by a supergroup of different writers. The narrative begins as a conventional tale about a king longing for a son, but it is one interspersed with shorter fables. Continue reading “894 to 930: The Divine Right of Kings To Shirk Responsibility”

Nights 863 to 894: Miriam Takes Charge

863—894 Nur al-Din and Miriam the sash-maker


This story begins with a description of a fabulous walled garden and with it, a fascinating inversion of The Arabian Nights usual metaphors. All over the text, the beauty found in nature is Shahrazad’s favoured comparison when she needs to describe the beauty of individuals. So a hero’s physique might be described as being like a ban tree, or like a gazelle. On many occasions, a woman’s breasts are compared to luscious fruits.

But in the description of the garden, which begins on Night 864, Shahrazad flips those metaphors one hundred and eighty degrees, and the fruits, flowers and roses are described with reference to beautiful people and their body parts, rather than the other way around. Continue reading “Nights 863 to 894: Miriam Takes Charge”

Nights 831 to 863: Dark Games

831—845 Khalifa the fisherman • 845—863 Masrur and Zain al-Mawasif


It’s funny how a long run on One Type Of Thing puts you in the mood for something else. When Shahrazad has presented us with a long chain of very short stories, I’ve yearned for a longer narrative; and when we have been given a more substantial tale, I have found myself wanting something shorter.

The two stories in this sequence hit the sweet spot. At 14 and 18 Nights respectively, they’re enough to establish a character or two and a particular mood, but not so long as to outstay their welcome. And after a run of earnest ‘love’ stories, full of heroes who take themselves very seriously, the comedy of Khalifa the fisherman is a very welcome change of tone. Continue reading “Nights 831 to 863: Dark Games”

Nights 778 to 831: Hasan of Basra

778—831 Hasan of Basra, the goldsmith


The tale of ‘Hasan of Basra, the goldsmith’ is about loss and longing for absent loved ones. Over the course of 54 nights (counting the pages, it is the third-longest stand-alone story in the collection), three characters express different aspects of that anguish.

There is the titular Hasan, the embodiment of romantic love; his mother, who obviously expresses maternal love; and then an unnamed jinni princess, who adopts Hasan as a brother and therefore experiences filial love. When Hasan’s choices and circumstances take him away from these women, their passion for him seems no less strong, and no less valuable, than the upset he suffers when enduring a forced separation from his wife. Moreover, it is expressed no less eloquently. At the heart of this story are the many poems which punctuate the narrative, each expressing the pain of loss. Continue reading “Nights 778 to 831: Hasan of Basra”

Nights 719 to 778: Blind Love

Julnar March Chagall
Julnar the Sea-Born and her Son King Badr Basim of Persia. By Marc Chagall (1948)

719—738 Ardashir and Hayat al-Nufus • 738—756 Julnar of the sea and her son, Badr Basim • 756—778 King Muhammad ibn Saba’ik and Hasan the merchant • 758—778 The story of Saif al-Muluk and Badi al-Jamal


There is a strange theme common to the stories in this section. Each of the three main protagonists we meet—Ardashir, Badr Basim and Saif al-Maluk—all manage to fall in love with someone without having met her. In the first two stories, the princes fall in love with a princess on the basis of reputation alone; in the final story, it takes only an embroidered representation of the woman to capture the man’s heart.

All three princes profess overwhelming love for the princesses they desire, but let us make no mistake—they see these women as trophies to which they are entitled. The women are a means to satisfy male lusts and ambitions, and none of them is loved as the person they are. Continue reading “Nights 719 to 778: Blind Love”